"Australia seemed to bring out the worst in Winston Churchill. Often enough to form a discernible pattern, Australia found itself on the wrong side of the very qualities – his strength of will, singleness of purpose, his refusal to 'give way, in things great or small, large or petty', the power of his imagination to set grim reality at defiance, his mastery of the English language – that made Winston Churchill, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin described him, 'the saviour of his country, the largest human being of his time'."Winston Churchill was a titan of the 20th Century, universally acknowledged as one of the greatest leaders of his age. Yet his relationship with Australia was a fraught one, tainted by the military failure of the Gallipoli campaign in the First War, and the disaster of Singapore in the Second. Churchill the patrician, descendant of dukes, could not appreciate Australia's dearly held egalitarianism, while Churchill the imperial statesman was impatient, and at times intolerant, of Australia's growing urge towards independence. The relationship between the two would span the first 50 tumultuous years of the 20th Century, from the Boer War through to opening salvoes of the Cold War, and act as a fascinating backdrop to Australia's maturity from a collection of autonomous colonies to full nationhood.Written with extraordinary narrative verve, and relying on exhaustive research and a true insider's knowledge of the political world, this is history written at its compelling best.
This book by Graham Freudenberg will become the standard work on the relationship between Australia and the British wartime leadership of Winston Churchill. It is comprehensive, fair-minded and insightful. At its heart is the contrast and tension between Churchill's determination to subordinate everything to the defeat of Hitler, including the essential interests of the Commonwealth of Australia. Freudenberg recognizes and applauds Churchill's strategic acuity and vision and does not question the wisdom of the British Prime Minister's "Big Idea" at the cenre of his strategy. This was to work and plan steadily to draw the United States into the war against Germany. But he shows in detail how Churchill sought to use, indeed at times to use up, the Australian army and navy even at the cost of diverting them from the defence of Australia against Japan.

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