NYT: "The reader learns that Churchill was also an advocate of policies usually identified with the Labor Party: a national health service, wider access to education, taxation of excess profits and profit-sharing. In fact, during his first public speech in 1897, three years before he entered Parliament, Churchill said he looked forward to the day when laborers would become shareholders in the businesses where they worked. Rather generously, Mr. Gilbert maintains that Churchill was "a consistent and lifelong liberal in outlook."
One of the values of this single-volume biography is that certain of Churchill's lifelong attitudes emerge more clearly. Mr. Gilbert, who is also the author of major works on Auschwitz, the Holocaust and Arab-Israeli conflicts, is especially strong in tracking Churchill's personal involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, his support for an identifiable Jewish brigade in the British Eighth Army in Italy during World War II and his influence in supporting the creation of a Jewish state after the war. For these views he sometimes found himself at odds with his own Conservative Party, but as usual, he stuck to his guns. Again and again, the author illustrates Churchill's fortitude and long-range sense of history.
During the crisis between Egypt and Israel in 1956, for example, Churchill informed a wavering President Dwight D. Eisenhower: "I am, of course, a Zionist, and have been ever since the Balfour Declaration. I think it is a wonderful thing that this tiny colony of Jews should have become a refuge to their compatriots in all the lands where they were persecuted so cruelly, and at the same time established themselves as the most effective fighting force in the area. I am sure America would not stand by and see them overwhelmed by Russian weapons, especially if we had persuaded them to hold their hand while their chance remained."
>NYT: "The reader learns that Churchill was also an advocate of policies usually identified with the Labor Party: a national health service, wider access to education, taxation of excess profits and profit-sharing. In fact, during his first public speech in 1897, three years before he entered Parliament, Churchill said he looked forward to the day when laborers would become shareholders in the businesses where they worked. Rather generously, Mr. Gilbert maintains that Churchill was "a consistent and lifelong liberal in outlook."
>One of the values of this single-volume biography is that certain of Churchill's lifelong attitudes emerge more clearly. **Mr. Gilbert, who is also the author of major works on Auschwitz, the Holocaust and Arab-Israeli conflicts**, is especially strong in tracking Churchill's personal involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, his support for an identifiable Jewish brigade in the British Eighth Army in Italy during World War II **and his influence in supporting the creation of a Jewish state after the war.** For these views he sometimes found himself at odds with his own Conservative Party, but as usual, he stuck to his guns. Again and again, the author illustrates Churchill's fortitude and long-range sense of history.
>During the crisis between Egypt and Israel in 1956, for example, Churchill informed a wavering President Dwight D. Eisenhower: **"I am, of course, a Zionist, and have been ever since the Balfour Declaration.** I think it is a wonderful thing that this tiny colony of Jews should have become a refuge to their compatriots in all the lands where they were persecuted so cruelly, and at the same time established themselves as the most effective fighting force in the area. I am sure America would not stand by and see them overwhelmed by Russian weapons, especially if we had persuaded them to hold their hand while their chance remained."
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