Finest Years
MAX HASTINGS
Churchill as Warlord 1940-45
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.com
Published by HarperPress in 2009
Copyright © Max Hastings 2009
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007263684
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 9780007344116 Version: 2017-07-26
In memory of Roy Jenkins, and our Indian summer friendship
Table of Contents
Nine: ‘The Valley of Humiliation’
Ten: Soldiers, Bosses and ‘Slackers’
Seventeen: Setting Europe Ablaze
Nineteen: Bargaining with an Empty Wallet
Twenty: Athens: ‘Wounded in the House of Our Friends’
It may well be that the most glorious chapters of our history have yet to be written. Indeed, the very problems and dangers that encompass us and our country ought to make English men and women of this generation glad to be here at such a time. We ought to rejoice at the responsibilities with which destiny has honoured us, and be proud that we are guardians of our country in an age when her life is at stake.
WSC, April 1933
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.
WSC, November 1940