well this is the first book i read on winston churchill . bought it in 1983 . the foreword is unforgettable but historical mistakes in it makes this work not the very best on the luife of sir winston. great prose nevetheless.same can be said of book number two.

Manchester is one of those writers who appears unable to disappoint. This is a book to be read and savored. For years, it sat on my shelf - I saw as a large undertaking that I wanted to do right.

The book has a very interesting structure. First, it begins with a kind of interpretive introduction to the man, vividly characterizing him while also evaluating his strengths as a man of history and his glaring weaknesses. You see him, worts and all, and it is both funny and enlightening. The psychological depth is virtually unprecedented in any other bio I have read. Second, you get a view both into his milieu - as an aristocrat of talent and privilege in Victorian Britain - and a biography of both of his parents. This is crucially important, as we come to see Churchill as an anachronism, but also as a boy neglected by narcissistic parents. (Interestingly, the absence of one or both parents is a common trait in extraordinary achievers.) Third, you get his life story, more from the events he was involved in than as an intimate portrait, though much of his personal life is covered. Indeed, he used action as the most effective tonic against depression.

The man that emerges is flawed and complex, but evidently a political genius. In my view, the key to his character is that he remained a Victorian gentleman, who viewed martial valor as the greatest source of meaning and glory in life. This suited him to titanic struggles, such as the one he faced with Hitler that places him in the ranks of the greatest historical figures. As an egotist, he always wanted to place himself at the center of events and yet did so with courage and tenacity in spite of his physical weaknesses. When out of power, he exercised other gifts, such as writing, with equal talent and energy.

Nonetheless, Manchester proves that Churchill was not a politician deeply in touch with his constituency: he never developed a typical base of power and often his views did not synch with the mainstream. Without Hitler, his hour might never have arrived: this duality is a theme that runs through the entire book.

If there is any flaw here, it is that Manchester includes a plethora of detail, not only about world events but in Churchill's political maneuverings. Normally, I delight in these details, if I know there is a purpose to all of it, which I did not always sense in this book. (Here a comparison with Robert Caro is instructive: you always know where he is going and why.) Others may see it differently, of course. Also, many of the historical details I already knew, so did not need Manchester's wordy introductions, but they were useful in the many cases of which I was ignorant.

All in all, this is one of the most engrossing and fascinating bios I have ever read. Warmly recommended.

Winston Churchill was not a likable or even an admirable man.He was dishonest,childish,ruthless and disloyal.Perhaps worst of all,he was a megalomaniac-he knew that he was a Great Man,and that some day he would fulfill a magnificent destiny. But when war and catastrophe came to England he was perhaps the only politician psycholigically capable of inspiring continued resistence and defiance to Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich.Given that England had already lost the war,that was a breathtaking achievement.

James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson",published in 1791,is generally considered the finest biography produced in the English language.However,Manchester's work is perhaps superior. Boswell was of Johnson's world and therefore conveyed it to his reader only incidently;that is,he naturally assumed that his reader would be familiar with the things and events with which he was familiar.Manchester,writing of the past,appreciated the necessity of re-creating Churchill's world for the reader.He was brilliantly successful.The world which Churchill inhabited would have been amazing even to most of his contemporaries because of his social class.As Manchester points out,in over 90 years of life Churchill never drew his own bath;one of his relatives,visiting friends without his valet,sent down word that he was having trouble getting his toothpaste to "froth properly".He'd never applied toothpaste to a toothbrush himself.It isn't just the story of Churchill's life that is so engrossing.It is the wonderful recreation of Churchill's world,of the people he knew and the conversations he had,the events which occurred and the way that Churchill and his friends and enemies reacted to the events.

As Boswell loved Johnson,Manchester worshipped Churchill.Indeed,Churchill was in some ways a lovable man.He was devoted to his wife and family(happily married for almost 60 years-how many men can say that?) He revered his father (a syphlitic,who depised him,)and he was loyal to his country and the Empire it ruled.Personally,I doubt that I'd have been able to spend more than ten minutes in a room with Churchill.But this book is one of the finest I've ever read.I was honestly sorry to read the last of its almost 900 pages and I'm opening the second volume tonight.In the forward to the second volume Manchester quotes a definition of biographer.The biographer is judged "by his ability to suggest the sweep of chronology and yet to highlight the major patterns of behavior that give a life its shape and meaning."Boswell did that. Manchester,I believe,did it better.

This is William Manchester at his best. This is fascinating reading and fascinating writing. Of course Winston Churchill was quite a character but to be honest I didn't know that fact until I read this book and its companion volume.
After reading this book I put it to my mind that I would read everything that Manchester wrote. I've got a couple more to go. You can't miss with this purchase. A great story, great writing, and good history. What more could you ask for?

I am a little half way through the book, but it already is one of the best books I have ever read. The book deserves all the accolade. Manchester's approach to biography is a little different from many others in that he did not shy away from coloring the narrative with events that were yet to occur. He always hinted the historical significance of events in light of what happened later. I find this extremely helpful. For example: Churchill's fascination with early airplanes, his conception of tanks when dealing with a domestic riot are just two examples. These illuminated Churchill was indeed ahead of his peers in recognizing important trends.

The buildup to WWI is masterful. The book weaves Churchill's struggle with the Irish Home rule question together with the naval arms race with Germany in 1913. Since we know WWI started in 1914, the realization that Churchill and the British government were struggling with a domestic problem (which surely was exploited by the German Kaiser) enhances our understanding of the immediate pre-war times.

I knew the old US of A was not a world player before WWI. This book adds to that impression. Until the outbreak of the war, the US is just not on Churhill's radar: it does not show up much in his writing, travel, and speech. Yes, he did a book tour in the US, but that was before he started his political career.

Can't wait to read the second half of the book.

This book should be read (before, after or with) The End of the World as We Know It. The scenarios are almost interchangable.

This book should be read (before, after or with) The End of the World as We Know It. The scenarios are almost interchangable.

Manchester's prose more than compensates for the book's intimidating girth. His style is rich enough to do justice to a rhetorician like Churchill. It is a nice case of style dovetailing with substance.

The book opens where the second one closes - with the advent of Churchill's tenure as PM. This promise of things to come was enough to get me through the enlightening but drawn out chapters on Churchill's lineage and upbringing. This section, like most biographies, treats the subject as a precursor to the historical figure we all know (and love or hate enough to read about) rather than treating the youth Churchill in his own right before drawing connections to the statesman. Once Churchill joins the armed forces the pace quickens until the end of the book - by which point I was exhausted by all Churchill accomplished during these years.

Actually it is very sad to mention this blunder against humanity:

When the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October and November 1914, Britain's communications with India and the East via the Suez canal was immediately placed in jeopardy.
There was a secret agreement with Germany signed in August 1914 by the Young Turks that was troubling the Russians and taken as warning of the forthcoming trouble to The Tsar. The Russians regarded their Caucasian terrirories were also placed in jeopardy.
Consequently, the British and French, in order to protect their future `colonies' and bisect the `sick man of Europe', had to act forcefully. They opened another front in the South with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns.

Anxious to score his first military encounter with `the enemy', Winston Churchill, in his capacity as Lord of Navy, prematurely urged a combined French and British naval incursion into Gallipoli. But the Turks were successful in repelling the British, French, and Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. and pushed their eventual withdrawal and evacuation.

((By contrast, in Mesopotamia - Iraq- after the disastrous Siege of Kut (1915-16), British Empire forces - mainly of Indian troops - reorganized and captured Baghdad (March 1917). Further to the west in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, initial British failures were overcome when Jerusalem was captured in December 1917, and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918))

Russia, the protector of the Greek Orthothox Armenian population, sent her best troops in the Caucasus. The Turkish, Vice-Generalissimo Enver Pasha, supreme commander of the ex Ottoman Empire armed forces, was a very ambitious man. His aim and everpresent dream was to conquer central Asia. Enver Pasha, like Winston Churchill, was not a practical soldier. He launched an offensive with 100,000 soldiers against the Russians in the Caucasus in December of 1914.
His main enemy was the severe Weather conditions.
Insisting on a frontal attack against Russian positions in the mountains , Enver lost over 80% of his troops at the Battle of Sarikamis, in the heart of the tough winter season.

In 1917, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas assumed senior control over the Caucasus front. Nicholas tried to have a railway built from Russia (Georgia) to the conquered territories with a view to bringing up more supplies for a new offensive. But, in March of 1917 (February in the pre-revolutionary Russian calendar), the Czar was overthrown in the February Revolution and the Russian army began to slowly fall apart.
Hence, the protector of the Armenians was gone.

Winston Churchill blunder in Gallipoli, opened patched over wounds and re-ignited animosities between the Turks and their Armenian neighbors. In 1915, the Armenians were the victims of his cowardice. The Turks committed a HOLOCAUST against the Armenians that immediately started after WC debacle in Gallipolis.
The mass murder of the Armenians was indeed the first Holocaust of the twentieth century.

This is a brilliantly written biography of one of the most fascinating characters in history. Like most of Mnchester's work (I must admit to being a big fan), this is a very readable biography, well researched and holds the reader's interest from page to page. We see so much of Churchhill in his role as a WWII leader that we tend to forget there was a young man, living, learning and growing before the back and white films we see today. It is good to be reminded of this from time to time. It is also, for those interested, to learn how a world leader of Churchill's calibre came into being, how he developed and why he was the way he was. This work gives us great insight to those questions. Cannot recommend this work highly enough.

This is a brilliantly written biography of one of the most fascinating characters in history. Like most of Mnchester's work (I must admit to being a big fan), this is a very readable biography, well researched and holds the reader's interest from page to page. We see so much of Churchhill in his role as a WWII leader that we tend to forget there was a young man, living, learning and growing before the back and white films we see today. It is good to be reminded of this from time to time. It is also, for those interested, to learn how a world leader of Churchill's calibre came into being, how he developed and why he was the way he was. This work gives us great insight to those questions. Cannot recommend this work highly enough.

This is a two volume work that provides an outstanding portrait of a great man. Mr. Manchester shows him in all of his roles but most importantly he allows the reader to see that Sir Winston was a nineteenth century aristocrat trapped in the twentieth century. Volume One brings Sir Winston to life but Volume Two offers a view of his years in political exile where he became a voice in the wilderness. This biography brilliantly displays the astonishing scope of Sir Winston's strategic and geopolitical insight. It also shows how in many cases - and to the detriment of mankind - he was his own worst enemy.

From a personal perspective I found the details surrounding the actions of Neville Chamberlain to be the most informative because his naiveté has always been astonishing to me. Mr. Manchester puts the whole attitude of appeasement into perspective but unfortunately he seems to portray the appeasers as weak, ignorant men, who placed their personal agendas ahead of the country. While some of this assessment may be correct I think Mr. Manchester fails to show the appeasers as men of their time who had been so appalled by the carnage of WW I that they were willing to do anything to avoid another war.

Volume One clearly shows Sir Winston not only as a man of action but it shows him for what he was underneath - an aristocrat. He shamelessly used his connections to further his own ends and it was these connections that allowed him to flaunt military orders. He did things that another officer would have been court-martialed for. At the core Sir Winston was an aristocrat who treated non-aristocrats with indifference. I felt Volume One showed Sir Winston's flaws as a man but it also showed his development not only as a politician but as one of the most strategic thinkers of the twentieth century. This volume also gives you the foundation for the opposition that he encountered throughout his career. He was so ahead of his contemporaries that they never seemed to grasp what he was saying and he was unable to convey his thinking without coming across as a power seeker. This was the price for his earlier self-promotion.

With the advantage of hindsight, Volume Two shows in painful detail the step by step climb to power by a raving madman - Adolf Hitler. It shows how the European powers had multiple opportunities to stop this and to avoid WW II but they could not bring themselves to take the aggressive steps necessary. The "peace at any price" was the prevailing attitude and the failure by the politicians to act raised the price of peace day by day and year by year until WW II was inevitable. Perhaps the greatest message in this volume goes unsaid and that is that the anti-war and total disarmament crowd always seem to not prevent war but to make the on-coming war more disastrous and more inevitable. Perhaps the ultimate message here is that the absence of war is not peace. In any event these were two very good books. Sir Winston's "World War II" and William Shirrer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" are also well worth reading.

Although William Manchester didn't live long enough to complete his biography of Winston Churchill, this first book of the proposed triology begins with Dunkirk and shows Churchill at his most magnificent before switching to his early years. Manchester's prose--eloquent, clear, moving, and witty--is a fitting vehicle for the story of a master of the English language, and the story itself is filled with amazing adventures and memorable anecdotes. This book and its sequel are the best of all the Churchill biographies.

Before the cigar-chomping, top-hat-wearing portly gentleman hit the scene, there was a young man who nearly flunked out of school, chased war around the world, played polo, participated in the world's last meaningful cavalry charge, was a war correspondent, and escaped imprisonment as a POW in the Boar War. Churchill got around plenty before settling down in Parliament and "Visions of Glory" covers that portion of Churchill's life.

This book takes an exciting life and brings you into it. As good as biography gets.

Manchester's work is extraordinary and a journey into the making of a great leader of the world that was the 20th century.

Churchill was a man of vision and he was molded in his early years. Manchester makes a case for his growth coming in the Boar War period.

There is a beginning of greatness. Manchester introduces us to the world that formed this great man.

Many lists say the best historical biography is "Disraeli" by Blake. This is better. Way better.

The only author that has ever kept me glued to a book as much as Manchester's is Michael Crichton. It's odd to compare a biography to Jurassic Park, but Manchester makes history come alive. He spends a lot of time and care setting the "culture" in a way that is not pedantic or boring (unlike some Civil War histories I've read!). And then he builds on Churchill's stories in a way that makes you feel like you're in Churchill's shoes, with the same issues and challenges.

Unfortunately, there is no Volume 3 about the war years. Manchester's illness prevented this. What a sad loss to history.

Read Vol 1 and 2. You won't regret it.

Now that we are firmly into the 21st Century, it might be appropriate to ask, who was the greatest man of the 20th Century. (We might we ask, who was the greatest person of the 20th Century since this was the century that gave us reason to be inclusive with the question). I'm sure I echo the thoughts of many when I suugest that the answer is easy: Winston Churchill. Rather than make my case here, I would direct you to read Manchester's biography of the man, "The Last Lion".

William Manchester set out to write the biography of Winston Churchill and found that it was not going to fit neatly into one volume. We have, in "The Last Lion:Visions of Glory" the first of, presumably 3 or 4 volume. This is quite an undertaking. For me, the prospect of reading so large a book just to get the facts on the first third of a man's life seemed pretty intimidating. I left this book on the shelf for a number of years. Finally, I decided to give it a shot and I immediately found myself immersed in the early years of Churchill. There really is plenty to write about this man and Manchester is just the person to handle the job. I found this book not only hard to put down, when I finished it I got started right away on the second volume; "Alone". I have been waiting patiently while the author continues to age. I have tried to ignore the rumors that there will be no further output from Manchester. Such is the quality of his writing and his thoroughness that this biography ranks at the apex of 20th Century historical writing. Read this book and the second volume and you, too, will demand its' proper conclusion.

There are many good biographies out there, but a great one is rare. This is one of the great ones; William Manchester has taken the art of biography to a new level. Most biographies are merely "interesting," rarely making any effort to give the reader a sense of what it would have been like to be or know the subject. Manchester does just that. Rather than write a narrative story of Winston Churchill's life, he has chosen instead to give us a rich tapestry of Chrchill's life as it was woven. Many biographers are simply idolizers of their subjects; this is not so with Manchester. He reserves no harsh judgment, just as he reserves no due praise; when he is reporting something negative that Winston did he says it was negative, and explains why.

But The Last Lion is more than just a biography. In attempting to capture the essence of Churchill Manchester has written some of the best material about World War I and the appeasement crisis. It is rare that historical events can be made to feel like the present, but Manchester has done this.

Both volumes of this work are well worth your money, your time, and your attention. Indeed, the only bad part of Manchester's biography is that he will not be able to finish it. It is not known how much of the third volume he was able to put together before Alzheimer's made work impossible for him, but it can be hoped that whatever he was able to do will someday be published, no matter how unpolished it may be.

What a fascinating journey the reader takes with Manchester at the helm! It is so interesting to read of the real man Winston Churchill, not merely the legend. His trials and tribulations would eventually lead to greatness, but this is how that great man was made. The political party switching, the Great War and his exile after an unsuccessful stint as Chancellor of the Exchequer all make up important segments of this book. If you like good biography, politics and/or history, this is for you.

Churchill, in his own memoirs, wouldn't tell you that he loved hot baths so much he would do sommersaults in the tub; or that he watched movies at home with his little dog on his lap and covered her eyes during the scary parts; or that he cried at the end of a sentimental movie about a boy saving his beloved donkey. This book -- actually both book of this unfinished trilogy -- portray the human side of the man who's powerful will marshalled a prostrate England to its succesful, life-or-death defense against Hitler. It also imparts the greatness of this amazing man -- his toughness, his brilliance, his eloquence. Reader's of Churchill's fine memoirs of the Second World War will enjoy, I think, seeing his pluck and ingenuity exhibited in his early life, in this book. Churchill suffered defeats, but never was defeated, and this quality shows in this book. Like other reviewers, I look foreward to the third instalment of Manchester's biography of Churchill.

I was already a huge Churchill fan when I decided to read this book. The first book I had read on him was Gilbert's one volume condensed version of the official biography. But nothing could prepare me for how wonderfully written this book was. Just as many others have said, I read the introduction and became hooked. I have yet to find another modern author with a talent for writting as great as Manchester's.

What makes these two volumes great is that they really portray Churchill as a human being--he isn't simply the man who saved Great Britain (and arguably Western Civilization) from the Nazis. He was man with human strengths and human weaknesses--just like all of us. Manchester never loses sight of this throughout his work. He stresses the man's faults just as much as he stresses his strengths. In addition to this, both volumes--particularly the first one--give the reader an idea of what the world around Churchill was like. The prelude of Vol. I, for example, doesn't even mention Churchill until the very end, when he is born. Rather, it tells of what Victorian Britain was like up to the man's birth in 1874.

One sad event to note, however: for many, many years there has been speculation about when Mr. Manchester will publish the third and final volume. I can say with absolute certainty that the third volume will NEVER come about.