SOURCE: “Winston S. Churchill,” in Some Modern Historians of Britain, edited by Herman Ausubel, J. Bartlet Brebner, and Erling M. Hunt. The Dryden Press, 1951, pp. 306-24.

In the following essay, Hurwitz presents an overview of Churchill's career as a writer and a historian.

To reverse one of his malicious phrases (“Mr. Attlee is a modest man and he has much to be modest about”), Winston Spencer Churchill is a very immodest man and he has indeed much to be immodest about. Soldier, journalist, novelist, lecturer, ruler of the King's Navy, of the Army, and of the country, bricklayer, painter, politician and statesman, and historian, too, Churchill has enjoyed, and the word is used advisedly, a very full and successful life.

Like other charismatic heroes, Churchill believes that he is a man of destiny. Though ours is not the best of all possible worlds, he believes that, for him...