Sketches the life of Britain’s foremost 20th-century statesman, whose wartime leadership merely punctuated his vision and achievements as a journalist and in office. Despite little formal schooling, Churchill mastered English rhetoric and consequently a romantic telling of British history, centering on a patriotism borne of personal freedom, the sanctity of (common law) justice, and limited government. Such principles colored his political leadership. A solder and student of warfare, he never forgot its consequences for the common man. An aristocrat who held to Tory democracy, he is little appreciated for championing the early welfare state (Lloyd George wrongly getting the credit for the People’s Budget). An imperialist, he sympathized with the Boers and Michael Collins’ Ireland but not Gandhi’s India – for the latter did not lead a warrior caste. In the 1930s, Gallipoli, opposition to Indian self-rule and support for Edward VIII, and obnoxious habits kept him from office and influence. Yet rightly seeing the perils of airborne war and Nazi Germany, he set the agenda for World War II and the subsequently the anti-communist Cold War.