Churchill and America

Named Churchill's official biographer in 1968, renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert has amassed exclusive archival and personal documentation to explore the statesman's famed affinity for and relationship with the United States. Churchill and America tells the intensely personal story of Winston Churchill's profound connection to America, which resulted in an Anglo-American alliance that has stood at the center of international relations for more than a century. Drawing on this extensive store of Churchill's own words — his private letters, his articles and speeches, and press conferences and interviews given to American journalists on his journeys throughout the United States — Gilbert paints a rich portrait of the Anglo-American relationship, illuminated by its most famous proponent.

The astounding story of Churchill’ s seventy-year relationship with the United States, from one of the world’ s leading historians.

Winston Churchill spent much of his adult life in close contact with the United States. In two world wars, his was the main British voice urging the closest possible co-operation with the Americans. In the masterly and eloquent "Churchill and America," Martin Gilbert explores every twist and turn of Churchill’ s relations with the United States, revealing the golden thread of friendship and understanding running through the relationship, despite countless setbacks.

Martin Gilbert was named Winston Churchill's official biographer in 1968. He is the author of seventy-five books, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories The First World War and The Second World War, the comprehensive Israel: A History, and his three-volume History of the Twentieth Century. An Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan, he was knighted in 1995 "for services to British history and international relations," and in 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford for the totality of his published work.

Contents

List of Maps

List of Photographs

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: From Blenheim Palace to Buffalo Bill

Chapter Two: The "Tall Yankee" and "A Great Lusty Youth"

Chapter Three: Cuba and Beyond

Chapter Four: "How Little Time Remains!"

Chapter Five: Lecturer in the United States:"The Stormy Ocean of American Thought and Discussion"

Chapter Six: "Dark Would Be the Day"

Chapter Seven: Churchill at War, and a Neutral America

Chapter Eight: "The Future Destiny of the English-speaking Peoples"

Chapter Nine: 1918: "Come Over as Quickly as Possible"

Chapter Ten: "America Did Not Make Good"

Chapter Eleven: "We Do Not Wish to Put Ourselves in the Power of the United States"

Chapter Twelve: "United to Us by the Crimson Thread of Friendship"

Chapter Thirteen: Between Two Visits

Chapter Fourteen: "There's No Baloney About Him at All"

Chapter Fifteen: "Why Do Our Two Countries Not Take Counsel Together?"

Chapter Sixteen: "A Union of Spirit"

Chapter Seventeen: Road to War

Chapter Eighteen: "Hope Burden Will Not Be Made Too Heavy for Us to Bear"

Chapter Nineteen: "I Shall Drag the United States In"

Chapter Twenty: "Until the Old World — and the New — Can Join Hands"

Chapter Twenty-One: "We Are No Longer Alone"

Chapter Twenty-Two: Five Months of Anguish

Chapter Twenty-Three: "A Means of Waging More Effective War"

Chapter Twenty-Four: "American Blood Flowed in My Veins"

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Washington War Conference: "All in It Together"

Chapter Twenty-Six: "Okay Full Blast"

Chapter Twenty-Seven: "The Tact and Consideration Which the Harmony of the Common Cause Requires"

Chapter Twenty-Eight: "If We Are Together Nothing Is Impossible"

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Toward Overlord: "Our Band of Brothers"

Chapter Thirty: From Normandy to Quebec

Chapter Thirty-One: "It Grieves Me Very Much to See Signs of Our Drifting Apart"

Chapter Thirty-Two: Malta, Yalta and Beyond

Chapter Thirty-Three: "We Must Make Sure That the United States Are with Us"

Chapter Thirty-Four: "Britain, Though a Smaller Power Than the United States, Had Much to Give"

Chapter Thirty-Five: Fulton and Its Aftermath

Chapter Thirty-Six: "I Have Always Worked for Friendship with the United States"

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Indefatigable Traveler

Chapter Thirty-Eight: "I Marvel at America's Altruism, Her Sublime Disinterestedness"

Chapter Thirty-Nine: "We Must Not Cast Away a Single Hope, However Slender"

Chapter Forty: "Never Be Separated from the Americans"

Chapter Forty-One: Final Decade: "I Delight in My American Ancestry"

Churchill's American Visits

Maps

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index