Today, as liberty & truth are increasingly challenged, the figures of Churchill & Orwell loom large. Exemplars of Britishness, they preserved individual freedom & democracy for the world through their far-sighted vision & inspired action, & cast a long shadow across our culture & politics. In Churchill & Orwell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks masterfully argues that these extraordinary men are as important today as they ever were. Churchill & Orwell stood in political opposition to each other, but were both committed to the preservation of freedom. However, in the late 1930s they occupied a lonely position: democracy was much discredited, & authoritarian rulers, fascist & communist, were everywhere in the ascent. Unlike others, they had the wisdom to see that the most salient issue was human liberty
- & that any government that denies its people basic rights is a totalitarian menace to be resisted. Churchill & Orwell proved their age`s necessary men, & this book reveals how they rose from a precarious position to triumph over the enemies of freedom. Churchill may have played the larger role in Hitler`s defeat, but Orwell`s reckoning with the threat of authoritarian rule in 1984 & Animal Farm defined the stakes of the Cold War & continues to inspire to this day. Their lives are an eloquent testament to the power of moral conviction, & to the courage it takes to stay true to it.