MIRRORS OF GREATNESS

A TELEGRAPH BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023 A highly imaginative and thought provoking way of exploring the personality of a man who like him or loathe him left an indelible mark on our age ADAM ZAMOYSKIWinston Churchill followed his own star He yearned to be great to gain historical immortality And he did so through deeds and words his actions as a soldier and politician gilded by his writings as a journalist and historian But Churchill s path to greatness was also defined by the leaders he encountered along the way friends and foes at home and abroad Men of power such as Hitler and Mussolini Roosevelt and Stalin David Lloyd George Neville Chamberlain and Charles de Gaulle And the haunting presence of the adored father who had seen nothing of merit in his troublesome son In these men Churchill discerned greatness or its absence in ways that influenced his own career This book includes some whom Churchill would not have deemed great but who in our own day offer alternative mirrors of what that word might mean Mahatma Gandhi who infuriated Churchill by exploiting the power of powerlessness Clement Attlee whose heretical vision of Great Britain was socialist and post imperial And his darling Clementine channelling her pinko sentiments to