The Unwritten Alliance

Book excerpt: The fifth and final volume in this collection of the British prime minister’s oratory contains the final speeches and addresses of his life. Legendary politician and military strategist Winston S. Churchill was a master not only of the battlefield, but of the page and the podium. Over the course of forty books and countless speeches, broadcasts, news items and more, he addressed a country at war and at peace, thrilling with victory but uneasy with its shifting role on the global stage. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” During his lifetime, he enthralled readers and brought crowds roaring to their feet; in the years since his death, his skilled writing has inspired generations of eager history buffs. In the last years of Sir Winston Churchill’s life, his health was failing—he had suffered several strokes—but his intellect and wit were as sharp as ever. This collection contains some of Churchill’s more obscure works, including addresses at banquets, award ceremonies, and to the Primrose League—where he had given his first political speech many decades before, in 1897. In these speeches we see the continued force of his mental acuity, and of his love for the country he served every day of his adult life.