The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume 1: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

by William Manchester

Overview

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 an American mother and the gifted but unstable son of a duke, his childhood was one of wretched neglect. He sought glory on the battlefields of Cuba, Sudan, India, South Africa and the trenches of France. In Parliament he was the prime force behind the creation of Iraq and Jordan, laid the groundwork for the birth of Israel, and negotiated the independence of the Irish Free State. Yet, as Chancellor of the Exchequer he plunged England into economic crisis, and his fruitless attempt to suppress Gandhi's quest for Indian independence brought political chaos to Britain.

Throughout, Churchill learned the lessons that would prepare him for the storm to come, and as the 1930's began, he readied himself for the coming battle against Nazism--an evil the world had never before seen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316244855
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	11/06/2012
Series:	Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Series
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	992
Sales rank:	358,456
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

William Manchester was a hugely successful popular historian and biographer whose books include The Last Lion, Volumes 1 and 2, Goodbye Darkness, A World Lit Only by Fire, The Glory and the Dream, The Arms of Krupp, American Caesar, The Death of the President, and assorted works of journalism.

What People are Saying About This

Russell Baker

Absolutely magnificent…a delight to read…It's one of those books you devour line by line and word by word and finally hate to see it end.

Editorial Reviews

"Bedazzling.''

Newsweek

"Stylish...The heroic Churchill is in these pages, but so is the little boy writing forlorn letters to the father who all but ignored him, and the romantic who once courted Ethel Barrymore and ended up with a lovely fifty-seven-year-long marriage to a woman whose pet name for him was 'Pig'...An altogether absorbing popular biography."

Magazine Staff People

"Adds a grand dimension...Rich in historical and social contexts."

Time

"Absolutely magnificent . . . a delight to read . . . one of those books you devour line by line and word by word and finally hate to see end."—Russell Baker

"Bedazzling."—Newsweek

"Manchester has read further, thought harder, and told with considerable verve what is mesmerizing in [Churchill's] drama. . . . One cannot do better than this book."—Philadelphia Inquirer

"An altogether absorbing popular biography . . . The heroic Churchill is in these pages, but so is the little boy writing forlorn letters to the father who all but ignored him."—People

"Superb . . . [Manchester] pulls together the multitudinous facets of one of the richest lives ever to be chronicled. . . . Churchill and Manchester were clearly made for each other."—Chicago Tribune

"Adds a grand dimension . . . rich in historical and social contexts.—Time

From the Publisher