Chapter Ten, Apotheosis Summary and Analysis

After the war, Churchill is enormously popular, but politically he is seen as reactionary, as anti-worker and anti-welfare. In 1945, Clement Attlee and the Labour Party come to power. They create the National Health Service (which Keegan reminds us is partly Churchill's idea) and nationalize a huge range of industries (which Churchill bitterly derides as akin to fascist authoritarianism, an unpopular accusation at the time).

Churchill focuses soon after his defeat on finishing his six volumes of The Second World War. He completes them all by the astonishingly early date of 1951 when he turns 78. He makes $1.4 million American for the rights to the books and wins the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature. He also begins to speak out strongly against communism; his speaking out is criticized at the time, particularly by the United States. No one wants to exacerbate...