Churchill: Walking with Destiny von Andrew Roberts

Churchill: Walking with Destiny

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, ECONOMIST, DAILY TELEGRAPH, EVENING STANDARD, OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR'Undoubtedly the best single-volume life of Churchill ever written' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday TimesA magnificently fresh and unexpected biography of Churchill, by one of Britain's most acclaimed historiansWinston Churchill towers over every other figure in twentieth-century British history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world.There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over forty new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors. The book in no way conceals Churchill's faults and it allows the reader to appreciate his virtues and character in full: his titanic capacity for work (and drink), his ability see the big picture, his willingness to take risks and insistence on being where the action was, his good humour even in the most desperate circumstances, the breadth and strength of his friendships and his extraordinary propensity to burst into tears at unexpected moments. Above all, it shows us the wellsprings of his personality - his lifelong desire to please his father (even long after his father's death) but aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history and its connection to the present.During the Second World War, Churchill summoned a particular scientist to see him several times for technical advice. 'It was the same whenever we met', wrote the young man, 'I had a feeling of being recharged by a source of living power.' Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's emissary, wrote 'Wherever he was, there was a battlefront.' Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill's essential partner in strategy and most severe critic in private, wrote in his diary, 'I thank God I was given such an opportunity of working alongside such a man, and of having my eyes opened to the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.'

"Churchill" von Andrew Roberts ist eine umfassende und fesselnde Biografie über eine der einflussreichsten Persönlichkeiten des 20. Jahrhunderts. Diese bemerkenswerte Darstellung beleuchtet das Leben und die Errungenschaften von Winston Churchill, der nicht nur als britischer Premierminister, sondern auch als bedeutender Staatsmann und Historiker in die Geschichte eingegangen ist. Roberts nutzt über vierzig neue Quellen, darunter die privaten Tagebücher von König George VI, um ein intimeres und nuancierteres Bild von Churchill zu zeichnen. Die Biografie geht über die üblichen Darstellungen hinaus und zeigt sowohl die Stärken als auch die Schwächen des Politikers. Sie vermittelt ein tiefes Verständnis für seine Persönlichkeit, seine Arbeitsmoral und seine Fähigkeit, in Krisenzeiten zu führen. Roberts' Werk ist nicht nur eine Hommage an Churchill, sondern auch eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit seinem Leben und seinen Entscheidungen, die die Weltgeschichte geprägt haben. Diese Biografie ist ein unverzichtbares Werk für alle, die sich für Geschichte und die komplexen Charaktere, die sie geformt haben, interessieren.