Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45

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HarperPress, 2009 - Biography & Autobiography - 664 pages
"By looking at Churchill from the outside in, through the eyes of British soldiers, civilians and newspapers, and also those of Russians and Americans, Hastings provides new perspectives on the greatest Englishman and the precarious Grand Alliance. He condemns as folly Churchill's attempt to promote mass uprisings in occupied Europe through SOE, and describes the prime minister's disastrous but little-known Dodecanese campaign of 1943. He details Unthinkable, his amazing 1945 plan for an Allied offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland. Here is an intimate and affectionate portrait of Churchill as Britain's saviour, but also an unsparing examination of the wartime nation which he led and the performance of its armed forces."--BOOK JACKET.

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About the author (2009)

British journalist, editor, and historian Max Hastings was born on December 28, 1945. He was a foreign correspondent for BBC television and London's Evening Standard, for which he later served as editor from 1996 to 2001. Hastings also worked as editor and editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph. In addition to presenting BBC historical documentaries and writing numerous books of military history, Hastings has contributed to publications including the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and the New York Review of Books. He received the nonfiction Somerset Maugham Award for Bomber Command, as well as the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize for both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands. His title Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2013. The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 was published in 2016 and is also on the New York Times Bestsellers List. Hastings was knighted in 2002, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and from 2002-2007 was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.