The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill
Volume I
Visions of Glory 1874-1932
By: William Manchester
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 41 hrs and 19 mins

The Romance of the 19th century was instilled into Winston. It was this vision of a great people that began him on his journey to be the man of the hour. His childhood was one of noble neglect. His natal adulthood one of empirical glory through hard work and near failure. The world he knew was destroyed by the brutality of industrial age warfare. A monster that no one wanted to look in the eye again. It took away the glory of war and replaced it with the starkness of hell.

In and through these times we are confronted with a man who seems mercurial to some and steadfast to others. The only thing he appears to be true to are himself and his beliefs. These cause him to misunderstand and to be misunderstood. Ultimately leading him from the brink of success to the flounder in failure. But through this, he trods on. The tough childhood and youth cause him to persevere, as he has always been the truest believer in himself.

The world will find that its frame of reference is wrong. it is not Winston that changes, but that the world has been changing around a steadfast ideological being. Winston is a paring of antitheses. He is conservative, a liberal. He is a visionary stuck in the past. He is a studious dunce. A man who can cry at the loss of a mother and send a man to scaffold for not doing his duty. A loving father who did not know the love of a father. A champion for Victorian England long after Queen Victoria was dead. A man of the ages and yet not of his age.