ABSTRACT
Churchill had sailed close hauled into the new and turbulent seas, ready to tack to any quarter, susceptible not only to the prevailing winds (as soon as he should discover them), but to all the nuances and vagaries of the cross currents beneath the surface. Churchill would have agreed with Montaigne that good and bad fortune are ‘two sovereign powers’, and that ‘it is unwise to think that human wisdom can fill fortune’s rôle’. His will and reasoning, and certainly his course, would be moved ‘sometimes by one breeze, sometimes by another’. Two world wars of appalling barbarity, inflicting dreadful sufferings upon millions of men, women and children, would fail to banish such visions from the minds of sentimental men. The legend of Britain, of which Churchill was to become an expression, a legend in himself, was more powerful even than the legend of ancient Rome.
