''A History of the English-Speaking Peoples'' is a four-volume

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...

, covering the period from

Caesar's invasions of Britain In the course of his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice: in 55 and 54 BC. On the first occasion, Caesar took with him only two legions, and achieved little beyond a landing on the coast of Kent. The second invasion was more subst ...

(55 BC) to the end of

the Second Boer War The Second Boer War (, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo–Boer War, or South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the South African Republic and ...

(1902). It was started in 1937 and finally published 1956–1958, delayed several times by war and his work on other texts. The volumes have been abridged into a single-volume, concise edition.

Writing and publishing

Churchill, who excelled in the study of history as a child and whose

mother A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of ges ...

was an American, had a firm belief in a so-called "

special relationship The Special Relationship is an unofficial term for relations between the United Kingdom and the United States. Special Relationship also may refer to: * Special relationship (international relations), other exceptionally strong ties between nat ...

" between the people of Britain and its

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the 15th century. Originally a phrase (the common-wealth ...

(

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, etc.) united under the Crown, and the people of the United States who had broken with the Crown and gone their own way. His book thus dealt with the resulting two divisions of the "English-speaking peoples". At the independent suggestions of British publisher Newman Flower''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' obituary of Newman Flower, 13 March 1964, p. 19. and American editor

Maxwell Perkins William Maxwell Evarts "Max" Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was an American book editor, best remembered for discovering authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe. Early life and ...

, Churchill began the history in the 1930s, during the period that his official biographer

Martin Gilbert Sir Martin John Gilbert (25 October 1936 – 3 February 2015) was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He was the author of 88 books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish history inc ...

termed the "wilderness years" when he was not in government. Work was interrupted in 1939 when the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

broke out and Churchill was appointed

First Lord of the Admiralty First Lord of the Admiralty, or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, was the title of the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was the government's senior adviser on all naval affairs, responsible f ...

and became

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

a year later. After the war ended in 1945, Churchill was busy, first writing his

of that conflict and then as Prime Minister again between 1951 and 1955, so it was not until the mid-1950s, when Churchill was in his early eighties, that he was able to finish his work. One third of the last volume was devoted to the military minutiae of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

Social history Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

, the agricultural revolution, and the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

hardly get a mention. Political opponent

Clement Attlee Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee (3 January 18838 October 1967) was a British statesman who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. At ...

suggested the work should have been titled "Things in history that interested me." Despite these criticisms, the books were bestsellers and reviewed favourably on both sides of the Atlantic. In ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'', J. H. Plumb wrote: "This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past." The four volumes are: * ''The Birth of Britain'' * ''The New World'' * ''The Age of Revolution'' * ''The Great Democracies''

Related works

The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

produced a series of twenty-six fifty-minute plays loosely based around Churchill's work and entitled '' Churchill's People'' which were broadcast in 1974 and 1975. However, the quality of the productions was judged to be poor and the series received low ratings. A sequel to Churchill's work, ''A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900'', by Andrew Roberts, was published in 2006.

Writing and publishing

Related works

See also

References

Further reading