Churchill Defiant

Fighting On: 1945-1955

By: Barbara Leaming

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Winston Churchill rages against time and his own mortality in this tumultuous political drama of his last 10 years of public life. Here is Churchill at his most outrageous, maddening, and devious - but also at his most human, courageous, and defiant.

"I am an obstinate pig." This was how Winston Churchill described himself. But at the end of July 1945, Winston Churchill was a defeated man - hurled from power by the British people at the end of the war in which he had just saved his country.

Churchill Defiant is the story of how, when it seemed impossible, Churchill fought his way back over the next six years to the center of great events - the only place he ever wanted to be. In 1951, at last prime minister once more, he was ready to begin his dash to win "the last prize I seek": the enduring peace that had eluded the world after Hitler's defeat.

But Churchill's battles were just beginning. He would have to wage war with both his closest colleagues and his most indispensable allies, the Americans, to get where none of them wanted him to go: the negotiating table with the Soviets.

Barbara Leaming has written a gripping, fast-paced narrative of bare-knuckle politics, of life-and-death decisions, of old grudges and fresh blame. It is the story of how, between 1945 and 1955, Churchill simultaneously fought to prevent a third world war and to defy his own mortality as the clock ticked away and time threatened to run out for him.

This is Winston Churchill in close-up - a compelling, vivid, and deeply poignant portrait of the great man at a time when almost no one wanted him to remain on the public stage and when he was willing to do absolutely anything to stay there.

©2010 Barbara Leaming (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers

History With an Anti-American Slant

According to the author I learned that:
1. Anthony Eden was very smart. Smarter than Winston Churchill. Much smarter than any American.
2. Winston Churchill was much harder than any American.
3. Dwight D Eisenhower was much more dangerous than Joseph Stalin or any leader of the Soviet union. The world was in great peril as long as Eisenhower was on the loose.
4. John Foster her Dulles was a very bad man. Mainly because he had bad breath.
Presumably after Eden disposed of Churchill and the evil American influence everything ran smoothly. Why Anthony Eden is remembered as a failure and Dwight Eisenhower as a great success must be a mystery to this author.