Author(s): Tariq Ali

History | Britain

A critical and radical biography of the last great Imperialist

The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine.

In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist, adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian, nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's every step, with catastrophic effects. As a young man he rode into battle in South Africa, Sudan and India in order to maintain the Imperial order. As a minister during the first World War, he was responsible for a series of calamitous errors that cost thousands of lives. His attempt to crush the Irish nationalists left scars that have not yet healed. Despite his record as a defender of his homeland during the Second World War, he was willing to sacrifice more distant domains. Singapore fell due to his hubris. Over 3 Millions Bengalis starved in 1943 as a consequence of his policies. As a peace time leader, even as the Empire was starting to crumble, Churchill never questioned his imperial philosophy as he became one of the architects of the postwar world we live in today.

Ali remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower; an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist. -- Observer * [For The Extreme Centre] *
Ali is indeed a kind of professional, or inveterate heretic, a writer who has made a career of dissenting from every kind of orthodoxy. -- The National * [For The Extreme Centre] *
Included in The Independent's Books of the month. * Independent *
For Tariq Ali, Churchill debunking, like Churchill worship, is a political act. -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *
In Ali's telling, which draws on more honest existing historical scholarship than most popular biographies of Churchill, the two-times prime minister emerges not so much as deeply racist - some of his contemporaries remarked on it in shock - as profoundly authoritarian, with a soft spot for fascist strongmen, and a hostility to working-class assertion. -- Priyamvada Gopal * Prospect *
Ali portrays Churchill as cruel, incompetent and blinded by prejudice * Spectator *
A Marxist insult to history. -- Simon Heffer * The Telegraph *
A powerful corrective...shining a light on the nasty parts of the Churchill story that his supporters conveniently ignore. This book is an unreserved polemic against the man usually celebrated for standing up to Hitler -- Martin Chilton * Independent *
An essential antidote to the Churchill myth...This book could not be more timely. -- Lindsey German * Counterfire *

Author Biography: Tariq Ali has written more than two-dozen books on world history and politics-the most recent of which are The Dilemmas of Lenin, The Obama Syndrome and The Extreme Centre-as well as the novels of his Islam Quintet and scripts for the stage and screen. He is a long-standing member of the editorial committee of New Left Review.