In Command of History

Defeat in the 1945 general election shocked Winston Churchill, and the size of Labour's majority seemed a personal disgrace. When his wife ventured that it might be a blessing in disguise, he replied, with remarkable self-control, that it ‘seemed quite effectively disguised’. Yet Clementine was correct, for now Churchill had the time to produce The Second World War, his monumental account in six volumes and two million words of the conflict still in progress when Attlee replaced him in Downing Street.