Churchill sequel provides epic task for author

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Historian will add a fifth volume to the wartime leader's narrative - and vows to put facts before polemic

David Smith
Sunday February 27, 2005
The Observer

Warrior kings, heroic battles, bloody revolution and burnt cakes. Such was the stuff of Winston Churchill's epic, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which spun ripping yarns from down the ages but which his old rival, Clement Attlee, mocked as 'Things in History that Interested Me'.

The gripping storytelling - and somewhat partial approach - made for a unique overview of 2,000 years as seen by the man voted the Greatest Briton in a BBC poll. But that has not stood in the way of an audacious attempt at a sequel. Historian Andrew Roberts has taken on the daunting task of picking up where Churchill's narrative left off, at the dawn of the 20th century.

Roberts is writing a fifth volume to add to the four Churchill wrote. It will trace the main events of the 20th century chronologically, with the wartime leader himself a dominant figure, and is due to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in September 2006.

But Roberts, author of an introduction to the latest edition of the series, as well as books including Hitler And Churchill: Secrets Of Leadership, said he would depart from the approach of the original. 'Churchill retold stories like King Alfred burning the cakes as though they were true,' he explained. 'He had a very broad-minded view when it came to evidence, which I don't think any historian would get away with today. You have to be an awful lot more rigorous than he was.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1426336,00.html