Please send me some book rec­om­men­da­tions on Churchill’s life for young read­ers. By young, I mean a boy of sev­en years old. My nephew asked me about the book I was read­ing (Churchill: The Unex­pect­ed Hero by Paul Addi­son), and after I told him a lit­tle bit about it, he want­ed to know more. I’d appre­ci­ate any rec­om­men­da­tions. —R.M., Mass.

Paul Addison’s Unex­pect­ed Hero is prob­a­bly the best “brief life” in print. If your nephew is into that at sev­en,  he has great promise, and you should buy him a mem­ber­ship in The Churchill Cen­tre. The stu­dent rate is $25, which rep­re­sents a 50% discount.

Finest Hour 140, Autumn 2008, our for­ti­eth anniver­sary num­ber, con­tains an arti­cle, “The Fifty Best Books of the Past Forty Years.” Copies are avail­able for $5 from the Cen­tre at 888-WSC-1874, or email me for a copy of the text. 

Scan­ning the “Best Fifty” for ones he’d might like, may I suggest:

Mar­tin Gilbert, Churchill: A Pho­to­graph­ic Portrait
Dou­glas Hall, The Book of Churchilliana (Churchill sou­venir items)
Fiona Reynold­son, Churchill—best ever for read­ers under 10.
Dou­glas Rus­sell, Win­ston Churchill: Soldier
John Sev­er­ance, Sol­dier, States­man Artist—excel­lent for young people
Mary Soames, A Churchill Fam­i­ly Album—pho­to documentary

Most of these are avail­able on Ama­zon, or search for sec­ond­hand copies on MX Book­find­er.

I also mod­est­ly rec­om­mend my book of quo­ta­tions, Churchill by Himself,
which (much to my regret) Ama­zon is dis­count­ing to $11.98 to move stock at the moment. 

Also avail­able is the text of four reviews of new books for young peo­ple in Finest Hour 142. The best of these is The Hap­py War­rior, only avail­able from Lev­enger. This is an ele­gant hard­bound repro­duc­tion of a car­toon strip Churchill biog­ra­phy orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1958 by The Eagle, a “boy’s own” type of week­ly peri­od­i­cal. Lev­enger pro­vides excel­lent col­or repro­duc­tions and new com­men­taries by the orig­i­nal pub­lish­er and oth­er author­i­ties. The Hap­py War­rior sells for $39, but is on sale for $32 through 13 July 2009.