Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill

Just when you think there can be nothing fresh to be said about the long life of Winston Churchill, along comes biographer Michael Shelden’s page-turner about Churchill from age twenty-six to forty (The Washington Times).Between his rise and his fall, young Winston Churchill built a modern navy, experimented with radical social reforms, survived various threats on his life, made powerful enemies and a few good friends, became a husband and father, took the measure of the German military machine, and faced deadly artillery barrages on the Western front. Along the way, he learned how to outwit more experienced rivals, overcome bureaucratic obstacles, question the assumptions of his upbringing, value loyalty–and how to fall in love. In Young Titan, historian Michael Shelden gives us a portrait of Churchill as the dashing young suitor who pursued three great beauties of British society with his witty repartee, political flair, and poetic letters. This is the first biography that focuses on Churchill’s early career–the years between 1901 and 1915 that both nearly undid him but also forged the character that would later triumph in the Second World War.