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In Command of History
In Command of History
Oct 29, 2024 9:28 PM

Author:David Reynolds

In Command of History

Churchill fought the war twice over - as Prime Minister and again as its premier historian. In 1948-54 he published six volumes of memoirs which secured his reputation and shaped our understanding of the conflict to this day.

Using the drafts and correspondence for The Second World War, David Reynolds opens our eyes to Churchill the author and to the research 'syndicate' on whom he depended. We see how the memoirs were censored by Whitehall to conceal secrets such as the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, and how Churchill himself censored them to avoid offending current world leaders.

This book forces us to reconsider much received wisdom about the war and illuminates an unjustly neglected period of his life - the Second Wilderness Years of 1945-51, when Churchill, now over seventy, wrote himself into history, politicked himself back into Downing Street and delivered some of the most important speeches of his career.

Reviews

Praise for Let Me Go
'A powerful, painful book'

—— Guardian

'Frightening and fascinating'

—— Mail on Sunday

'Grips the reader completely...so powerful'

—— Glasgow Herlad

'Desperately sad and powerful...Unforgettable'

—— Jewish Telegraph

Unforgettable... Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova have recovered nothing less than a lost classic of reportage

—— Sean McCarthy , The Scotsman

Grossman was above all a clear-eyed and generous witness to the human cost of war, civilians and soldiers of both sides, the lost women and broken men; in the very highest order of journalistic achievement, he was as alert to the victims as much as to the heroes his audience was required to read about

—— David Flusfeder , Daily Telegraph

Impeccably edited, the commentary as informative as it is unobtrusive.

—— Robert Chandler , Financial Times

In bringing his notebooks to a wider audience, and in reminding us about this brilliant witness, Beevor and Vinogradova have done their readers - and Grossman's memory - a great service

—— Independent

'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War

—— History Today
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