Winston Churchill's Reading List
The 5 books that shaped Winston Churchill — statesman & nobel laureate.
Wartime leader, historian, and Nobel Prize-winning writer who read voraciously across every subject imaginable.
Influential Books
The History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Winston Churchill(1956)
Churchill's sweeping narrative of Anglo civilization — history as the story of liberty's gradual triumph.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon(1776)
Churchill devoured Gibbon as a young officer in India. Gibbon's grand style shaped Churchill's own prose.
My Early Life
Winston Churchill(1930)
Churchill's charming memoir of his youth — school failures, cavalry charges, and a daring escape from a Boer prison.
The Second World War
Winston Churchill(1953)
Churchill's six-volume account of the war — part memoir, part history, and the work that won him the Nobel Prize.
The Republic
Plato
Churchill read widely in philosophy. He believed in the philosopher-statesman and saw himself in that tradition.