Title

Franklin and Winston : an intimate portrait of an epic friendship

Description

The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history's towering leaders. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of the Greatest Generation. In [this volume, the author] explores the ... relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one--a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children. Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR's affections which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides and Winston Churchill. Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history. [In the volume, he] has written [an] account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.--Dust jacket.

Identifier

1139264

375505008

Creator

Meacham, Jon

Format

1st ed.

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

2003

Program air date: February 15, 2004

Publisher

Random House

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Notes on front papers concerning the birth and death dates of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, in addition to the date and place of their first meeting, the date of the assassination attempt on FDR in Miami, the countries where they met during World War II, their hobbies, a list of individuals such one of FDR's closest advisers, Harry Hopkins and one of his closest friends and confidants, Daisy Suckley, Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, and FDR's mistress, Lucy Mercer. Notes on end papers include a list of individuals interviewed by the author and notes taken by Brian Lamb on the author's acknowledgements. Annotations by Brian Lamb in the margins and underlining of pertinent phrases throughout the book. Examples: "easy friendship," "did not fool each other," and "war cruel, squalid."

Subject

"Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945--Military leadership."

"Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965--Military leadership."

"World War, 1939-1945--Diplomatic history."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

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