His finest hour

Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning by John Lukacs

Most popular

Michael Gove

‘I’m a new kind of Christian’: Jordan Peterson on faith, family and the future of the right

Nine years ago the American historian, John Lukacs, published an excellent little book, Five Days in London: May 1940. In this he analysed in detail that critical moment in the history of the Second World War — perhaps indeed in the history of Western civilization — when the British people, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, decided to reject Hitler’s peace offers and, against all the odds, to fight on until ultimate victory. Now Lukacs has given us an even smaller book, less than 150 pages, that covers exactly the same ground and says little that he did not tell us before. Only on the very last page is it revealed that this opuscule belongs to a ‘Basic Ideas’ series in which ‘a leading authority offers a concise biography of a text that transformed its world, and ours’.