Geoffrey Best began his academic life in Cambridge, as undergraduate and research student at Trinity College and then as a History Fellow of Trinity Hall. He went on to teach history at the Universities of Edinburgh and Sussex and, after six years as Academic Visitor at the L S E, ended up teaching International Relations at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He has held visiting posts at the Universities of Harvard and Chicago and at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre, Washington DC. His previous publications include Humanity in Warfare, Honour among Men and Nations, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe and the prize-winning pair, War and Law since 1945 and Churchill: a Study in Greatness He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

'my favourite Winston Churchill biography of all, though, is Geoffrey Best's 'Churchill: A Study of Greatness' which combines all the biographical information with a real sense of what it felt like to be English in Churchill's era.'

• List of Illustrations \ Prologue \ 1. Unwillingly to School \ 2. Willingly to War \ 3. Clementine and the Commons \ 4. Board of Trade and Home Office \ 5. First Lord of the Admiralty \ 6. The Dardanelles \ 7. Recovery \ 8. Bolsheviks and Irishmen \ 9. Eastern Questions \ 10. Tory Chancellor \ 11. Empire and India \ 12. Chartwell and Hitler \ 13. 'Winston is Back!' \ 14. His Finest Hour \ 15. Democratic Warlord \ 16. 'Action This Day' \ 17. America and Roosevelt \ 18. Special Operations and Bombing Offensive \ 19. France and de Gaulle \ 20. Russia and Stalin \ 21. Victory Overcast \ 22. Iron Curtain \ 23. Summitry and the Bomb \ 24. Return to Downing Street \ 25. Sunset and Nightfall \ 26. Epilogue \ Notes \ Bibliography \ Index