Part one: the preparation -- 1. A famous name: November 1874-January 1895 -- 2. Ambition under fire: January 1895-July 1898 -- 3. From Omdurman to Oldham via Pretoria: August 1898-October 1900 -- 4. Crossing the floor: October 1900-December 1905 -- 5. Liberal imperialist: January 1906-April 1908 -- 6. Love and liberalism: April 1908-February 1910 -- 7. Home Secretary: February 1910-September 1911 -- 8. First Lord of the Admiralty: October 1911-August 1914 -- 9. 'The glorious, delicious war': August 1914-March 1915 -- 10. Gallipoli: March-November 1915 -- 11. Plug Street to victory: November 1915-November 1918 -- 12. Coalition politics: November 1918-November 1922 -- 13. redemption: November 1922-Many 1926 -- 14. Crash: June 1926-January 1931 -- 15. Into the wilderness: January 1931-October 1933 -- 16. Sounding the alarm: October 1933-March 1936 -- 17. Apotheosis of appeasement: March 1936-October 1938 -- 18. Vindication: October 1938-September 1939 -- 19. 'Winston is back': September 1939-May 1940 -- 20. Seizing the premiership: May 1940 -- Part two: the trial -- 21. The fall of France: May-June 1940 -- 22. The battle of Britain: June-September 1940 -- 23. The Blitz: September 1940-January 1941 -- 24. 'Keep buggering on': January-June 1941 -- 25. 'Being met together': June 1941-January 1942 -- 26. Disaster: January-June 1942 -- 27. Desert victory: June-November 1942 -- 28. 'One continent redeemed': November 1942-September 1943 -- 29. The hard underbelly: September 1943-June 1944 -- 30. Liberation: June 1944-January 1945 -- 31. Victory and defeat: January-July 1945 -- 32. Opposition: August 1945-October 1951 -- 33. Indian summer: October 1951-April 1955 -- 34. 'Long sunset': April 1955-January 1965 -- Conclusion: walking with destiny.

"Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in twentieth-century British history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world.

There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over forty new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors. The book in no way conceals Churchill's faults and it allows the reader to appreciate his virtues and character in full: his titanic capacity for work (and drink), his ability [to] see the big picture, his willingness to take risks and insistence on being where the action was, his good humour even in the most desperate circumstances, the breadth and strength of his friendships and his extraordinary propensity to burst into tears at unexpected moments. Above all, it shows us the wellsprings of his personality - his lifelong desire to please his father (even long after his father's death) but aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history and its connection to the present.

During the Second World War, Churchill summoned a particular scientist to see him several times for technical advice. 'It was the same whenever we met', wrote the young man, 'I had a feeling of being recharged by a source of living power.' Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's emissary, wrote 'Wherever he was, there was a battlefront.' Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill's essential partner in strategy and most severe critic in private, wrote in his diary, 'I thank God I was given such an opportunity of working alongside such a man, and of having my eyes opened to the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.'" -- Taken from dust jacket.