Introduction

Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a history of the British Isles written by Churchill between the years of 1937 and 1956. Churchill took a leading role in writing the book, but he did depend on a number of dedicated research assistants who were invaluable in gathering the information he needed. His account begins with Caesar's conquest in 55 BC of large areas of the British Isles and concludes at the advent of the Great War in 1914. The text also considers the early history of the United States of America, whose people for Churchill were a close kindred of his own (given their shared Protestant roots and their commitments to forms of government ruled by the populous).

Churchill's A History of The English-Speaking Peoples is written with characteristic vigor and poetic flare—always attentive to the broader international picture in its portrayal of individual events. His British patriotism comes across in his elevation of British historical figures and his demonizing of various French (or otherwise non-Anglo-Saxon) entities. In this way, his work can be read as an example of the racial exceptionalism with which many British citizens understood themselves during the early years of the twentieth century.

The work focuses primarily on military and political history and pays far less attention to the minutia of social development, which is perhaps an inevitable consequence of the substantial time period it covers.

Summary

Volume 1: "The Birth of Britain"

The first of the work's four volumes is the most ambitious in terms of the time frame it addresses. Beginning with an examination of the Roman Civilization and the subsequent Christianization of Britain, Churchill proceeds to tell the story of Saxon Britain—a country consisting of various smaller kingdoms, which was troubled by frequent raids from the Vikings—a period he concludes with an account of British unification under Norman rule. The volume then explores medieval politics, paying particular attention to the signing of the Magna Carta (a step that Churchill considered to be fundamental in developing the contemporary British political system) and the protracted conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster that was eventually referred to as the War of The Roses—a conflict that would mark the end of the medieval age.

Volume 2: "A New World"

The second volume details Britain's relationship to the cultural Renaissance and the religious Reformation that gripped Europe in the sixteenth century. He proceeds to describe the English Civil War in the seventeenth century and Britain's brief experiment with Republicanism. He then details the efforts of King James II to restore Catholicism to Britain and his subsequent defeat at the Battle of the Boyne by the Protestant William of Orange, in 1688.

Volume 3: "The Age of Revolution"

The third volume portrays Britain in the age of Enlightenment: a Britain increasingly at odds with France, first in the so-called French and Indian Wars and later during the period of the first French Republic and First French Empire under Napoleon. This volume also introduces the United States as a new and independent nation and chronicles the brief conflict in 1812 between the United States and Britain.

Volume 4: "The Great Democracies"

The fourth volume takes a somewhat more international view of Britain—perhaps by necessity, since the island was by this point a major international player. Churchill considers the actions of several important political figures in Britain during the nineteenth century—such as the prime ministers Gladstone and Dizraeli—as well as highlights the importance of certain bills and reforms (such as the Democracy Act of 1830). However, he also takes time to detail the affairs of major colonies like Canada and South Africa as well as the affairs upstart European nations—such as a newly united Germany, whom he saw as a key British rival. He also describes, in detail, the outbreak and events of the American Civil War