 First edition | |
| Author | Tariq Ali |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Published | London |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
Publication date | May 2022 |
| Media type | Hardback |
| Pages | 448 |
| ISBN | 9781788735773 |
Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes is a 2022 book by British-Pakistani writer, journalist, political activist and historian Tariq Ali. In it, Ali discusses Winston Churchill's racial and imperialist views.
The book is described as "A coruscating portrait of Britain’s greatest imperialist" by its publisher Verso. [1]
Historian Andrew Roberts was highly critical of the book, stating that the book "makes so many basic factual errors that Churchill’s reputation emerges unscathed from this onslaught", and that the "quality of Ali’s research is so execrable that he even cites the fictional TV series Peaky Blinders as a source". [2] Similarly, Simon Heffer, writing in The Daily Telegraph , argues that Ali "fails to consider the historical context" and "seems to mount a class analysis of Churchill's wickedness, but he never really succeeds", albeit concurring that Churchill "was a racist". [3]
Writing for Prospect , Priyamvada Gopal welcomed the book, noting that it "draws on more honest existing historical scholarship than most popular biographies of Churchill" and portrays Churchill as "profoundly authoritarian, with a soft spot for fascist strongmen, and a hostility to working-class assertion." [4] In Current Affairs , Alex Skopic commended the book for calling more attention to Churchill's broader political career than simply to his actions during the Second World War, which "allows Ali to place Churchill in a more complete world-historical context", giving special commendation to the chapters on the Bengal famine of 1943 and the Mau Mau rebellion. [5]
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by Winston Churchill, covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain to the end of the Second Boer War (1902). It was started in 1937 and finally published 1956–1958, delayed several times by war and his work on other texts. The volumes have been abridged into a single-volume, concise edition.
Daniel Bensaïd was a philosopher and a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France. He became a leading figure in the student revolt of 1968, while studying at the University of Paris X: Nanterre.
Simon James Heffer is an English historian, journalist, author and political commentator. He has published several biographies and a series of books on the social history of Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the First World War. He was appointed professorial research fellow at the University of Buckingham in 2017.
Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia,, is an English popular historian, journalist and member of the House of Lords. He is the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Lehrman Institute Distinguished Lecturer at the New-York Historical Society. He served as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 2013 to 2021.
Ernie Tate was a long-standing supporter and leading member of Trotskyist groups in Canada and the United Kingdom and a founder in the 1960s of the International Marxist Group and Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in Britain.
Sir Henry Channon, often known as Chips Channon, was an American-born British Conservative politician, author and diarist. Channon moved to England in 1920 and became strongly anti-American, feeling that American cultural and economic views threatened traditional European and British civilisation. He wrote extensively about these views. Channon quickly became enamoured of London society and became a social and political climber.
Caroline Elkins is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School, and the Founding Oppenheimer Faculty Director of Harvard's Center for African Studies.
Alex von Tunzelmann is a British historian, screenwriter and author.
Geoffrey Albert Wheatcroft is a British journalist, author, and historian.
Winston Churchill, in addition to his careers of soldier and politician, was a prolific writer under the variant of his full name 'Winston S. Churchill'. After being commissioned into the 4th Queen's Own Hussars in 1895, Churchill gained permission to observe the Cuban War of Independence, and sent war reports to The Daily Graphic. He continued his war journalism in British India, at the Siege of Malakand, then in the Sudan during the Mahdist War and in southern Africa during the Second Boer War.
Richard John Toye is a British historian and academic. He is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He was previously a Fellow and Director of Studies for History at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, from 2002 to 2007, and before that he taught at University of Manchester from 2000.
Political Marxism (PM) is an anti-positivist strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It is also referred to as a form of neo-Marxism.
Tariq Ali is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford.
Edward Palmer Thompson was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class (1963).
Trotsky: A Biography is a biography of the Marxist theorist and revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) written by the English historian Robert Service, then a professor in Russian history at the University of Oxford. It was first published by Macmillan in 2009 and later republished in other languages.
Jacob Epstein's bronze bust of Winston Churchill was completed in 1947 and cast in an edition often said to number 10. Epstein was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to create a sculpture of former British prime minister Winston Churchill in August 1945, after the end of the Second World War and shortly after Churchill lost the 1945 UK general election. Two casts have been previously displayed in the Oval Office. Another remains on display in the atrium of Churchill College, Cambridge.
The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution is a 2017 book written by activist and Trotskyist Tariq Ali, which focuses on the life of Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
Priyamvada Gopal is an Indian-born academic, writer and public intellectual who is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her primary teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial studies, South Asian literature, critical race studies, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation. She has written three books engaging these subjects: Literary Radicalism in India (2005), The Indian English Novel (2009) and Insurgent Empire (2019). Her third book, Insurgent Empire, was shortlisted for the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
Throughout his life British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made numerous controversial statements on race, which some writers have described as racist. It is furthermore suggested that his personal views influenced important decisions he made throughout his political career, particularly relating to the British Empire, of which he was a staunch advocate and defender. In the 21st century, his views on race and empire became amongst the most discussed aspects of his legacy. Some academics, such as Kehinde Andrews, go so far as to suggest Churchill was "the perfect embodiment of white supremacy", while others like historian Andrew Roberts, say that Churchill could certainly be accused of paternalism, but not race-hatred.