Book cover: In Command of History by David Reynolds

In Command of History

Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War

David Reynolds

How Churchill wrote the history that decided how his war would be remembered, drafts and deletions included.

Churchill wrote six volumes on the Second World War, won a Nobel Prize for literature largely on their strength, and in doing so fixed how the war would be remembered. Reynolds went back to the drafts to see the book being assembled: what the research syndicate supplied, what the Cabinet Office censored, what Churchill quietly rewrote once he wanted office again. It won the Wolfson History Prize.

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Tim Bouverie

Historian and Author

Reynolds did an enormous amount of research, and this is a book which, unsurprisingly, won the Wolfson History Prize.

Interview · June 2026

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