Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Fifty Bestbooks of The Last Fifty Years
The Fifty Bestbooks of The Last Fifty Years
n 1991, Finest Hour 70 listed our thirty favorite books about Churchill, five in each of six categories. In 2005,
Finest Hour 128 offered Professor Paul Addisons top ten choices. The exciting explosion of books over recent years
makes it impossible to be so rigid nowadaysso for our fortieth anniversary, we have simply listed fifty great
books, alphabetically by author (except that the Official Biography is at the top).
Our list is not intended to be exclusive, and more nominations are welcome. We have cited at least one work from
prolific Churchill authors such as Gilbert, Kimball, Sandys, Soames and Weidhorn, though their other titles are worth considering. The only mandates were to include any book which made Professor Addisons list (which one disputes at ones
peril), and all winners of Churchill Centre awards: the Reves Award for excellence in writing or speaking about Churchills
life and times; the Farrow Award for excellence in Churchill studies. (Winners are at http://xrl.us/oo5en.)
Three changes from 1991: (1) We no longer list any work more than forty years old. While many are still fine reads,
many have been rendered incomplete or obsolete by new scholarship and sourcework. (2) Several books are included that
were not listed in 1991 because they mainly contain Churchills own words. Yet their editors deserve credit, because they
are indispensable. (3) There is no attempt to rank books in any sub-category or in order of merit. Our priorities may differ
from yours, and given the diversity of this rich assortment, judging one book against another is futile.
A numbers are from the standard work that should be on every Churchillians shelf: Curt Zollers Annotated
Bibliography of Works About Sir Winston Churchill (Sharpe, 2004). This massive book of 410 pages sells for up to $189
on the internet, but members can order it for $65 postpaidcomplete with Curt Zollers addendum to works published
since 2004. Send your check to Zoller Book, Churchill Centre, 200 West Madison Street, Suite 1700, Chicago IL 60606
or telephone Mary Dwyer with your credit card numbers toll free: (888) WSC-1874.
For titles not readily obtainable through usual sources, readers may wish to check www.bookfinder.com, or contact
one of the two leading Churchill book specialists:
Barry Singer, Chartwell Booksellers (www.churchillbooks.com, email info@chartwellbooksellers.com), Park Avenue
Plaza, 55 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10055, telephone (212) 308-0643.
Mark Weber, The Churchill Book Specialist (www.wscbooks.com, email mark@wscbooks.com), PO Box 90689,
Tucson AZ 85752-0689, telephone (520) 743-8405.
the companion volumes are more interesting than the biographics. The authors are unabashedly positive in their
selection of material, but all the facts are there, and this is
the basic reference all other Churchill writers draw from.
We warmly recommend the new Hillsdale College Press
reprints (page 11). On the Internet, we urge you to visit
www.hillsdale.edu/news/freedomlibrary/churchill.asp.
Farrow Award 1996, Reves Award 1999.
Addison, Paul. Churchill on the Home Front 1900-1955,
1968-2008
Invaluable.
>>
FIFTY BEST BOOKS...
Coombs, David and Churchill, Minnie. Winston
Churchill: His Life Through His Paintings, 2003, 256
pages. A vast expansion and update of Coombs 1967 catalogue of Churchills paintings, this book not only lists all
the 550-plus Churchill paintings but reproduces nearly all
of them, mostly in faultless color. Five thick chapters, a
bibliography, and a catalogue track Churchills painting
against the course of world events. A luxurious coffee table
book as well as the essential reference to WSCs art.
Dilks, David. Great Dominion:
Winston Churchill and Canada 19001954, 2005. This award-winning
work examines each of Churchills
nine encounters with Canada,
dredging from contemporary news
accounts words by and about WSC
that were hitherto unrecorded. A
grand and handsome guidebook to
Canada as seen through Churchills
eyes, and how Canadians themselves
saw WSC. Reves Award 2006.
witnesses to history.
Gilbert, Martin. Churchill and America,
2005, 504 pages. Churchills love of his
mothers land was evident from an early
age and stayed with him for life, but he
was not an uncritical lover. He deplored
U.S. reluctance to engage in world
affairs after World War I, and with
Russia after WW2, and hoped for more
than he got from the special relationship. Here is the whole story, good, bad
and ugly, with the fastidious maps that are among his hallmarks. Reading like a fast-paced novel, this book is now
the standard work on the subject.
Gilbert, Martin. Churchill and the Jews, 2007, 384 pages.
The subject is traced individually and collectively, beginning with Churchills representing a heavily Jewish
consistency and ending with his support for Israel, with
vast detail on WSCs involvement in the Jewish Homeland
from the Balfour declaration to the 1937 Peel Commission
and beyond. No one is better able to write such a history,
which eclipses earlier works on the subject by Rabinowicz
and Cohen. See also Makovsky, below.
decade.
Kimball, Warren F., ed. Churchill
and Roosevelt: The Complete
Correspondence, 3 Vols., 1983,
2192 pages, Zoller A463. This
seminal three-volume achievement collects all the
Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, carefully arranging and
footnoting every communication
between them. Kimball adds
scholarly connecting tissue to reveal the background, and
his own opinions. A major sourcework, not least for
Kimballs own subsequent books such as The Juggler and
Forged in War, which we also recommend.
Langworth, Richard M. A Connoisseurs Guide to the
Books of Sir Winston Churchill, 1998, 372 pages, Zoller
A616. A guide to Churchills works for bibliophiles,
scholars, collectors and librarians which combines features
of a buyers guide, book review and catalogue of editions,
issues, states and variantsEnglish, American, Canadian,
Australian and foreign. Includes aesthetic judgments, comments of contemporary reviewers and the author; about
200 photos. Reves Award 2000.
Larres, Klaus. Churchills Cold War:
The Politics of Personal Diplomacy,
2002, 592 pages. While one hundred
pages of this book cover Churchills preWorld War II career, most of the work is
dedicated to his actions during and after
it: a tour de force that dispels the widespread perception of Churchill as a
simplistic cold warrior, as the author
says. Depicts a depth of personal diplomacy that was both imaginative and
visionary, whether or not it succeeded or
failed, and WSC experienced ample cases of both.
Makovsky, Michael. Churchills Promised Land: Zionism
and Statecraft, 2007, 368 pages. Makovskys excellent
study on the statecraft of Churchill over Jewish matters is a
highly readable accompanying work to Gilberts Churchill
and the Jews. Both books provide up to date archival
research and perspectives on Zionism that were not available, or not offered by, earlier writers.
Manchester, William and Reid, Paul. The
Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill,
1983-88, 2 vols., vol. 3 to come by 2010,
1730 pages to date, Zoller A453. The
longest biography short of the O.B.
Lyrical, romantic, overwhelmingly proChurchill and not without factual errors,
it nevertheless captures his life and times
better than any other full-scale biography.
1968-2008
what he did, how he felt about it, and why it matters. Still
in print, this needs to be disseminated widely. Reves Award
2003.
Rhodes James, Sir Robert. Churchill: A Study in Failure,
1900-1939, 1972, 372 pages, Zoller A348. An important
work on Churchills lost causes through 1939, this book
develops the controversial argument that Churchill would
be a historical footnote had he died before 1939. The
author is grinding no personal axes and his analytical work
is among the most balanced critiques. Despite the advent
of new research and archives, it is still widely quoted.
Rhodes James, Sir Robert,
ed. Winston S. Churchill:
His Complete Speeches
1897-1963, 1974, 8 vols.,
8918 pages. While not
entirely complete, 98
percent of Churchills
oratory must be gathered
here, by a young Rhodes
James who let on that he
was paid all of 5000 for this titanic job. Alas now rare and
expensive, this is the masterwork from which all quotations
must be drawn, based as it is on Hansard (Parliamentary
Debates), with expert introductions by the editor.
Russell, Douglas. Winston Churchill Soldier: The Military
Life of a Gentleman at War, 2005, 388 pages. Although
much of the story has been published variously before,
Russell has brought Churchills military career together in
one compact, highly praised package which qualifies it as
essential for the serious Churchill library. The expertly footnoted narrative is never boring, and the depth of the
authors knowledge is manifest throughout.
Sandys, Celia. Churchill, 2003, 160
pages. A brief life by WSCs granddaughter, profusely illustrated and
well researched. Widely admired for
its applications to education, used as
a tool by the Churchill Centre to
reach young people: an ideal
Churchill 101, and an introduction to the authors other books,
notably including Churchill Wanted
Dead or Alive and Chasing Churchill,
the latter now a television documentary.
Seldon, Anthony. Churchills Indian Summer: The
Conservative Government, 1951-1955, 1981, 662 pages,
Zoller 442. Virtually all biographies run quickly through
Churchills second premiership, from 1951 through 1955.
Here is the only work thus far which concentrates in detail
on that Conservative Government, distinguished by
numerous first-person interviews.