This timely book fills a lacuna in the extensive literature on Churchill's life and times. It covers his long relationship with Africa during the most important period in Anglo-African history, from nineteenth-century imperial rule to independence and the emergence of modern Africa.

Churchill first went to Africa during the British re-conquest of Sudan in 1898 and would spend almost the next sixty years dealing with Africa as soldier, journalist, government minister, and finally prime minister. Churchill's story is one of transition from the height of late-Victorian British imperialism to the acceptance of African nationalism in the middle years of the twentieth century. He helped to shape British colonial policy in Africa from the first decade of the twentieth century through the Second World War and colonial Kenya's Mau Mau crisis of the 1950s. Few British leaders were as closely involved with Africa as was Churchill.