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Summary: Churchill devised a special method for writing
Review: Winston Churchill was remarkable, as much as for any other reason, for the sheer volume of words he produced. In a long life, during which he was often preoccupied by both family matters (he had four children) and matters of state, he nevertheless found the time to compose an inordinate number of books. I say compose, because he perfected a system during the first war, which revealed its efficacy more than ever in the second, of working through secretaries. There are many odd anecdotes told about Churchill, not the least of which is that his secretaries, sometimes working in rotation throughout much of the night, were obliged to attend to him and take down what he said, even in the bath. This way of getting the material down in print proved to be very effective, as the tens of thousands of published pages of his work amply demonstrates. His long history of the Second World War continues with "The Hinge of Fate." Although he was personally assured that the American entry into the war meant the ultimate defeat of Germany, he still had to see to the day to day running of the war machine, and counter the perverse effects of both German victories and British pessimism. Now began, as well, the long battle with Stalin about opening up a second front in France, to take some of the heat off the Russian armies in the East. In fact, his relationship with the Russian leader is one of the most interesting sources of anecdotal references throughout this series. This is history being well told by a man who was, while perhaps not a trained historian as such, so steeped in the history of his family and his country, that he an utterly unique point of view. The fact that he was also a central figure in the war itself, means that we have, if you like, a one in a million chance victory on our hands, as though we had just won a lottery of sorts, by being able to read him.
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