Winston Churchill saved Britain and Europe by his incomparable leadership in the Second World War. His involvement in war, however, stretched over a far longer period and was one of the main themes of his long life. Cavalryman at
Omdurman, infantry colonel in the Trenches, First Lord of the Admiralty, as well as wartime Prime Minister, he wrote copiously about war as war correspondent, journalist and historian.
Personally brave, he was both excited and repelled by war, and was a powerful strategic thinker. Geoffrey Best shows the importance of war in Churchill 's career as a whole, from his early days as a hussar in India to his attempts to control the threat of the nuclear bomb. His leadership in the Second World War owed much to what he had learnt from earlier wars.
This is a rounded portrait of Churchill the warrior.