The View from Churchill: Travels in the Footsteps of Britain’s Last Lion

Product Description

The View from Churchill

In this brilliant introduction, Matthew Mills Stevenson explores the significant moments and places that helped to shape Sir Winston Churchill’s remarkable career as a British politician, prime minister, soldier, and author.

• He visits visits Pretoria in South Africa where in 1899 the young journalist Churchill escaped from Boer captivity.
• He walks the battlefields of Gallipoli in Turkey to discover why Churchill’s bold military strategy failed.
• He rides his bicycle along the Western Front of World War I to visit Ploegsteert in Belgium, where Churchill commanded a battalion of the Scots Fusiliers.
• He visits Chartwell from where in the 1930s Churchill warned the world of the dangers to come from Hitler and Fascism.
• He travels to Yalta (yes, on his bicycle) to write about Churchill’s 1945 meetings with Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt.

The life of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) is an extraordinary story of survival against the odds that ends in triumph.

• This summary of the key moments in Churchill’s life is the perfect introduction.
• Many of the illustrations, all from the Churchill Archive in Churchill College, Cambridge, have never been published before.

About the Author

Matthew Mills Stevenson, an American historian, gains his inspiration to write by  visiting, often on his folding Brompton bicycle, the places where men and woman have made history. He is the Cycling Historian.

Reviews

A Different Sort of Churchill Book

I like  how Matthew Mills Stevenson’s notably concise books interweave history, some of it his own, a powerful sense of place and deep understanding of people famous and unknown. His ability to meld travel writing  that’s rich with local detail and personal and sometimes quirky asides with big-picture observations is unusual.

His latest book, The View From Churchill: Travels in the Footsteps of  Britain’s Last Lion, may be my favorite so far. Mr. Stevenson, sometimes alone and sometimes with oft-enthusiastic family and/or friends, travels, via various modes, including bicycle, to key places in Winston Churchill’s  long  (1874-1965) life. As with, say Lincoln, truckloads of different books have been written about the great, heroic and flawed Englishman; I myself have read a few over many years. But you’ll learn new and exciting stuff  in this thin volume.

Mr. Stevenson visits South Africa, where in 1899 Churchill was imprisoned and then escaped from  captivity in the Boer War. He goes to Gallipoli, in Turkey. There he  ruminates on the reasons for the failure of Churchill's bold military strategy in 1915,  when he was the first lord of the admiralty,  to knock the Ottomans out of World War I.

He rides his bicycle along the Western Front of World War I to visit the Belgian town where Churchill commanded a battalion of the Scots Fusiliers after the Gallipoli disaster. He goes to Churchill’s  estate, Chartwell, where he  lived in a sort of internal semi-political exile in the 1930s while warning about the menace of Hitler.

Mr. Stevenson gets to Yalta, in Crimea, to appraise Churchill's meetings with Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt that effectively formalized the division of Europe between Soviet and Western spheres.

After reading Mr. Stevenson, one comes away with a fuller understanding of the giant mistakes and triumphs of this statesman, journalist and historian, whose heroic labors at the crucial time helped save Western Civilization. And yes, he was also a very good painter.

I wonder if a kind of Churchill will turn up with the rhetorical skills to effectively take on the present-day fascist dictators who are on the march. Let’s hope we have future lions.

Robert Whitcomb

I have read so many different titles about Winston Churchill including Manchester’s book and Andrew Roberts Walking with Destiny.  The Roberts book required reading it at the dining room table as the book was so heavy after while it tired the arms but inspired the mind!!  Now on to Stevenson: I thoroughly enjoyed the read!  I learned more about Churchill and found Stevenson’s perspective on him interesting and thought provoking. I also enjoyed having a book that was manageable.  The length was perfect.  I find that the shorter the book the better. Age? Perhaps. I really don’t want to waste time on too much detail that I will forget anyway.  The bicycle angle gave it some grit.  The Cycling Historian is a great handle.  The style of the writing was very good, as well.  Plenty of facts with good perspective. So YES, you have a winner.

Rick Miners