As his daughter Mary Soames observed, Winston Churchill’s literary career was arguably longer than his political career. His first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, appeared in 1898 before he had turned 24, and he wrote four more before taking his seat in the House of Commons in 1901. His writing continued apace for six decades. Though he remained in Parliament until 1964, he gave his final substantive speech in 1955. His last book of speeches before his death, however, The Unwritten Alliance, was published in 1961.

From the beginning, Churchill’s books were widely read. They supported his political career in many ways. Beginning at a time when parliamentarians received no pay unless they held cabinet office, income from his writings made it possible for him to serve in Parliament without inherited wealth. The discipline of writing helped Churchill cultivate the prudence that made him an exemplary statesman. His reputation arose and grew as readers appreciated his writings.

Churchill was a young man in his twenties serving as a cavalry subaltern in India when he wrote to his mother wondering whether he himself would one day have a biographer. It came to pass a year before Churchill published a two-volume life of his father, Lord Randolph, when Alexander MacCallum Scott—a fellow young Liberal member of parliament