The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor

The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor

by Jonathan Rose
The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor

The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor

by Jonathan Rose

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Overview

A transformative portrait of Churchill, whose love of history, theater, and reading was inextricably linked to his life as a statesman

This strikingly original book introduces a Winston Churchill we have not known before. Award-winning author Jonathan Rose explores in tandem Churchill’s careers as statesman and author, revealing the profound influence of literature and theater on Churchill’s personal, carefully composed grand story and on the decisions he made throughout his political life.
 
Rose provides in this expansive literary biography an analysis of Churchill’s writings and their reception (he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 and was a best-selling author), and a chronicle of his dealings with publishers, editors, literary agents, and censors. The book also identifies an array of authors who shaped Churchill’s own writings and politics: George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Margaret Mitchell, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, and many more. Rose investigates the effect of Churchill’s passion for theater on his approach to reportage, memoirs, and historical works. Perhaps most remarkably, Rose reveals the unmistakable influence of Churchill’s reading on every important episode of his public life, including his championship of social reform, plans for the Gallipoli invasion, command during the Blitz, crusade for Zionism, and efforts to prevent a nuclear arms race. In a fascinating conclusion, Rose traces the significance of Churchill’s writings to later generations of politicians, among them President John F. Kennedy as he struggled to extricate the U.S. from the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780300212341
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication date: 06/09/2015
Pages: 528
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History, Drew University. He lives in Morristown, NJ.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Acknowledgments vii

Preface: A Literary History of Politics ix

1 The Theatre Rage 1

2 An Uneducated Man 19

3 A Pushing Age 34

4 War of the Worlds 48

5 A Portrait of the Artist 65

6 Publicity Capital 73

7 Things to Come 82

8 Comedie Anglaise 95

9 On the Stage of History 117

10 What Actually Happened 144

11 Revolutionaries 160

12 The Chancellor's Star Turn 181

13 That Special Relationship 199

14 The Apple Cart 215

15 The Producer 234

16 Blackout 249

17 The Loaded Pause 273

18 The Hour of Fate and the Crack of Doom 290

19 This Different England 326

20 The War Poet 351

21 Victory? 369

22 The Summit 395

23 The Last Whig 411

24 The Terrible Ifs 425

Notes 451

Index 495

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