The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill

Two volume set in slipcase. Volume 1 : Visions of Glory, 1874 - 1932. Volume 2 : Alone, 1932 - 1940.The first volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Spencer Churchill, "The Last Lion," packed a freighted load in 1983. Subtitled "Visions of Glory, 1874-1932," it presented his lonely childhood; his early military and literary exploits in India, Afghanistan and South Africa; his precocious entry into politics and rapid rise; his equally rapid fall after the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of World War I; his abandonment of the Liberal Party; and his resignation from the Tory leadership over a difference of opinion on granting India a small degree of sovereignty. In a second volume, Manchester planned to unleash the whirlwind of Churchill's legendary prime ministership during six years of total war, stage his return to power in 1951 and document his long, aimless decline. Instead, "Alone, 1932-1940" (1989) covered just his eight years as a political pariah, a period when he fulminated against Gandhi, wrote to make ends meet and vainly tried to get England to meet the rising threat of Hitler. Both volumes were masterly narratives, filled with close-ups and unexpectedly revealing historical digressions. But readers were left awaiting the main event, the war foreshadowed in the opening pages of "The Last Lion."