. . . would you take to a desert island?

ANDREW ROBERTS’ Churchill: Walking With Destiny, simply because I’ve dipped in and out of it but have yet to find the time to immerse myself in this 1,000-page masterpiece. I re-read one of Churchill’s speeches recently and was struck by it so powerfully. On June 4, 1940, as the last of the little ships steamed away from Dunkirk, he hailed the rescuing of so many from ‘the jaws of death and shame, to their native land’, adding a trenchant reminder: ‘We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.’ We owe so much to that man.