'It is refreshing, ' writes Sir Peter de la Billiere in his foreword to this book, 'to have an account of Churchill that breaks new ground.' And this book does indeed break new ground, in describing and analysing the large and various sequence of illnesses and accidents that befell Winston Churchill, and would surely have defeated a lesser man. If Churchill had not been the supreme survivor he was, the history of the world would have taken a very different course in the first half of the twentieth century. Most of Sir Winston's life was lived in pre-antibiotic days, and we are reminded of the limitations of medical care when he developed pneumonia in his youth, or fell nine metres out of a tree, or (with similar mechanical forces involved) was knocked down by a car in New York in 1931. These events and many more, described without resort to jargon and generously illustrated, form the substance of this book.

The author, a surgeon, breaks new ground in describing and analysing the many illnesses and accidents that befell Winston Churchill, and would surely have defeated a lesser man. If Churchill had not been the supreme survivor he was, the history of the world would have taken a very different course in the first half of the twentieth century.