We unabashedly urge you purchase a book that we are not even offering for sale.

Our friend, wonderfully erudite fellow Churchill collector (and physician, and medical researcher, and corporate executive, and writer, and just generally interesting and accomplished gentleman) Gary Stiles, has written an absolutely terrific book about an absolutely terrific book. A Prelude to Immortality: Churchill’s My Early Life. To quote the publisher, “This is the incredible story of why and how Winston Churchill in his mid-50s decides to write an autobiography.”

Gary did the Churchill world a great service a few years back with publication of Churchill in Punch – a lovely book, too, that should be on the shelves of anyone interested in Churchill. But back to A Prelude to Immortality… We had the privilege of an advance review copy and Gary was kind enough to ask us to provide a pre-publication review blurb. Here’s what we had to say about the book:

“Most of what is written about Churchill just tells us who he was and what he did. Stiles shows us how and why Churchill became who he was. In Stiles’s hands, Churchill’s single most popular work not only entertains the reader, as it has done for nearly a century since it was first published, but now illuminates its author as never before. Stiles brilliantly uses Churchill’s own – and only – retrospective on his origins as a kind of skeleton key to access Churchill’s voice and vitality, his animating attitudes and ambitions. A true sense of Churchill ramifies and resonates in these pages. Not only has this never been done before, but it is hard to imagine it being done better. A Prelude to Immortality is silver-tongued scholarship – part rigorous analysis, part reference compendium, all held within a gripping narrative.”

Folks, there’s no hyperbole in what we wrote. But just in case you don’t believe us, here’s what historian Andrew Roberts, author of the superb biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny, has to say:

“This fascinating biography of a biography essentially explains to the reader how Winston Churchill’s thought process worked when he wrote My Early Life, one of the books that deservedly won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. A vital part of the Churchill myth as well as being a beautiful piece of writing in itself, My Early Life has always been something of an enigma – until now.”

A Prelude to Immortality can be pre-ordered HERE in the U.S. Amazon – but won’t be delivered until early January. If you need the book before Christmas, HERE it is in UK Amazon.

Cheers!