Raymond Seitz
The Greatest Showmen
Franklin and Winston: A Portrait of Friendship
By Jon Meacham
Granta Books 490pp £25 order from our bookshop
WHAT A MOMENT it must have been. The Washington Star called it ‘electric’. Alistair Cooke, who was there, said it was ‘terribly exciting’. Behind the cluttered desk in the Oval Office were seated the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Barely two weeks had passed since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. America was in the war now and Britain’s lonely struggle was no longer lonely.
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