Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink by Anthony McCarten
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was written in parallel with a screenplay for the movie of the same title. It is a good read, with a central plot point of the "wobbly" nature of Winston Spencer Churchill (WSC) immediately after becoming Britain's prime minister in the spring of 1940. The book concentrates on how WSC navigated the crisis of May 1940 as Nazi Germany swamped the French military, isolated the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Dunkirk and threatened to invade Great Britain. I enjoyed reading about the "inside game" revealed by the author, especially the WSC relationship with his PM predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, and his foreign secretary, Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax. The attention, time and extreme care WSC spent on his oratory is also explored by the book. The final sentence of the Epilogue reveals the book's theme: "That May, Winston Churchill became Winston Churchill."


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