Winston Churchill embarks on a battle of wills with Adolf Hitler in the run-up to Dunkirk. The compelling new historical novel from the acclaimed author of Winston's War. 10 May 1940. In the early hours Hitler launches his attack on France, Holland and Belgium. The Phoney War is at an end. In four weeks, Hitler will win the most devastating series of victories in the history of modern warfare that will make him master of Europe. A few hours after Hitler's attack begins, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of a beleaguered, confused and dispirited Britain. He is surrounded by intrigue and mistrusted by his colleagues, who within days will plot to throw him out of office. He is also about to suffer the most humiliating military setback at Dunkirk that brings Britain within hours of defeat and surrender. This is the story of those four crucial weeks in which Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were pitted against each other, man to man, mind to mind, in a confrontation that both came to regard as a personal battle of wills. Their clash began immediately, on 10 May, when Churchill sent a letter to the old German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. It continued as first Holland and then Belgium surrendered, and Churchill used his opponents within his own War Cabinet to confuse and outwit Hitler. And while the Wehrmacht's panzers drove remorselessly through France and towards Dunkirk, Churchill used his most secret weapon, a young and resourceful woman called Emma, to sow such confusion within the Nazi ranks that would give the British forces pinned down on the beaches of Dunkirk three vital days to sail away and to survive. Britain would fight on. By the end of those four weeks, Hitler was at the gates of Paris and master of all he surveyed. But Churchill had already broken him on the most crucial battlefield of all, the battlefield of the mind.
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From the Back Cover:
?This is a magnificent novel. It will hold the reader's fascination from beginning to end.?
-Press Association
This stunning historical novel brings you deep inside Winston Churchill's mind and heart as he becomes Prime Minister and takes on the terrifying challenge of halting Hitler's murderous invasion of France, Holland and Belgium with only his wits and his magnificent words. Only his courage stands between the people of the British Isles and advancing enemy armies as they drive his retreating soldiers onto the beaches of Dunkirk and into the English channel. You will live at Churchill's side as he deals with his own feelings of inadequacy while contending with his fellow ministers, who plot to throw him out of office. And you will be the fly on the wall of history as he matches wits with Hitler in the most crucial battlefield of all, the battlefield of the mind.
Best-selling author Michael Dobbs has written fifteen novels. He served as one of the chief advisers to Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
?Dobbs doesn?t put a foot wrong. I read it in two gulps in just two nights; the characters are brilliantly sketched.?
-Churchill Center website
?Dobbs masterfully dissects three weeks of the Second World War. A historical hit.?
-Daily Mirror
?Better than any other fiction, [Dobbs's books] convey the desperation of those times, which we today, six decades removed, cannot possibly imagine.?
-Finest Hour, magazine of the Churchill Center
About the Author:
For two decades, Michael Dobbs has been at the right hand of political controversy. He was at Mrs Thatcher's side as she took her first step into Downing Street as Prime Minister, and was a key aide to John Major when he was voted out. In between times he was bombed in Brighton, banished from Chequers and blamed for failing to secure a Blair-Major television debate.
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- PublisherHarper Collins
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0007107250
- ISBN 13 9780007107254
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages352
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