Great Contemporaries: Churchill Reflects on Fdr, Hitler, Kipling, Chaplin, Balfour, and Other Giants of His Age

Winston S. Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature for ＂his mastery of historical and biographical description.＂ Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries, first published in 1937.

Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, these portraits of notable figures of his age offer wisdom for our own. With keen observations and telling anecdotes, Churchill points out what he learned from them about greatness and also their limitations. His subjects range from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw.

Published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Churchill’s birth, this is the most complete edition, including five additional essays, more than thirty photographs, with a new foreword and annotations by Churchill scholar James W. Muller. This volume revives Churchill’s unmatched insights and unforgettable prose for a new generation of readers.

Sir Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on two occasions, from 1940-1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Celebrated as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, he was also a gifted orator, statesman and historian. The author of more than 40 books, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 and in 1963 was made an honorary citizen of the United States.

James W. Muller is Professor of Political Science at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he has taught since 1983, and is Chairman of the Board of Academic Advisers of the International Churchill Society. Educated at Harvard University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, he is a by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and served as a White House Fellow in 1983-84 and was an Academic Visitor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1988-89. He has taught courses in statesmanship, political philosophy, and American political thought.