Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie King kept a voluminous diary that is an incredible source of insight into his role as a witness (and often an influencer) to the wartime and post-World War II leadership of Roosevelt and Churchill. A new book distills the 30,000 pages of the diary.
The recent Royal Family drama had nothing on the relationship of Winston Churchill and his son Randolph, which was thrown into tumult by the younger Churchill's marital problems at the onset of World War II.
"Churchill was an admired wartime leader who recognised the threat of Hitler in time and played a pivotal role in the allied victory. It should be possible to recognise this without glossing over his less benign side."
Churchill painted the scene the day after the January, 1943 Casablanca Conference meeting with Franklin Roosevelt to strategize for the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Historians have criticised a BBC News report on Tuesday about Churchill’s role in the Bengal Famine, which killed three million people in 1943 and 1944. The report arguably blamed Churchill's racism without considering other material factors that lead to 3 million deaths.
Neither the formation of what Churchill later called the Grand Alliance nor its collapse was inevitable. The Grand Alliance was willed into existence by its leaders and then sustained through four years of total war. It was one the most successful alliances in history.
The 18-karat gold toilet disappeared from Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, on September 14 - only two days after the palace installed it as part of an art exhibition by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
The exhibition focuses on Churchill’s journey, but it builds context through immersive galleries of World War I trenches, the rise of fascism in Europe, and the London Blitz.
Although more than one thousand books have been written on his life, the recently-published Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018) by Andrew Roberts merits consideration as the newly definitive one-volume biography of its subject.
