This book presents Winston Churchill and George Orwell as two clear-sighted men who saved the world for liberal democracy. Certainly for one brief moment in 1940 both were willing to die fighting to save the country from invasion. ‘My Country Right or Left’, Orwell declared. But so were a lot of other British people. What they had in common was a desire to win the war. After that, we have to qualify and equivocate. 

Churchill was the son of a Tory politician and the grandson of a Tory duke. After a celebrated stint in the Liberal Party between 1904 and 1924, he came back into the Conservative fold, only to find many Tories distrusted his talent and ambition. As he remarked, ‘Anyone can rat,