Winston’s War. Michael Dobbs

      MICHAEL DOBBS

      WINSTON’S WAR

       Dedication

      FOR SANDY AND EDNA SAUNDERS, AND EDNA DICKINSON.

      

      Much loved aunts and uncle.

       Epigraph

       ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’

      Neville Chamberlain, speaking about Czechoslovakia, hours before flying to Munich to negotiate the deal with Hitler that surrendered to Germany large parts of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were not invited to the negotiations.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Epigraph

Part One: Blessed are the Peacemakers

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

       Seven

       Part Two: An End to Illusions

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Thirteen

       Part Three: The Limits of Loyalty

       Fourteen

       Fifteen

       Sixteen

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Twenty-One

       Twenty-Two

       Twenty-Three

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Author’s Note

       Praise

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

PART ONE Blessed are the Peacemakers

       ONE

       London, Saturday 1 October 1938.

      A story has to start somewhere. Ours begins on a disgruntled day in autumn, in the unsuspecting year of 1938.

      It could have begun a generation earlier, of course – in 1914, as the British Expeditionary Force whistled its way off to war with the Kaiser. Or 1918, when the few that were left dragged themselves back. There again, we could have started a century earlier when the hooves of the Emperor Napoleon’s cavalry turned the continent of Europe into a muddy dying place that stretched from the tumbling rivers and mountains of Spain to the gates of imperial Moscow. Extend the imagination just a little and we could go back – why, a thousand years, to that day on a hill overlooking the coast of Sussex when King Harold raised his eyes to view his enemy in full retreat, and got nothing but an arrow for his efforts – or another thousand years still, to the time of the great Julius and his invasion fleet as they landed a little further along the shore. We could go back to almost any day, in fact, and still it would be the same. Johnny Foreigner was a pain.

      But this story starts on the Bayswater Road, and not with a King or an invading Emperor but an undersized figure named McFadden. He is a gentlemen’s barber, and a good one. One of the best, in fact. A man with a sharp eye for detail and a soft hand, a punctilious sort of fellow both by his nature and by his trade. Yet McFadden is late, which is unusual for him. And he shouldn’t be late, not today, for this is the day he has agreed to be married.

      He has dressed as best he can in the circumstances, but it doesn’t quite work. The heavy wool jacket is meant for someone at least ten pounds lighter and the button at his belly keeps coming undone. The rose in his buttonhole also refuses to co-operate. It has slipped away from its pin and is threatening to jump. McFadden mutters a dark