Overview

'When the Nazi power was broken, I asked myself what was the best advice I could give to my fellow citizens here in this island and across the channel in our ravaged continent. There was no difficulty in answering the question. My counsel to Europe can be given in a single word: Unite!'Sir Winston Churchill in 1947After the Second World War, with Europe in ruins, the victorious Winston Churchill swore to build a peace that would last.Together with a group of thinkers and politicians, Churchill began to build the institutions and the political will that would eventually lead to what we now know as the European Union.He believed in a united Europe, and wanted Britain to play a leading role. This book, based in part on new evidence, reveals his vision: Britain as a leading member of the European family. On the 23rd June this book asks us all to think carefully: what would Churchill have done?

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9781784537517

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'An exceptionally well crafted work of history. Politically, what is particularly important about it is the way that Churchill's argument was not about economics, but about the political need for collaboration between European states as a way of avoiding the return of small nation protectionism and the political antagonisms to which it gave rise.' - Professor Gareth Stedman Jones, King's College, University of Cambridge, This accessible and thoroughly researched study explores Churchill's extraordinary contribution to the original emergence of the European 'project', and will challenge muddled explanations of his thinking on Europe. An important book which could not have come at a better time.' - Dr Sue Onslow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 'All historical writing speaks to the present through the past, but it is rare, very rare, to find a work of scholarship that is as decisively relevant as Felix Klos's portrait of Winston Churchill in his later career as a champion of Europeanism. This scrupulous, elegant book rejuvenates for the twenty-first century the prophetic vision of one of the towering figures of the twentieth.' - Vijay Seshadri, Author, Essayist and Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, 'All politicians suffer from having their words misquoted or taken out of context, but the posthumous conflicts over the precise nature of Churchill's views on European integration are probably in a class of their own. Timely, erudite and absorbing.' - Professor Peter Catterall, editor of The Macmillan Diaries

"'An exceptionally well crafted work of history. Politically, what is particularly important about it is the way that Churchill's argument was not about economics, but about the political need for collaboration between European states as a way of avoiding the return of small nation protectionism and the political antagonisms to which it gave rise.' - Professor Gareth Stedman Jones, King's College, University of Cambridge, ""This accessible and thoroughly researched study explores Churchill's extraordinary contribution to the original emergence of the European 'project', and will challenge muddled explanations of his thinking on Europe. An important book which could not have come at a better time.' - Dr Sue Onslow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 'All historical writing speaks to the present through the past, but it is rare, very rare, to find a work of scholarship that is as decisively relevant as Felix Klos's portrait of Winston Churchill in his later career as a champion of Europeanism. This scrupulous, elegant book rejuvenates for the twenty-first century the prophetic vision of one of the towering figures of the twentieth.' - Vijay Seshadri, Author, Essayist and Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, 'All politicians suffer from having their words misquoted or taken out of context, but the posthumous conflicts over the precise nature of Churchill's views on European integration are probably in a class of their own. Timely, erudite and absorbing.' - Professor Peter Catterall, editor of The Macmillan Diaries"

Author Information

Felix Klos is a historian who has had access to unpublished Churchill papers and archives. He undertook his research at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and at Churchill's family home, Chartwell.

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