Great Contemporaries

Original essays offering fresh ways into exploring Churchill and his perspectives

Winston S. Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature for “his mastery of historical and biographical description.” Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries, first published in 1937.

Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, these portraits of notable figures of his age offer wisdom for our own. With keen observations and telling anecdotes, Churchill points out what he learned from them about greatness and also their limitations. His subjects range from Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw.

Published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Churchill's birth, this is the most complete edition, including five additional essays, more than thirty photographs, with a new foreword and annotations by Churchill scholar James W. Muller. This volume revives Churchill’s unmatched insights and unforgettable prose for a new generation of readers.