New biography of winston churchill

Is "Churchill: Walking With Destiny" by Andrew Roberts the best Churchill biography of them all?

Who in their right mind would presume to say, short of Winston Churchill himself, who maintained, “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”?

All Churchill biographies stand in the shadow of their subject and on the shoulders of Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert, whose primary research constitutes the bulk of what we truly know.

In this sense, Roberts’ new biography (Viking, 982 pp., ★★★★ out of four) stands tall, re-illuminating the well-etched contours of Churchill’s monumental life with scrupulous scholarship and a flair for unearthing the telling detail; looking twice where most biographers have been content to glance once.

Here are five time-honored Churchillian bio-tropes, reframed and refreshed by Roberts’ keen attention to historical context.

1.

The pur