Winston's War

Winston's War

First edition HarperCollins cover art
Author	Michael Dobbs[1]
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Churchill
Genre	Historical novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	2002
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)[2]
Pages	487 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-00-713018-X[3]
OCLC	48885056
Dewey Decimal	823/.914 22
LC Class	PR6054.O23 W56 2002
Followed by	Never Surrender[4]

Winston's War is a 2003 novel by Michael Dobbs that presents a fictional account of the struggle of Winston Churchill to combat the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.^{[5] [6] [7]}

Plot summary

The story starts with Chamberlain’s 1938 triumphant return to 10 Downing Street, a public hero after the signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, declaring "peace in our time." The story ends with the fall of the Chamberlain Government, and the appointment of Churchill as Prime Minister.^[8]

Churchill, relegated to the periphery of British politics by the late Thirties, lashes out against appeasement despite having almost no support from fellow parliamentarians or the British press. The novel includes many of the momentous historical personages of the day: Chamberlain, the ailing and pacifist Prime Minister; Churchill, the political outcast, whose pugnacity created opprobrium in the public eye; Joseph Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's; Guy Burgess, an alcoholic BBC journalist of later Cold War infamy; the machiavellian newspaper mogul, Max Aitken, (Lord Beaverbrook), and the stuttering and insecure King George VI, who personally detests Churchill and tries to persuade his good friend, Lord Halifax, to take the reins of leadership.

Winston's War is the first in a series of novels by Dobbs about Churchill's wartime leadership. The sequel Never Surrender continues the storyline over the first few weeks of Churchill's premiership.^{[9] [10]}

References