Books with author Sir Winston S. Churchill

The Crossing is a 1904 best-selling novel by American writer Winston Churchill. It was the best-selling novel in the United States in 1904, and includes illustrations by Sydney Adamson and Lilian Bayliss. A portion of the book first appeared in December 1903 in Collier's under the title The Borderland.The last of Churchill's sweeping historical novels, the plot concerns the westward expansion of the United States, including the settlement of Kentucky.A stage adaptation written by Churchill and Louis Evan Shipman (who had also worked on the stage adaptation of The Crisis) debuted in 1905 and briefly ran on Broadway in January 1906 for eight performances. One commentator summed up the play's short run as one that "very soon met with disaster."

Romantic tension develops between the four main characters: one, Virginia Carvel, the fashionable daughter of Comyn Carvel, a southern gentleman of the old school; another, Clarence Maxwell Colfax, her n'er-do-well cousin who becomes a stalwart cavalier in the Southern cause in an effort to win Ginny's approval; the third, Stephen A. Brice, an earnest young lawyer from Boston who antagonizes Virginia by his zeal for Abraham Lincoln's cause; and the fourth, Eliphalet Hopper, a hard-working clerk with ambitions to advance himself both financially and socially.The crisis of the title is provoked by Abraham Lincoln's opposition to the extension of slavery, and the power of his personal integrity to win people to his cause, including the young lawyer, Stephen Brice, who becomes a devoted admirer and proponent following a personal interview on the eve of the Freeport debate between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. This meeting depicts Lincoln's determination to advance the cause of freedom through the possible (and likely) sacrifice of his own political ambitions, and is related with a very believable combination of rustic humor and political acumen on Lincoln's part.The events prior to Lincoln’s nomination and his eventual election to the Presidency elicit different reactions among the citizens of St. Louis, from the determined antipathy of the Southern sympathizers, to the equally determined patriotism of the population of German immigrants who have fled from their homeland and whose devotion to liberty has caused them to transfer their allegiance to the ideal of American democracy. One of them is Stephen's fellow lawyer, Karl, who bears the scar of a duel fought with broadswords between himself and an arrogant German noble; a duel based on an actual incident in Berlin.Although the personal rivalries follow an almost soap opera style formula, the overall events of the war from the perspective of St. Louis and the Western theater of war are dramatically depicted with well-researched authenticity, and both Grant and Sherman are depicted as having a personal involvement in the lives of the main characters. A pivotal moment in the heroine's life is presented through her transformation from being self-centered and self-absorbed to becoming self-sacrificing and dedicated to easing the suffering of those around her. This is represented as a Christian metaphor for the way that God uses challenges to mould a person's character.Eventually she and the young lawyer find themselves meeting Lincoln together to try to save her cousin's life after Clarence is condemned as a Southern spy, and together they experience Lincoln's power to bring about a reconciliation between them, just before the national reconciliation which Lincoln proposed between the North and the South would be aborted by John Wilkes Booth's bullet.This novel is a story about Abraham Lincoln in the same sense that the novel Ben Hur is "a tale of the Christ," in that Lincoln only appears twice, for a total of about two dozen pages, but his philosophy is a dynamic presence throughout the story. The author portrays Lincoln as being the sacrifice America had to pay to redeem it from the sin of slavery.As a side note: General Lew Wallace wrote Ben Hur partly as a way to revive his reputation in the aftermath of the battle of Shiloh, in which his division played an undistinguished role, marching and countermarching futilely the first day of the battle, the aftermath of which left Sherman so discouraged that he remarked to Grant, "They sure whupped us today!" To which Grant replied, "Yep. We'll whup them tomorrow," and they did.In his post-script, the author offers this apology for supporting Lincoln's point of view, by explaining, "Lincoln loved both the South and the North".Includes a biography of the Author

Mr. Keegan's Elopement was the first published story by the American author, Winston Churchill. It was published in magazine format in 1896, probably in Cosmopolitan magazine, of which he was the managing editor at the time. It was later published in 1903 by Macmillan & Co. as a short story in hard cover book format. The story is that of a young U.S. Naval officer meeting and eloping with a young British lady on the island of Madeira and of the, sometimes humorous, secretive arrangements made by one of his friends from the crew of the ship to facilitate the elopement. The island of Madeira is part of a Portuguese group of islands about 360 miles off the coast of Africa and 535 miles from Lisbon, Portugal. Funchal (the setting for this story) is on the south coast of Madeira, and is the capital city with a population of about 100,000 residents today.

This a collection of the correspondence between Sir Winston and Lady Clementine Churchill extending from their early days of courtship in 1908 to Winston Churchill's death in 1965. The letters serve both as a chronicle of their personal achievements and tragedies over the years and as a political and social history. In their own words they recount events such as the sinking of the Titanic, the abdication of King Edward VIII, the downfall of governments, the Depression, and the two world wars. Here are first-hand accounts from the battlefields in 1915, reflections on political triumphs and upsets, as well as domestic minutiae, foreign travel, revelations of social scandals and words of mutual support. Mary Soames complements the letters with explanatory notes, biographical details and her own personal recollections in the introduction.

Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania is the only major fictional work of Sir Winston S. Churchill. The story describes events in the capital of Laurania, a fictional European state, as unrest against the dictatorial government of president Antonio Molara turns to violent revolution. "It is the character of Savrola himself that fascinates us, for we realize that in creating the great republican of Laurania young Churchill was depicting his ideal hero, that he was putting into words the kind of man he wished to be--that he was, perhaps, determined to become."—Ben Ray Redman, Saturday Review

A fast-paced thriller written near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign when Great Britain ruled a worldwide empire, it subtly reveals the political awareness and personal views of a young Churchill, decades before he would become one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. Savrola shows that it is possible to obtain penetrating insights into an author’s mind from their fiction as well as from their biography. The story concerns the events leading up to, during and after a revolution in the fictional European country of Laurania.