First published 2017
Thomas E. Ricks examines how Winston Churchill and George Orwell became freedom's champions during democracy's darkest hour. Both men nearly died in the mid-1930s when their careers had stalled. Churchill was a discredited politician whose party questioned his loyalty. Orwell was a struggling novelist with modest success. Yet these two figures would emerge as Britain's most important defenders of human liberty. Ricks traces their parallel journeys as they recognized the totalitarian threat from both left and right. While others saw Hitler and Mussolini as potential partners or viewed communism as salvation, Churchill and Orwell understood that any government denying basic freedoms posed a menace. The author shows how their commitment to truth and moral conviction guided their actions through the 1940s. Churchill led the fight against Hitler and the Axis powers. Orwell confronted authoritarian rule through Animal Farm and 1984, works that shaped Cold War understanding for fifty years. Ricks demonstrates how their foresight and courage kept Western civilization oriented toward freedom when democracy seemed doomed and authoritarianism appeared ascendant across the globe.
Genres: biography, history, 20th-century, political-science, non-fiction, 21st-century, academic, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-allies, moral-conviction
Setting: Britain
Period: 1930s, 1940s, Cold War
352 pages · Hardcover · Penguin Pr