Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill

Pay with

About Young Titan: The Making Of Winston Churchill

Product Description The first biography focused on Winston Churchill’s early career: a never-before-told account of his ambitious romantic pursuits, his outmaneuvering of rival political giants, and the fatal mistakes that would sideline him for years. In modern memory, Winston Churchill remains the man with the cigar and the equanimity among the ruins. Few can remember that at the age of 40, he was considered washed up, his best days behind him. In Young Titan, historian Michael Shelden has produced the first biography focused on Churchill’s early career, the years between 1901 and 1915 that both nearly undid him but also forged the character that would later triumph in the Second World War. Between his rise and his fall, Churchill built a modern navy, experimented with radical social reforms, survived various threats on his life, made powerful enemies and a few good friends, annoyed and delighted two British monarchs, became a husband and father, took the measure of the German military machine, authorized executions of notorious murderers, and faced deadly artillery barrages on the Western front. Along the way, he learned how to outwit more experienced rivals, how to overcome bureaucratic obstacles, how to question the assumptions of his upbringing, how to be patient and avoid overconfidence, and how to value loyalty. He also learned how to fall in love. Shelden gives us a portrait of Churchill as the dashing young suitor who pursued three great beauties of British society with his witty repartee, political f lair, and poetic letters. In one of many never-before-told episodes, Churchill is seen racing to a Scottish castle to prepare the heartbroken daughter of the prime minister for his impending marriage. This was a time of high drama, intrigue, personal courage, and grave miscalculations. But as Shelden shows in this fresh and revealing biography, Churchill’s later success was predicated on his struggles to redeem the promise of his youth. From Booklist Customarily a biographer of literary figures (Mark Twain, Man in White, 2010), Shelden now turns to a politician. Averring his discovery of facts about his famous subject missed or muted by prior writers, he twins Churchill’s search for a wife and his reach for the political heights. Unfolding from 1901, when Churchill entered Parliament, to 1915, when he was dismissed as chief of the British Navy because of the Gallipoli defeat, Shelden’s narrative spryly captures Churchill’s romantic impulses and vaulting political ambition to become prime minister. As many histories recount the ascent up the political ladder, Shelden sites his claim to newness in Churchill annals in Churchill’s courting of potential spouses. Churchill reached as socially high for a wife as he did in politics, receiving three ladies’ rejections of his wooing before acceptance by Clementine Hozier in 1908, news he had to break awkwardly to another woman he had strung along. Including the cast of Churchill’s friends and enemies, Shelden’s well-judged account taps the inexhaustible interest in Churchill. --Gilbert Taylor Review “Perceptive and entertaining.” Source: Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post "A vivid portrait of a young man on the make, as ambitious as he was gifted. . . Enthralling." Author: DailyBeast.com [Newsweek digital edition] “Entertaining and erudite…. Shelden is full of sharp literary insights about Churchill, as one would expect from a literary biographer of his rank.” Source: Wall Street Journal “[As this] glowing portrait makes clear, the young Churchill was as beloved as he was despised: his intelligence, industry, and wit made him a darling of the press, and he was often seen as a future Prime Minister.” Author: The New Yorker “Much has been written about Winston Churchill, but there is still much to learn, especially about those early years when he seemed destined for greatness. Michael Shelden now thoughtfully explores those years in Young Titan….An engaging as