cover image Mr. Churchill’s Profession: 
The Statesman as Author and 
the Book That Defined the “Special Relationship”

Mr. Churchill’s Profession: The Statesman as Author and the Book That Defined the “Special Relationship”

Peter Clarke. Bloomsbury Press, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-1-60819-372-1

Clarke enhances his distinguished reputation as a scholar of modern Britain (The Last Days of the British Empire) with this original perspective on Winston Churchill. Clarke defines and interprets Churchill in the context of a writing career (paralleling his more familiar roles as statesman and politician) that brought him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. Capitalizing on his family connections, encouraged by his American mother, Churchill published two books by the time he was 25. His authorized collected works require 34 volumes. Memoirs, biography, history, and fiction—Churchill essayed them all. Clarke considers Churchill’s defining work not the more familiar History of the Second World War but his four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Begun in 1938–1939, polished and published n the 1950s, it was conceived and constructed in a political context, to demonstrate a “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S. Looking at the development of the idea of “the English-speaking peoples,” Clarke also demonstrates that the manuscript expressed Churchill’s need to emphasize the link between America and Britain as events advanced toward the outbreak of war. Winston Churchill was a man of action and of oratory; as Clarke underscores, he was also a formidable man of letters. (June)