Carlo D'Este: Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945

After his first personal experience of battle, at 23 years of age, Winston Churchill wrote that "war, disguise it as you may, is but a dirty, shoddy business, which only a fool would play at." But neither that experience - nor the two world wars that followed - could shake Churchill's belief that he was born to be a soldier.

Although he is most often celebrated for his wit and oratory, Warlord is the first comprehensive study of "the military Churchill", from the toy soldiers conspicuously placed in his nursery to his stalwart leadership in World War II. Sir Winston Churchill was born to an American heiress and a British statesman, part of a family descended from the 1st Duke of Marlborough, one of the most famous soldiers in British history. Raised among echoes of glory on the battlefield, he would always dream of becoming a soldier, and see politics as merely a second option; in later life, over the course of what D'Este calls the dazzling successes and appalling failures of his military career, Churchill would continue to be torn between Victorian notions of gallant soldier-adventurers and a profound abhorrence of war, even as he foretold the rising threat of Hitler more clearly than any other member of the British government.

Using extensive archival materials, including previously untold observations from Churchill's personal physician, D'Este sheds light on the "black dog" of depression that followed the famed Prime Minister until the end of his life. He also brings perspective to the enormity of Churchill's task in World War II, assuming leadership of England at an age when it was customary for politicians to retire. In D'Este's re-telling, it was a decision that was made in 1874, not in 1939; it was the only choice available to a man who, one philosopher said, was "the largest human being of our time."

Carlo D'Este is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and co-founder of the William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium, based at Norwich University. He is the author of Patton: A Genius for War and Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life 1890-1945, among other acclaimed books on World War II.