Like so many readers, I thought the first two books of The Last Lion were magnificent, and like so many, I eagerly awaited the final volume. By the time I met Bill in person, I had read all of his nonfiction works. My first encounter with Bill was on the page, when I read his account of the assassination of President Kennedy, The Death of a President. Although the strokes did not steal his memory or his ability to formulate complex thoughts, Bill could no longer connect those thoughts on paper. Then, in 1998, he suffered two strokes that left his speech slightly slurred and his left leg partially paralyzed. They also included excerpts from transcripts of more than fifty interviews Bill conducted in the early 1980s with Churchill's friends, family, and colleagues.īetween 19, Bill, in increasingly poor health, wrote about one hundred pages of Defender of the Realm, a first draft covering the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940, and the beginning of the Battle of Britain in July 1940. His notes consisted of photocopied extracts from myriad sources, including Churchill's speeches, wartime memoirs, letters and telegrams Churchill sent and received, diary entries of contemporaries, official documents, newspaper clippings, and numerous secondary sources. He had assembled his notes in fifty-page bound 8½ × 21-inch paper tablets, which he called his long notes, or "clumps." More than forty such tablets were dedicated to the war years 1940–1945, and a few addressed the postwar years 1946–1965. In 1988, William Manchester began writing The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm, the third and final volume of his biography of Winston Churchill. This is popular history at its most stirring. More than twenty years in the making, The Last Lion presents a revelatory and unparalleled portrait of this brilliant, flawed, and dynamic leader. The Last Lion brilliantly recounts how Churchill organized his nation’s military response and defense, compelled FDR into supporting America’s beleaguered cousins, and personified the “never surrender” ethos that helped the Allies win the war, while at the same time adapting himself and his country to the inevitable shift of world power from the British Empire to the United States. The Churchill conjured up by William Manchester and Paul Reid is a man of indomitable courage, lightning-fast intellect, and an irresistible will to action. Spanning the years of 1940-1965, The Last Lion picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister-when his tiny island nation stood alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. The long-awaited final volume of William Manchester’s legendary biography of Winston Churchill.
0 kommentar(er)
