'What an extraordinary people the Americans are!' he wrote to his mother.

During that first visit, he was invited to West Point and was fascinated by New York City. Drawing on this extensive store of Churchill's own words - in his private letters, his articles and speeches, and press conferences and interviews given to American journalists on his numerous journeys throughout the United States - Gilbert paints a rich portrait of the Anglo-American relationship that began at the turn of the last century.Ĭhurchill first visited the United States in 1895, when he was twenty-one. Sir Martin Gilbert was appointed Churchill's official biographer in 1968 and has ever since been collecting archival and personal documentation that explores every twist and turn of Churchill's relationship with the United States, revealing the golden thread running through it of friendship and understanding despite many setbacks and disappointments. From before the First World War, he understood the power of the United States, the 'gigantic boiler,' which, once lit, would drive the great engine forward. In two world wars, his was the main British voice urging the closest possible cooperation with the United States.

Winston Churchill, whose mother, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a leading American entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn in 1854, spent much of his seventy adult years in close contact with the United States. In this stirring book, Martin Gilbert tells the intensely human story of Winston Churchill's profound connection to America, a relationship that resulted in an Anglo-American alliance that has stood at the center of international relations for more than a century.

Churchill by Martin Gilbert