''A History of the English-Speaking Peoples'' is a four-volume

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

, covering the period from

Caesar's invasions of Britain In the course of his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice: in 55 and 54 BC. On the first occasion Caesar took with him only two legions, and achieved little beyond a landing on the coast of Kent. The second invasion consisted of 628 ...

(55 BC) to the end of the Second Boer War (1902). It was started in 1937 and finally published 1956–1958, delayed several times by war and his work on other texts. The volumes have been abridged into a single-volume, concise edition.

Writing and publishing

Churchill, who excelled in the study of history as a child and whose mother was American, had a firm belief in a so-called "

special relationship The Special Relationship is a term that is often used to describe the political, social, diplomatic, cultural, economic, legal, environmental, religious, military and historic relations between the United Kingdom and the United States or i ...

" between the people of Britain and its

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...

(Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.) united under the Crown, and the people of the United States who had broken with the Crown and gone their own way. His book thus dealt with the resulting two divisions of the "English-speaking peoples". At the independent suggestions of British publisher

Newman Flower Sir Walter Newman Flower (8 July 1879 – 12 March 1964) was an English publisher and author. He transformed the fortunes of the publishing house Cassell & Co, and later became its proprietor. As an author, he published studies of the composers Ge ...

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

'' obituary of

, 13 March 1964, p. 19. and American editor

Max Perkins William Maxwell Evarts "Max" Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was an American book editor, best remembered for discovering authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe. Early life and ...

, Churchill began the history during the 1930s, during the period that his official biographer Martin Gilbert termed the "wilderness years" when he was not in government. Work was interrupted in 1939 when the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

broke out and Churchill was appointed

First Lord of the Admiralty The First Lord of the Admiralty, or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, was the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was the government's senior adviser on all naval affairs, responsible for the di ...

and became

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

a year later. After the war ended in 1945, Churchill was busy, first writing his

of that conflict and then as Prime Minister again between 1951 and 1955, so it was not until the mid-1950s, when Churchill was in his early eighties, that he was able to finish his work . One third of the last volume was devoted to the military minutiae of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

Social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

, the agricultural revolution, and the

industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

hardly get a mention. Political opponent

Clement Attlee Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, (3 January 18838 October 1967) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was Deputy Prime Mini ...

suggested the work should have been titled "Things in history that interested me." Despite these criticisms, the books were bestsellers and reviewed favourably on both sides of the Atlantic. In ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', J. H. Plumb wrote: "This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country's past." The four volumes are: * ''The Birth of Britain'' * ''The New World'' * ''The Age of Revolution'' * ''The Great Democracies''

Related works

The BBC produced a series of twenty-six fifty-minute

plays Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

loosely based around Churchill's work and entitled ''

Churchill's People ''Churchill's People'' is a series of 26 historical dramas produced by the BBC, based on Winston Churchill's ''A History of the English-Speaking Peoples''. They were first broadcast on BBC1 in 1974 and 1975. It was produced to mark the centen ...

'' which were broadcast in 1974 and 1975. However, the quality of the productions was judged to be poor and the series received low ratings. A sequel to Churchill's work, ''A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900'', by Andrew Roberts, was published in 2006.

Writing and publishing

Related works

See also

References

Further reading