Mr Churchill's Profession: Statesman, Orator, Writer

摘要

Professor Peter Clarke is one of our most prolific and highly regarded modern British historians. His celebrated volume Hope and Glory: Britain, 1900-2000, the final volume in the Penguin History of Britain, was notably well received and a masterpiece of scholarly exposition and compression. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) is obviously one of Clarke's historical heroes. Whereas Churchill has been the subject of scores of biographies and other, more specialized works focusing on certain aspects of his life, career and contribution, this is the first to take as its central theme his (possibly under-valued, but yet significant) contribution as a writer and author which extended over many decades. 'Words are the only things that last forever', Winston Churchill famously declared in 1938. Few people now recall that in 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, a major accolade and a prize worth no less than £600,000 in today's money.