Churchill and the Great Republic

Drawing on a wide range of Churchill’s personal correspondence, this title covers the great British wartime leader’s long and consequential relationship with the United States of America, and reflects in his own words his lasting admiration for the land, people, and institutions of the country that was the birthplace of his mother, Brooklyn born Jennie Jerome.

Special attention is focussed on Churchill’s efforts to gain US support for Britain in the early years of World War II, in particular the Atlantic Conference on board the US Navy cruiser Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland on August 9th, 1941, where both Churchill and Roosevelt got to know each other much better, and established an unusually close political relationship through most of the war and the remainder of Roosevelt’s life. Rare correspondence is also included on specific operations, such as the aborted Operation Velvet (1942) and the Normandy Landings, as well as Churchill’s relationship with Harry Truman, strained at first, but which became ever stronger as the Cold War developed.

The book includes an essay by Sir Martin Gilbert, one of our leading twentieth-century historians, and official biographer of Winston Churchill since the late 1960s, as well as a preface by Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames.