Andrew Robert’s ‘Churchill’ is a masterpiece. Roberts has a reputation of being a right-wing historian. That wouldn’t bother me in itself, but in truth his own position and views never seem to intrude. Where Churchill could or should be criticised, Roberts criticises with a sure touch. More has been written about Churchill than anyone else that matters, but Roberts approaches his subject with such a fresh and knowing eye, and with such an appreciation of humour ( Churchill was as witty as Oscar Wilde if not more so) that you feel that you are learning something new at every page. Certainly several potential sceptics and critics have been won over as I have been. The book just bursts with the presence of this true colossus and it is so readable. It is, as one historian has said, written in the unfashionable tradition of Gibbon, Trevelyan and Macaulay, in a gripping narrative style. So good that I could start on this one thousand plus pages straight away again.