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4 - Churchill As a Writer and Orator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

Allen Packwood
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge
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Summary

The chapter places Churchill’s lifespan firmly within ‘the golden age of print’. It looks at his apprenticeship as a writer, served while in the army, explaining how his early books helped him earn the war chest that allowed him to launch his political career, before showing how his shrewd and selective use of sources for his biography of Lord Randolph Churchill allowed him to reconcile his role as a defender of his father’s political legacy with his own move to the Liberal Party. Churchill’s working methods also changed as he entered government. He used a team to help produce his multi-volume history of the First World War in order to defend his role in the Dardanelles operation. Thereafter, Churchill had to juggle managing his tax liability as an author with his need for more income, but by the 1930s he was committed to several major publishing projects. After the war, he sought to capitalise on his premiership through his multi-volume histories of the Second World War and the History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The chapter analyses how Churchill managed his various literary projects, sheds light on his own role in the creative process and looks at how this changed over time.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

(For a full list of works by Winston Churchill, see Appendix 2.)Google Scholar
Ashley, M., Churchill as Historian (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968)Google Scholar
Berlin, I., Mr Churchill in 1940 (London: Murray, 1964)Google Scholar
Clarke, P., Mr Churchill’s Profession: Statesman, Orator, Writer (London: Bloomsbury, 2012)Google Scholar
Cohen, R. I., Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, 3 vols. (London: Thoemmes, 2006)Google Scholar
Foster, R., Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981)Google Scholar
Jenkins, R., Churchill (London: Macmillan, 2001)Google Scholar
Levillain, C., An Art of Translation: Churchill’s Uses of Eighteenth-Century British History, XVII–XVIII. Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, vol. 76 (2019), pp. 115.Google Scholar
Lough, D., No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money (London: Head of Zeus, 2015)Google Scholar
Plumb, J. H., The Historian. In Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (London: Allen Lane, 1969)Google Scholar
Prior, R., Churchill’s ‘World Crisis’ as History (London: Croom Helm, 1983)Google Scholar
Reynolds, D., In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004)Google Scholar
Rose, J., The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014)Google Scholar
Toye, R., The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World War II Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar
Weidhorn, M., Sword and Pen: A Survey of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974)Google Scholar

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