Alliance: The Inside Story of How Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill Won One War and Began Another - Couverture souple

‘His camera is fixed on the men who sent millions into battle in the Second World War, but those battles are off-stage. It is the personalities of the Big Three that fascinate him, and his story will fascinate readers, even if it is mostly familiar. This is not to carp – it is all but impossible that it should be otherwise. What Fenby does brilliantly, and sometimes movingly, is bring these three extraordinary men to life...Fenby also gives a vivid picture of the social habits of the leaders. In our puritanical times, when only bottles of mineral water appear on conference tables, it’s interesting to see great strategic decisions taken by men whose alcohol intake would now invite criminal prosecution if they were at the wheel of a car. Nevertheless, these hard-drinking smokers successfully saw off the teetotal, non-smoking Fuhrer. It would be nice to think there was a lesson for us there’
Daily Telegraph 30/12
‘Fenby, a superb researcher...tells a compelling story brilliantly well and lets the most important facts shape his conclusions. We had leaders and they led, didn’t they? No, we had titans when we needed them, and they found a way to tower over the smoking ruins the Nazis left behind’
Observer 31/12

‘My scepticism, doubts and perhaps even a touch of literary smugness were wholly misplaced and demolished by Fenby’s quite brilliant narrative. Effectively, this a blow-by-blow reporter’s account of how three very different and remarkable war leaders led us to one of history’s most crucial victories – the defeat of Hitler’s fascism...Fenby combines the reporter’s skill in narrative and flavour as well as dedicated research in welding together in highly readable form a formidable assembly of memoirs from the great and good of the Second World War.’
Tribune 16/2

‘Fenby, a former editor of the Observer, may be covering ostensibly familiar ground, but he has trawled through countless records and reminiscences to make the conferences in Casablanca, Potsdam and Yalta come vividly alive’
Catholic Herald 23/2

‘It was the great tragedy of the Second World War that such colossal loss and suffering should have led to half a century of dangerous standoff between east and west...Alliance is an engaging book and, particularly for readers wishing to discover this rewarding subject, as comprehensive and entertaining a place to start as any’
BBC History Magazine, March ‘07

Article by Jonathan Fenby
‘Jonathan Fenby reveals a US president’s disturbing views on Jews’
Jewish Chronicle 16/2
‘In redefining Britain’s relationship with America, the next British Prime Minster must see beyond the rose-tinted image of Churchill and Roosevelt’
Article by Jonathan Fenby
Guardian Unlimited website 26/2
‘My scepticism, doubts and perhaps even a touch of literary smugness were wholly misplaced and demolished by Fenby’s quite brilliant narrative. Effectively, this a blow-by-blow reporter’s account of how three very different and remarkable war leaders led us to one of history’s most crucial victories – the defeat of Hitler’s fascism...Fenby combines the reporter’s skill in narrative and flavour as well as dedicated research in welding together in highly readable form a formidable assembly of memoirs from the great and good of the Second World War.’
Tribune 16/2

‘Fenby, a former editor of the Observer, may be covering ostensibly familiar ground, but he has trawled through countless records and reminiscences to make the conferences in Casablanca, Potsdam and Yalta come vividly alive’
Catholic Herald 23/2

‘It was the great tragedy of the Second World War that such colossal loss and suffering should have led to half a century of dangerous standoff between east and west...Alliance is an engaging book and, particularly for readers wishing to discover this rewarding subject, as comprehensive and entertaining a place to start as any’
BBC History Magazine, March ‘07
Article by Jonathan Fenby
‘Jonathan Fenby reveals a US president’s disturbing views on Jews’
Jewish Chronicle 16/2
‘A marvellous portrait of the three men who shaped the world we live in, during the two years (1943 – 1945) when they did it’
New Statesman 26/11
‘What makes Fenby’s study of this marriage of convenience so fresh is the acknowledgment that behind the policies adopted, three distinctive personalities shaped the war more than any other factor. Alliance reads like a great compendium of foibles and diplomatic flirtations. The significance of such accumulated minutiae is not lost on the reader. The book is all the better for them’
Paperback of the week, Observer 16/12
‘Jonathan Fenby has an instinct for drama, and gives the reader a sense of what it was like at the negotiations. What comes through most clearly is the expediency of the Alliance; despite Churchill’s public praising of Stalin, necessity was everything: as he said, if Hitler had invaded hell he would have found it in himself to “make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons’
Daily Telegraph 22/12
‘Fenby brilliantly captures these outsized personalities. When Churchill stayed at the White House he gave orders that he should be served sherry for breakfast, whisky for lunch and champagne and brandy in the evening. The teetotal Hitler never stood a chance’
Mail on Sunday 6/1
‘Bringing to life the personalities note only of the big three, but also of their supporting case, Fenby has created a memorable drama of world-changing decisions and the men who made them’
Sunday Times 7/1
‘A serious and vital story’
Sunday Telegraph 16/12
‘This is a book about personalities and they don’t come much bigger than the Big Three. Stalin was tough and self-assured, but “super-suspicious”. Roosevelt was emotionally cold and a “supreme egoist”. Churchill was frequently emotional and close to tears...No history of this period better illustrates the intolerable strain of making life-or-death decisions – the headaches, the sleeping pills, the diarrhoea. Most of all, they smoked and drank constantly, furiously, as if the world were about to end’
Guardian 12/1

‘The alliance between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill was often highly strained, and Jonathan Fenby portrays their personalities and foibles with exceptional immediacy in his detailed, even intimate, account of their interactions. It is a serious and vital story, but has comedy too, such as Churchill’s emerging naked from a bathroom in front of the startled President’
Sunday Telegraph 16/12

‘Fenby has created a memorable drama of world-changing decisions and the men who made them’
Sunday Times 6/1

'Highly readable' Sunday Times
Three very different men from three very different countries saved the world from Fascism in the Second World War. As their armies fought on three continents, Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill charted the shape of the post-war world in intensive and often fraught exchanges stretching over four years. This book tells the inside story of how they won the war and defined the peace, as their original hopes were replaced by growing East-West confrontation which would lead to the Cold War, as the United States and the Soviet Union became superpowers and Britain grappled with decline.
With a vivid narrative that ranges from the great conferences of the Big Three at Teheran and Yalta to a secret shipboard meeting in a deserted Newfoundland cove Alliance not only tells a historically important tale of a coalition of great powers that would redefine the world, but also provides a gripping account of a crucial time in human history, brought alive through the three formidable leaders at its core.
'His story will fascinate readers . . . What Fenby does brilliantly, and sometimes movingly, is bring these three extraordinary men to life'
Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph
'This is history caught in close, relentless focus . . . Fenby, a superb researcher . . . tells a compelling story brilliantly well'
Peter Preston, Observer
'The best sort of history; it provides a sense of world-shaking decisions being made, and also of the three human beings who made them . . . So effective a writer is Fenby that at times you feel you can see the three principals . . . Delightful'
Francis Beckett, Guardian