The Churchills

TX: Summer

In this brand new television series, Dr David Starkey tells the story of the two greatest war leaders in British history, both of whom were called Churchill.

Everyone knows Winston Churchill led Britain and her Allies in their struggle against Hitler; less well-known is John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who led Britain and her Allies against an earlier would-be dictator of Europe, the Sun King, Louis XIV of France.

John Churchill was Winston's ancestor, but he was more than that: he was his inspiration and he was his subject. Winston was a writer and historian before he was Prime Minister, and perhaps his greatest work is his massive, million-word biography of John Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938.

As David Starkey argues, it was the ten years he spent working on Marlborough that turned Winston from a politician into a statesman-prophet, and prepared him for the immense task of leading the nation against Nazi Germany.

Marlborough is a work of history that changed history, a book about a great war-leader which helped to make an even greater war-leader in a bigger, bloodier war.

Production company
DOX Productions Ltd