Churchill's Grand Alliance

The New York Times Book Review called John Charmley's previous book on Winston Churchill "entertaining, informative, and infuriating." With equally impressive scholarship, eloquence, and wit, Charmley now turns to the Anglo-American "special relationship" that was the cornerstone of Churchill's foreign policy, ruthlessly stripping away the myth to reveal the unsentimental reality of the Churchill years and beyond, from 1940 to 1957. Churchill carried on the war because of his misguided faith that U.S. help could be enlisted to save the British Empire, contends Charmley. President Roosevelt, however, sought an end to imperialism and thus entered the war only belatedly, ensuring that Britian would end the war weak and dependent on America. And Britian did indeed become a U.S. "pensioner"-a reality dramatically confirmed in 1956, when American pressure led to the removal of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. With vivid assessments of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden, John Charmley brilliantly continues his though-provoking-and sometimes infuriating-ways.

In this sequel to the controversial, widely praised Churchill: The End of Glory, Charmley turns his scholarship to the Anglo-American "special relationship" that was the cornerstone of Churchill's foreign policy, ruthlessly stripping away the myth to reveal the unsentimental reality of the Churchill years and beyond, from 1940 to 1957.

The New York Times Book Review called John Charmley's previous book on Winston Churchill "entertaining, informative, and infuriating." With equally impressive scholarship, eloquence, and wit, Charmley now turns to the Anglo-American "special relationship" that was the cornerstone of Churchill's foreign policy, ruthlessly stripping away the myth to reveal the unsentimental reality of the Churchill years and beyond, from 1940 to 1957. Churchill carried on the war because of his misguided faith that U.S. help could be enlisted to save the British Empire, contends Charmley. President Roosevelt, however, sought an end to imperialism and thus entered the war only belatedly, ensuring that Britian would end the war weak and dependent on America. And Britian did indeed become a U.S. "pensioner"-a reality dramatically confirmed in 1956, when American pressure led to the removal of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. With vivid assessments of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden, John Charmley brilliantly continues his though-provoking-and sometimes infuriating-ways.

Publishers Weekly

"It is as well that the ironies of history are hid from participants," says Charmley, the revisionist author continuing the history begun in Churchill: The End of Glory; A Political Biography (LJ 9/1/93). Churchill, the optimistic, myopic imperialist, turned to America for help in facing down Germany's onslaught in 1940. FDR, cool, pragmatic, unemotional, finally entered the war with his own agenda, which relegated the British to junior players on the world stage. Churchill never understood or expected that alliance to strip Great Britain of its colonial power; FDR knew full well that there was no place for the "old" Britain in America's new, postwar plans. Charmley will have his detractors (he is, after all, casting a cold, skeptical eye on venerable British institutions), but he has crafted a solid, balanced portrait of a frightening, chaotic time. Recommended for public libraries.-Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.