By Michael Shelden
A very interesting work on the life of Churchill from 1901-1915. These are Churchill's years when he was a rising star in Great Britain, until the Dardanelles for which the future "Last Lion" shared in the responsibility, but took the lion's share of blame. We find Churchill a young leader (he became a member of Parliament at twenty-five and First Lord of the Admiralty at 37), brash, and full of confidence about his role on the world stage. We leave discouraged and disconsolate.
I appreciated and enjoyed Michael Shelden's work. It is interesting, well-paced, and gives us Churchill, his times, and his contemporaries. He also brings to light a perspective on this leader with respect to the battle with anarchist in 1911 that has remained hidden for one-hundred years and which sheds new light on the heart behind the bravado.
Church, according to Violet Asquith, "did nothing by halves." Shelden helps reveal that truth.
