CHURCHILL:A Study in Greatness

Description

Winston Churchill's inspiring leadership in the Second World War once put him above criticism. In recent years his record has come under attack. In Churchill: A Study in Greatness, one of Britain's most distinguished historians makes sense of this extraordinary man and his long, controversial, colourful, contradictory and heroic career. What was at the heart of him? Was he a romantic or a realist? How central was his part in Britain's survival and in the defeat of Hitler? Geoffrey Best brings out both his strengths and his weaknesses, looking past the many received versions of Churchill in a biography that balances the private and the public man and offers a fresh insight into his character.

Geoffrey Best began his academic life in Cambridge, as undergraduate and research student at Trinity College and then as a History Fellow of Trinity Hall. He went on to teach history at the Universities of Edinburgh and Sussex and, after six years as Academic Visitor at the L S E, ended up teaching International Relations at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He has held visiting posts at the Universities of Harvard and Chicago and at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre, Washington DC. His previous publications include Humanity in Warfare, Honour among Men and Nations, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe and the prize-winning pair, War and Law since 1945 and Churchill: a Study in Greatness He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

'my favourite Winston Churchill biography of all, though, is Geoffrey Best's 'Churchill: A Study of Greatness' which combines all the biographical information with a real sense of what it felt like to be English in Churchill's era.' -- Rudolph Giukiani * Wall Street Journal *