Churchill
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
La meilleure biographie de Churchill, abondée de documents inédits.
De Churchill, croit-on, tout a été dit – en premier lieu par lui-même. Et pourtant, Andrew Roberts est parvenu à exhumer des articles de presse, des correspondances privées, des journaux intimes – le moindre n'étant pas celui du roi Georges VI, jusque-là sous clé – qui ne figurent dans aucune des mille biographies environ déjà consacrées à ce personnage essentiel de la Grande-Bretagne et du XXe siècle. Tout cela lui permet de proposer un récit extrêmement enlevé, fondé sur une abondance de citations désormais " classiques ", mais également souvent peu connues voire inédites qui apportent une éclairage parfois convergent, parfois contrasté sur l'homme Churchill. Démêlant le vrai du faux, tordant le cou aux nombreux mythes voire aux calomnies qui lui collent à la peau, mais relevant les critiques justifiées dont il est loin d'être exempt, Roberts brosse avec maestria le portrait de ce " Vieux Lion " dont toute la vie avant 1940 n'a fait que préparer le grand œuvre que demeurent ses années de guerre.
Il livre là ce qui est sans doute la meilleure biographie de ce géant de l'histoire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roberts (Napoleon: A Life) serves up an extraordinary biography of Winston Churchill. A resolutely pro-British empire "child of the Victorian era" who was emotionally neglected by his aristocratic father and frivolous American-raised mother, Churchill by his 20s had already reported from, fought in, and sometimes written books about imperial struggles in such places as Cuba, Sudan, India, and South Africa. He leveraged fame due to an escape from Boer captivity to win an election to British parliament in 1900 at age 25. As first lord of the admiralty during WWI, he was scapegoated for the military fiasco of Gallipoli in 1915 and cast into the political wilderness, which strengthened his nonconformist, independent nature, Roberts writes, helping him when he became prime minister in 1940. Roberts captures Churchill's close working relationship with FDR ("the greatest American friend we have ever known"), his distrust of his chiefs of staff, and his excessive faith in Stalin's promises in 1945. He also captures the man, dispelling the myth that Churchill was prone to depression and revealing his deep love for his wife, Clementine; his egotism, his wit, his loyalty to friends, his penchant sometimes for "selfishness, insensitivity, and ruthlessness"; and his "sybaritic" love of good drink and cigars. This biography is exhaustively researched, beautifully written and paced, deeply admiring but not hagiographic, and empathic and balanced in its judgments a magnificent achievement.
