Young Titan - 9781451609929

“Just when you think there can be nothing fresh to be said about the long life of Winston Churchill, along comes biographer Michael Shelden’s page-turner about Churchill from age twenty-six to forty” (The Washington Times).

In modern memory, Winston Churchill remains the man with the cigar and the equanimity among the ruins. Few remember that at the age of forty, he was considered washed up, his best days behind him. In Young Titan, historian Michael Shelden has produced the first biography focused on Churchill’s early career, the years between 1901 and 1915 that both nearly undid him but also forged the character that would later triumph in the Second World War.

Between his rise and his fall, Churchill built a modern navy, experimented with radical social reforms, survived various threats on his life, made powerful enemies and a few good friends, became a husband and father, took the measure of the German military machine, and faced deadly artillery barrages on the Western front. Along the way, he learned how to outwit more experienced rivals, overcome bureaucratic obstacles, question the assumptions of his upbringing, value loyalty—and how to fall in love. Shelden gives us a portrait of Churchill as the dashing young suitor who pursued three great beauties of British society with his witty repartee, political flair, and poetic letters. In one of many never-before-told episodes, Churchill is seen racing to a Scottish castle to prepare the heartbroken daughter of the prime minister for his impending marriage.

Compulsively readable and illuminating, Young Titan has received critical acclaim from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, and The Washington Times, among others. Shelden’s masterful work explores the high drama and intrigue that colored the era of Churchill’s promising and courageous youth.