Winston's War

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Winston's War
Winstons War by Michael Dobbs cover art.jpeg
First edition HarperCollins cover art
Author Michael Dobbs [1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SeriesChurchill
Genre Historical novel
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date
2002
Media typePrint (hardback and paperback) [2]
Pages487
ISBN 0-00-713018-X [3]
OCLC 48885056
823/.914 22
LC Class PR6054.O23 W56 2002
Followed by Never Surrender [4]  

Winston's War is a 2002 novel by Michael Dobbs that presents a fictional account of the struggle of Winston Churchill to combat the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. [5] [6] [7]

Plot summary

The story starts with Chamberlain's 1938 triumphant return to 10 Downing Street, a public hero after the signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, declaring "peace in our time." The story ends with the fall of the Chamberlain Government, and the appointment of Churchill as Prime Minister. [8]

Churchill, relegated to the periphery of British politics by the late 1930s, lashes out against appeasement despite having almost no support from fellow parliamentarians or the British press. The novel includes many of the momentous historical personages of the day: Chamberlain, the ailing and pacifist Prime Minister; Churchill, the political outcast, whose pugnacity created opprobrium in the public eye; Joseph Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's; Guy Burgess, an alcoholic BBC journalist of later Cold War infamy; the machiavellian newspaper mogul Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook), and the stuttering and insecure King George VI, who personally detests Churchill and tries to persuade his good friend, Lord Halifax, to take the reins of leadership.

Winston's War is the first in a series of novels by Dobbs about Churchill's wartime leadership. The sequel Never Surrender continues the storyline over the first few weeks of Churchill's premiership. [9] [10]

Related Research Articles

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Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940 and Leader of the Conservative Party from May 1937 to October 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.

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References

  1. "Book Chart". Express and Echo. 17 October 2013.
  2. "London's Best Sellers". The Evening Standard (London). 6 December 2004.
  3. Winston's War. OCLC   248496210 . Retrieved 12 April 2014 via OCLC Worldcat.
  4. "Churchill's Hour". Derby Evening Telegraph. 24 June 2005.
  5. Pearce, Robert (September 2004). "Winston's War". History Review (49): 33–35.
  6. Tebbit, Norman (20 November 2009). "My Six Best Books". The Express.
  7. Robinson, David (19 November 2005). "A Bulldog in Chains". The Scotsman.
  8. "Michael Dobbs: Churchill's Hour". The New Zealand Herald. 8 February 2005.
  9. "Paperbacks". Courier Mail. 31 December 2005.
  10. Hill, Alan (10 December 2005). "Real Triumph was Triumph of the Spirit". Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia).