Biography and Autobiography of Winston S. Churchill

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Session Description

Completion in summer 2019 of the multi-volume official Churchill biography, begun after his death in 1965 by his son Randolph S. Churchill, who wrote the first two volumes, and completed in eight main volumes by his successor Martin Gilbert in 1988, with publication of the last of the twenty-three companion volumes of documents, superintended by Gilbert until his death and then by Larry P. Arnn, makes it the longest biography ever written about anyone, and a crucial source for research on Churchill’s life and times.

Our panel takes completion of the official biography as an opportunity for scholarly reconsideration of Churchill’s life and thought, as illuminated by the official biography and other biographies and by Churchill’s autobiography, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, and what he wrote about himself in his other works.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / International Churchill Society

Individual Presentations

• Churchill’s Education on Reason and Faith, 1897-1930 - Patrick J. C. Powers, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

• Winston Churchill’s “World Crisis“ as Autobiography - John Maurer, U.S. Naval War College

• Churchill’s Roving Commission - James W. Muller, University of Alaska, Anchorage

Chair

• Robert P. Kraynak Colgate University

Discussant

• Andrew Roberts