Andrew Roberts.
ANDREW ROBERTS
CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY (2018)
One of the Economist’s Best Books of 2018
One of the Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Books of 2018
Winston Churchill (born 1874) was one of the most prominent politicians of the twentieth century. He had a 64 year parliamentary career, serving as wartime Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945. He was Prime Minister again from 1951 to 1955, retiring from Parliament in 1964, and dying in 1965. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a descendant of the 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Churchill was born at the family’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace. His mother, Jennie, was the daughter of the wealthy American businessman, Leonard Jerome.
After his education at Harrow School, Churchill entered the army, serving in Cuba, India and Sudan. His writing career began when he joined, as a journalist, Bindon Blood’s Malakand Field Force fighting Mohmand rebels in North East India’s Swat Valley. Keen to participate in the Boer War, Churchill sailed to South Africa as a journalist for the Morning Post. Captured as a prisoner of war, Churchill escaped by stowing away in freight trains and hiding in a mine. In 1901, at the age of 25, he was elected as the Conservative MP for Oldham. From 1904 to 1915 he was a member of the LIberal Party, serving during the First World War as a cabinet minister in Lloyd George’s government.
Piers Brendon wrote in the Literary Review of Roberts’ Churchill biography: ‘Roberts salutes his transcendent qualities of courage, eloquence, energy, magnanimity, tenacity, audacity, humour and imagination. He also enters into Churchill’s conceit that he was a man of destiny – ‘over me beat the invisible wings’. Yet Roberts acknowledges that Churchill was, from his adventurous youth to his political apotheosis, incredibly lucky. Churchill himself would have agreed: he likened becoming prime minister to winning the Derby.’
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Andrew Roberts (born 1963) is a distinguished historian and journalist, who was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer by Boris Johnson. Roberts read history at Caius College, Cambridge, where the chaired the Cambridge University Conservative Association. He worked as an investment banker at Robert Fleming from 1985 to 1988, publishing his first book, a biography of the politician Lord Halifax, in 1991. His many further books focus particularly on politics and war in the 20th century.
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BIOGRAPHIES BY ANDREW ROBERTS
Northcliffe, Lord. Press baron. By Andrew Roberts. 2022.
George III. Last King of America. By Andrew Roberts. 2021.
Churchill, Winston. Walking with Destiny. By Andrew Roberts. 2018.
Napoleon, Bonaparte. General and Emperor. By Andrew Roberts. 2014.
Windsor, House of. Britain’s Royal Family. By Andrew Roberts. 2000.
Halifax, Lord. British Prime Minister. By Andrew Roberts. 1991.