Roberts does a remarkable job focusing on Churchill’s bubble – explaining what happened and often…but not always… why. Anyone who has previously marveled at Churchill’s exceedingly interesting relationship with Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, will discover that much of the intangible magic surrounding their personal and professional connections is missing here. Hardcore history enthusiasts might embrace a dry recitation of facts, but readers seeking a colorful exploration of Churchill’s life will find the narrative lamentably stiff. For all the well-deserved praise it has received, “Walking with Destiny” is superb as history but less successful as engaging literature. Readers who may have overlooked or forgotten any of Churchill’s illustrious accomplishments or conspicuous flaws will find them carefully evaluated and fluently reviewed.īut in my experience, the very best biographies are found at the intersection of penetrating, insightful history and vibrant, captivating narrative. The highlight of the biography for me: the final eighteen pages which are dedicated to the evaluation of Churchill’s life and legacy. And the author’s attention to the lessons Churchill took from each misstep is as insightful as the description of the sins themselves. The narrative critically embraces Churchill’s complexity and never fails to explore his personal faults as well as his professional mistakes.

The book bursts with revealing observations and anecdotes and quickly proves a fruitful (if not effortless) reading experience.Ĭhurchill is easy to lionize and while Roberts’s tome can occasionally feel like an instrument of praise, it is remarkably objective.

But Roberts seems to have accomplished the task with authority, clarity and precision. It also benefits from the author’s access to personal papers and notes unavailable to previous biographers of Churchill.Īnyone familiar with Winston Churchill’s life will appreciate the difficulty inherent in compressing his remarkably eventful nine decades into a single volume. What is clear to me, however, is that Roberts’s biography of Churchill is magisterial, impressively thorough and keenly perceptive. Because this is the first biography of Churchill I’ve read, I am unable to offer an opinion on the matter. Within weeks of its release this book was hailed as one of the very best single-volume biographies of Winston Churchill ever published. Roberts is an award-winning British author and journalist who has written more than a dozen books including “ Napoleon: A Life” (which inspired a BBC tv series), “ The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War” and “ House of Windsor.” Andrew Roberts’s biography “ Churchill: Walking with Destiny” was published in the fall of 2018 and quickly became a bestseller in both the US and UK.

Andrew roberts winston churchill