Churchill

Much has been written, by himself and many others, of Winston Churchill as leader of his party and his country. This book shows us Churchill as an Essex MP, loyally serving Epping and Woodford interests from 1924 to 1964 and earning the loyal support of local notables in return. For nearly forty years, 'among the glades of Epping Forest', Churchill found a congenial base for his distinguished parliamentary career. It sustained him during his ten years in the political wilderness and during the fierce ordeals of tragedy and triumph in the Second World War. The book relates with anecdotal and archival evidence the attempt to unseat him in 1938 after what many supporters thought an injudicious Munich speech. If he had lost the support of the local executive council he had intended to resign his seat and stand independently at a subsequent by-election, jeopardising the Conservative interest - and his own hold on the constituency. Staunch friends retrieved the situation, thus ensuring Churchill's availability for a Cabinet post a few months later on the outbreak of war. His post-war years as opposition leader, as peacetime premier, as Father of the House, could only be anti-climactic after his wartime triumph. He kept his Association chairmen aware of his thoughts and feelings by letters, notably to John Harvey, Donald Forbes and Doris Moss, many of them published here for the first time. His attitude towards a united Europe and his views on the Suez campaign - 'We should either have never started or never stopped' - are covered here, alongside his letters of resignation as Prime Minister and, many years later, as Member of Parliament.