Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill

William Manchester was a hugely successful popular historian and renowned biographer. In addition to the first two volumes of The Last Lion, his books include Goodbye, Darkness, A World Lit Only by Fire, The Glory and the Dream, The Arms of Krupp, American Caesar, and The Death of a President, as well as assorted works of journalism. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal and the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award. He passed away in 2004.

Mr Manchester's work has such control over a huge and moving narrative, such illumination of character, and such a steady acceptance of the contrariness of a remarkable man seen in the round, that he can claim the considerable achievement of having assembled enough powerful evidence to support Isaiah Berlin's judgment of Churchill as 'the largest human being of our time' . . . (Manchester's) mastery of his huge file of research enables him to introduce many new and startling things . . . he takes nothing for granted.