An important new reappraisal of the immediate origins of World War II. Entertaining and absorbing....Chamberlain hardly emerges a hero from these pages, but at least there is no excuse left for regarding him as no more than a wimp in a wing-collar. -The Guardian

Splendid Isolation? is at once a portrait of British politics and diplomacy at the height of British power and a revisionist account of the First World War. John Charmley argues a powerful and challenging case, forcing a fresh look at a period long held to be part of the glorious British past.

Of the three revisionist works John Charmley has written about British foreign policy in the mid-twentieth century this is the centrepiece.The author argues that Churchill deserves more credit for 'their finest hour' than has been granted, but just as his virtues were built on the heroic scale, so too were his faults and failures. The statesman who had struggled to destroy Nazism and restore Europe's balance of power ended by allowing Stalin to dominate central and eastern Europe.

The second edition of this successful text has been thoroughly updated to take into account recent research, and now begins at 1830. Charmley examines the history of the party and takes the story through the recent 'wilderness years' following the 1997 election fiasco, right up to David Cameron's leadership.

The first volume in William Manchester's masterful, magnum opus account of Winston Churchill's life. The Last Lion: Visions of Glory follows the first fifty-eight years of Churchill's life--the years that mold him into the man who will become one of the most influential politicians of the twentieth century.In this, the first volume, Manchester follows Churchill from his birth to 1932, when he began to warn against the re-militarization of Germany. Born of a...

"A richly textured and deeply moving portrait of greatness" ( Los Angeles Times).In this masterful book, prize-winning historian and authorized Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert weaves together the research from his eight-volume biography of the elder statesman into one single volume, and includes new information unavailable at the time of the original work's publication.Spanning Churchill's youth, education, and early military career, his journa...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour…Sir Winston Churchill was a soldier, journalist, writer, Nobel Prize winner and, above all, a leader. Conservative then Liberal then Conservative again, his political instincts won him a sustained career at the summit of British government, while his resolve and politics of personality made him broadly regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century.With his early radicalism, bold decisions regarding ...

A biographical portrait of Great Britain's renowned Prime Minister during World War II—the basis for the film starring Oscar-winner Gary Oldman."McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable." —Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director of the International Churchill ...

Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, this biography examines the complex personality of Germany's last emperor. Born in 1859, the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria, Prince Wilhelm was torn between two cultures - that of the Prussian Junker and that of the English liberal gentleman.

Winston Churchill is probably still the best-known Prime Minster of Great Britain. Born at Blenheim Palace, he joined the army after Harrow, but in 1899 resigned his commission to report on the Boer War. Elected to Parliament in 1900, he served in both Conservative and Liberal governments, and became Chancellor of the Exechequer under Baldwin, A period in the political wilderness was ended by the declaration of the Second World War and his appointment to the Admiralty; aft...

In May 1940, with France on the verge of defeat, Britain alone stood in the path of the Nazi military juggernaut. Survival seemed to hinge on the leadership of Winston Churchill, whom the King reluctantly appointed Prime Minister as Germany invaded France. Churchill's reputation as one of the great twentieth-century leaders would be forged during the coming months and years, as he worked tirelessly first to rally his country and then to defeat Hitler. But Churchill -- regarded as the savio...

In the years before the First World War, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Together, they presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of the most destructive war the world had ever seen, a war that set twentieth-century Europe on course to be the most violent continent in the history of the world.Through brilliant and often darkly comic portraits o...