ABOUT THE BOOK
Most people today think of Winston Churchill as simply thewartime British bulldog - a jowly, cigar-chomping old fighter de-manding blood, sweat and tears from his nation. But the well-known story of the elder statesman has overshadowed an earlierpart of his life that is no less fascinating, and that has never beforebeen fully told. It is a tale of romance, ambition, intrigue and glam-our in Edwardian London, when the city was the centre of theworld, and when its best and brightest were dazzled by the meteor-ic rise to power of a young politician with a famous name and along aristocratic background. Winston Churchill gave his maidenspeech in Parliament at the very beginning of King Edward VII'sreign in 1901 when he was only 26. By the time the guns of August1914 swept away the Edwardian idyll, he was First Lord of the Ad-miralty - the civilian head of the largest navy in the world. In theintervening years, he often cut a dashing figure, romancing severalsociety beauties, tangling with some of the most powerful politicalfigures of his time, championing major social reforms, becomingone of the leading orators of the day, publishing six books, super-vising an armed assault on anarchists, and working harder perhapsthan anyone else to prepare his nation for war.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Shelden is an award-winning journalist and biographer.He has published biographies of, among others, George Orwell,Mark Twain and Graham Greene, and has written extensively for anumbr of international publications, including the Daily Telegraphand the New York Times.
