Quotes from Andrew Roberts

He cut out one quip from his September speech as just too flippant: he had been going to say, 'Our destroyers then engaged that particular submarine, and all that thereafter was seen of the vessel was a large spot of oil and a door which floated up to the surface bearing my initials.

Had the German Army been opposed by the French and British forces stationed near by, it had orders to retire back to base and such a reverse would almost certainly have cost Hitler the chancellorship. Yet the Western powers, riven with guilt about having imposed what was described as a 'Carthaginian peace' on Germany in 1919, allowed the Germans to enter the Rhineland unopposed.

Always alone and in the midst of men, I come back to my rooms to dream with myself, and to surrender myself to all the vivacity of my melancholy,' he wrote.

the qualities desirable in a politician, Churchill said, 'The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year Ã¢â'¬â€œ and . . . to explain why it didn't happen.

I am a child of the House of Commons,' he told the US Congress in December 1941. 'I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. "Trust the people" – that was his message.

Churchill's written output was similarly immense. He published 6.1 million words in thirty-seven books – more than Shakespeare and Dickens combined – and delivered five million in public speeches, not counting his voluminous letter- and memorandum-writing.

The reason the public trusted and soon came to love him in 1940 was not because they believed he had been right in the past, but because they believed he had been consistently true to his beliefs, in a way many other, self-serving politicians who had held office throughout the 1930s had not been.

Sometimes, what looks like bad luck may turn out to be good luck and vice versa

epistolary friendship

The boy was profoundly affected by his father's entirely self-inflicted disaster, from which he learned several important lessons. The most important was not to threaten to resign unless one is prepared to go into the wilderness. If one is not so prepared, then only threaten to resign along with several other people capable of bringing down the Government.

His unpunctuality was to be a lifelong trait; even as prime minister he would arrive late or with only minutes to spare for meetings with Cabinets and monarchs and for debates in Parliament. As his exasperated wife was to say, 'Winston always likes to give the train a sporting chance to get away.

As the Potsdam Conference opened, Truman was able to tell Stalin officially about the existence of the Bomb. Stalin showed the requisite amount of surprise, not revealing that his spies had kept him fully informed and that he was already trying to build his own.

The Victorian English aristocracy was a distinct tribe, with its own hierarchies, accents, clubs, schools, colleges, career-paths, vocabulary, honour-codes, love-rituals, loyalties, traditions, sports and sense of humour. Some of these were quite intricate and almost impenetrable to outsiders.

For a man who was to exhibit such acute political sharpness later in his career, Napoleon completely misread the revolution's opening stages. 'I repeat what I have said to you,' he wrote to Joseph on July 22, a week after the fall of the Bastille, 'calm will return. In a month, there will no longer be a question of anything. So, if you send me 300 livres [7,500 francs] I will go to Paris to terminate our business.

Churchill refused the King's third offer of the Order of the Garter, supposedly saying afterwards, 'Why should I accept the Order of the Garter from His Majesty when the people have just given me the order of the boot?

When Averell Harriman tried to console Churchill by saying that under the proportional representation system he would still have been prime minister, of a Conservative–Liberal coalition, he indignantly rejected the idea, saying, 'I will fight against the evils of proportional representation with all my strength,' and explained that democracy could succeed only if the people knew which party was accountable and responsible for the decisions taken in government

The interpretation Churchill gave to the obligations of aristocracy was that he and his class had a profound responsibility towards his country, which had the right to expect his lifelong service to it.

The men who have changed the world never succeeded by winning over the powerful, but always by stirring the masses. The first method is a resort to intrigue and only brings limited results. The latter is the course of genius and changes the face of the world.' Napoleon on St Helena

When Stalin approved of issuing fake invasion plans for Overlord, Churchill said, to Stalin's vast amusement, 'In wartime, Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

There is something rather wonderful about the fact that, at a particularly perilous point in a war for the continued independent existence of the nation, the British Prime Minister could be upbraided by his wife for being short tempered; we can be fairly certain that no one was saying this to Churchill's opposite number in the Reich Chancellery.

It had taken two years and two general elections, but now the elected House of Commons was supreme over the hereditary and appointed House of Lords. Churchill had negotiated much of the eventual deal. It made him deeply distrusted and disliked among the Tory Diehards, and by many of his own class, but it brought Britain closer to becoming a fully functioning modern democracy.

The House of Lords finally passed the Parliament Bill on 10 August 1911. It had taken two years and two general elections, but now the elected House of Commons was supreme over the hereditary and appointed House of Lords. Churchill had negotiated much of the eventual deal. It made him deeply distrusted and disliked among the Tory Diehards, and by many of his own class, but it brought Britain closer to becoming a fully functioning modern democracy.

Stalin did not trust Churchill, because he did not trust anyone (except, for two years, Adolf Hitler).

Stalin did not trust Churchill, because he did not trust anyone (except, for two years, Adolf Hitler). Yet Churchill could not discover Stalin's true views about him because after June 1941 Britain's intelligence services were ordered not to spy on Britain's new Soviet ally, a mistaken policy that was certainly not reciprocated.