The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill
Technical:
- ID: 161
- Added: 2025-09-03
- Updated: 2025-09-03
- ISBN: 9780316547703
- Publisher: Little, Brown
- Published: 2012-11-06
- Reviews: 3
The long-awaited final volume of William Manchester's legendary biography of Winston Churchill. Spanning the years of 1940-1965, THE LAST LION picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister-when his tiny island nation stood alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. The Churchill conjured up by William Manchester and Paul Reid is a man of indomitable courage, lightning fast intellect, and an irresistible will to action. THE LAST LION brilliantly recounts how Churchill organized his nation's military response and defense; compelled FDR into supporting America's beleaguered cousins, and personified the "never surrender" ethos that helped the Allies win the war, while at the same time adapting himself and his country to the inevitable shift of world power from the British Empire to the United States. More than twenty years in the making, THE LAST LION presents a revelatory and unparalleled portrait of this brilliant, flawed, and dynamic leader. This is popular history at its most stirring.
Reviews
Pull quotes
- The Last Lion is sometimes moved by a plain sympathy for Churchill, and in that mood, it gets very close to Churchill's own way of looking at things.
- Manchester is not revealing previously unknown facts; nor, for that matter, is he condensing the existing record for a popular audience.
- He finds the notion of “Victorian standards” serviceable as a kind of insulation to protect Churchill from the derision of fashionable opinion today.
Pull quotes
- Most of this volume (approximately 800 pages) covers the war years.
- It was impossible to understand the character and specific actions of Churchill’s leadership except against the canvas of the war.
- Churchill’s presence among the ruins, inspiring people by the fact that he was there.
Pull quotes
- Manchester fleshes out the entire Churchill, from his twice a day baths, his eccentric food habits at his country estate and even his counseling of Edward VIII prior to his abdication.
- The reader will surely take away a great deal from the experience and feel the advancing sense of doom with each part of the book.
- The selection of Churchill as prime minister is the only hope Britain has of righting itself, though he cannot do it alone.