Churchill's War, vol ii: Triumph in Adversity

What I love about David Irving's histories is that they are always written "in the moment" from the subject's point of view. This makes for a very exciting narrative all culled from Irving's deep researches in the archives, diaries, letters, and interviews with people close to the subject. It is like you are reliving history as it actually happens.

The first two volumes of the biography show a very balanced view of Churchill, both positive and negative, as any historian should approach a subject. In many ways, it was Churchill's negative characteristics, his stubbornness, vanity, his desperate clutching for political power when it was all but gone, and ruthlessness with his opponents, that proved to be exactly what Britain needed to win its war with Hitler. The negative consequence of this was of course the loss of Britain's Empire and Soviet supremacy in Eastern Europe.

Irving's archive work all over the world has brought forward some amazing gems of knowledge concerning many of Churchill's contemporaries in England, and also of people like Roosevelt and the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King whose dabblings with mysticism and superstition provide some comic relief to the narrative. More serious and controversial is Churchill's wartime dealings with Stalin.

Much like his biographies of the major players on the German side of the war, Irving has created another historical gem backed by massive documentary detail, this time about the goings on of "our" side. Another stunning achievement.