franklin and winston a portrait of a friendship

In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations-yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children.īorn in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one-a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. These similarities, as Meacham recounts, were reflected in their more fundamental preferences: 'They loved tobacco, strong drink, history of.The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leadersįranklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. Both were democrats, although Churchill, eight years the senior, remained tied to the past as a conservative, while Roosevelt focused progressively on the future.

They shared a sense of destiny and were both pragmatic and optimistic. They were both extremely ambitious politicians, expert at their jobs, physically courageous, and superb actors. The meetings were always hectic and entertaining, involving subjects that could range from politics and strategy to health and families.įrom the records of these meetings as well as their correspondence, Meacham creates a sympathetic, nuanced picture of two men with great similarities and differences.

They celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's together in Washington, Hyde Park, and Shangri-la (the presidential retreat, now Camp David). They also spent 113 days together during the war in locations from Canada to Morocco and from Malta to Yalta. From September 1939 until Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the two statesmen exchanged almost 2,000 letters. Meacham, a managing editor of Newsweek, provides Plutarchian analysis of the interaction of the two great lives and thereby proves with great success that it does matter who is at the helm of the ship of state at critical times in history. Jon Meacham considers the relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during World War II to be 'the most fascinating friendship of modern time,' a judgment buttressed by this extraordinary study. Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship.

Franklin and winston a portrait of a friendship