FINEST HOUR: On a 1944 trip to view enemy positions in Italy
He topped a BBC poll of all-time "Great Britons" two weeks ago. A few days earlier a German scholar grabbed headlines by accusing him of deliberately bombing civilians during World War II. Book-stores teem with his biographies, including new entries by historians John Ramsden, John Lukacs and John Keegan, plus a novel based on his fleeting acquaintance with the notorious spy Guy Burgess. More than four decades after his death, Winston Churchill's shadow falls heavily over Britain.
That's the starting point for historian David Cannadine's fascinating collection of essays, In Churchill's Shadow: Confronting the Past in Modern Britain. To Cannadine,...
