Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry

An important and magisterial account by England's extraordinary young historian of the epic struggle between two titans for the leadership of Britain on the eve of the Second World War.

In the 1930s, Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain were the two giants of the English political stage, the sons of men who had decisively shaped the politics of the previous era. Burying Caesar charts the bitter course plotted by Churchill and Chamberlain in their ambition to win the greatest prize in British politics-the primeministership that had eluded both their fathers-a struggle carried out against the darkening storm of Nazi Germany.

What were the political machinations that kept Neville Chamberlain in office during the 1930s and deliberately kept Winston Churchill out? Was Churchill the prophet of uncomfortable truths during his "wilderness years," or was Chamberlain reasonable in his appeasement of Hitler? Stewart examines the dynamics and deep-seated rivalries within the Tory party, pitting Chamberlain's partisans against Churchill's "glamour boys." While Chamberlain appeased Hitler at Munich and urged isolation at home, Churchill emerged from the wilderness with a distinctive voice of moral authority and bulldog conviction.

Burying Caesar is a gripping account of the mechanisms and motivations that underpin politics in Britain, forces that are as powerful today-on both sides of the Atlantic-as they were more than sixty years ago.