Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
    Unavailable
    In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
    Unavailable
    In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
    Ebook1,026 pages15 hours

    In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War

    By David Reynolds

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winston Churchill was one of the giants of the twentieth century. As Britain’s prime minister from 1940 to 1945, he courageously led his nation and the world away from appeasement, into war, and on to triumph over the Axis dictators. His classic six-volume account of those years, The Second World War, has shaped our perceptions of the conflict and secured Churchill’s place as its most important chronicler. Now, for the first time, a book explains how Churchill wrote this masterwork, and in the process enhances and often revises our understanding of one of history’s most complex, vivid, and eloquent leaders.

    In Command of History sheds new light on Churchill in his multiple, often overlapping roles as warrior, statesman, politician, and historian. Citing excerpts from the drafts and correspondence for Churchill’s magnum opus, David Reynolds opens our eyes to the myriad forces that shaped its final form.

    We see how Churchill’ s manuscripts were vetted by Whitehall to conceal secrets such as the breaking of the Enigma code by British spymasters at Bletchley Park, and how Churchill himself edited the volumes to avoid offending postwar statesmen such as Tito, Charles de Gaulle, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. We explore his confusions about the true story of the atomic bomb, learn of his second thoughts about Stalin, and watch him repackage himself as a consistent advocate of the D-Day landings.

    In Command of History is a major work that forces us to reconsider much received wisdom about World War II. It also peels back the covers from an unjustly neglected period of Churchill’s life, his “second wilderness” years, 1945—1951. During this time Churchill, now over seventy, wrote himself into history, politicked himself back into 10 Downing Street, and delivered some of the most vital oratory of his career, including his pivotal “iron curtain” speech.

    Exhaustively researched and dazzlingly written, this is a revelatory portrait of one of the world’s most profiled figures, a work by a historian in full command of his craft.

    “A fascinating account that accomplishes the impossible: [Reynolds] actually finds something new and interesting to say about one of the most chronicled characters of all time.” –The New York Times Book Review

    A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

    A BEST HISTORY OF THE YEAR SELECTION –The New York Sun

    NOTE: This edition does not include photographs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 19, 2012
    ISBN9780307824806
    Unavailable
    In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
    Author

    David Reynolds

    my Smashwords interview details some of my personal history, and the memoirs details even more. Best way to know more about me is to read the memoirs.At present 2024 I am still involved with Foxfield heritage railway museum. I am also busy upon a number of ancestry projects for friends or clients ( mcw999smw@yahoo.co.uk ) if you wish to contact. 2nd memoirs installment, out very soon Latest novel , Right place wrong time, 2nd part of eden to armageddon trilogy recently published. final part in trilogy already written, but needs polish and formatting. Busy compiling yet another reality & beyond anniversary magazine. Took on slot as cosmic commentator writing stories and articles for Star Trek universe. This has now evolved into full editorial position for U.K. based Star Trek / Star Wars/ Dr. Who monthly mag. Also producing articles for the hub pages. The rest of the time I was continuing with regular occupation ( international coach driver )

    Read more from David Reynolds

    Related to In Command of History

    Related ebooks

    Political Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Churchill’s World Crisis

      Nov 5, 2018

      Churchill’s World Crisis
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Warlords

      Nov 2, 2022

      The Warlords
      11 min read

    • Article

      When the Lion Still Roared

      Feb 5, 2020

      When the Lion Still Roared
      7 min read

    • Article

      Heroic Biography

      Nov 5, 2018

      Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Viking, 1105 pages, $40/£35. ISBN 978–1101980996 Given his publisher’s claim that there have already been more than a thousand biographies of Churchill, not counting hundreds of specialist studies ran

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Centenary Of The Armistice

      Nov 5, 2018

      “When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.” Such was Winston Churchill’s grim verdict on the Great War. It

      1 min read

    • Article

      Before History Devolves Into Mythology: 2020’s Best Books On World War II

      Dec 2, 2020

      Historians grapple with the grimmest, toughest questions surrounding the war, about culpability, morality, and demagoguery during a fraught time.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Key Canadian

      May 3, 2021

      Key Canadian
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Churchill for Our Time

      May 30, 2023

      “Reputation,” Shakespeare makes one of his characters remark, “is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving”—an observation that should be pondered by anyone or any group in our own time who wants to pull sta

      6 min read

    • Article

      Turning Point

      May 5, 2020

      Turning Point
      4 min read

    • Article

      Q & A

      Apr 16, 2020

      Q & A
      3 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Jan 24, 2023

      Reviews
      8 min read

    • Article

      BIGGEST BLOODIEST & MOST BARBAROUS

      May 23, 2021

      The greatest gamble in history began just before first light. At 3.15am on a midsummer morning 80 years ago next month, “Operation Barbarossa”, Adolf Hitler’s planned war of annihilation on the Soviet Union, opened with the shock and awe of a massive

      9 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Dec 21, 2023

      The painting selected to illustrate William Shakespeare in the December issue (En- counters) is captioned: “A c1610 painting of William Shakespeare, kept in the Cobbe Collection, is thought to be the only portrait of the English playwright to have be

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Making of CHURCHILL

      Nov 4, 2021

      The Making of CHURCHILL
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Noblest Adventure

      Feb 1, 2019

      Larry P. Arnn and Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 21, The Shadows of Victory: January–July 1945, Hillsdale College Press, 2018, 2149 pages, $60. ISBN 978–0916308391 Churchill entitled the final volume of his war memoirs Triumph and T

      6 min read

    • Article

      False Hopes

      Dec 9, 2019

      False Hopes
      3 min read

    • Article

      No End of Appeasement

      Nov 2, 2022

      Whatever the other consequences, Britain’s policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany has spawned no shortage of literature. Churchill’s authorised biographer Martin Gilbert began his career with The Appeasers, and Churchill’s role opposing first app

      2 min read

    • Article

      Force Of Nature

      Feb 5, 2019

      Force Of Nature
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Leadership Paradigm

      Aug 2, 2023

      The Leadership Paradigm
      17 min read

    • Article

      Sea Change

      Feb 12, 2019

      Sea Change
      9 min read

    Reviews for In Command of History

    4.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Penetrative, comphrehensive snslysis and review of the process, decision makiing and response to Churchill's epic epistolary tour de force, "The History of World War Two". The author carefully and skillfully disects the methodolgy for creating this highly regarded series while providing an excellent historical perspective pf Churchils's very skilled crasfting of his version of history. As a conducter leads an orcestra, Churcill guided his "syndicate" to a work skillfully tuned to the subtleties and nuances of the the political world when the events occurred as well as that during the series genesis. Shifts of pespective and emphasis were tools used to support Churchill's vision of himself as the "man of the Century"
    • 5/5
      "In command of history" is the type of magisterial work that Churchill would have been proud to have his name on. It is clear that Reynolds has completed an enormous amount of research to write this book and one would be hard pressed to find someone with greater knowledge of Churchill and his life.This knowledge and the resulting indepth recording of it in print is ultimately the reason why this doesn't receive five stars. There were perhaps too many cases where he includes small, irrelevent details as if to show how much research he has undertaken, but instead gets the reader bogged down in details.Also evident is the post-event rewriting of history that Churchill and others (including Mountbatten's reworking of his disastrous Dieppe Raid) participate in. Having said that, I did like Churchill's handling of the Fall of Singapore and his ambiguious acceptance of the blame for it.Well worth a read, whether you're a WWII buff or just someone who wants to understand the major event of the last century and one of its key players.
    • 4/5
      The title of this book gives a great hint as to what this book is about - commanding history. This relates not only to history making in time time it is being made, but also history making when it comes to setting the record. And then again, it doesn't.The author provides an extremely detailed account of the writing of Winston Churchill monumental 6 volume work World War II. How does an author write the history when so many documents belong to the government, and when many are secret? How to make it worthwhile when the government threatens the tax almost all of the earnings? How to get the most out of book publishers and newspapers in many countries? How to get the work done when time is so short? How to fund holidays on the continent? And how, most importantly, how to make sure that the author comes out looking best?What comes out is now not a great secret: Churchill nearly manipulated the public service to work for him to get access to documents, but still managed to avoid (to his disadvantage) mentioning the Ultra Secret - Bletchley Park; he set up a trust; but still made a record amount of money from a publisher deal; he had a team of writers and researchers, but stressed deadlines to beyond the limit; he convinced the American publishers that a holiday in Europe or North Africa was needed to get stuck into the writing; and he fibbed a lot.The account is thorough - perhaps a bit too much, but then the story would be incomplete. The most interesting parts are where Reynolds analyses what Churchill 'wrote' and places it alongside the facts - and Churchill does not come out of it looking good. Yet, we know that we ended the war as a winner (despite loosing government) and this was strengthened by these books. Errors, conflicting accounts, and threats of lawsuits did not get in the way of a very popular book.However, Churchill is still treated with respect. And allowances are made for the fact that he was operating in a climate of the Cold War, in which the Russians could not come out looking too good, but yet still not upset too much. And Churchill also had an electorate to whoo - he twice attempted a return as Prime Minister, the second time successfully.I suggest reading this book only after reading Churchill's volumes.