Alexander Hoyt put the idea for this book in my head and helped me overcome the qualms of a mildly republican heart. Wendy Wolf and Hugh Van Dusen have been stalwart. Margaret Riggs, Jeanette Gingold, and Sharon Gonzalez were models of diligence. The archivists at the Churchill Archives Centre, Windsor Castle, the University of York, and King’s College London, and the librarians at the Boston Athenaeum, Harvard’s Lamont and Widener libraries, and the Bilkent University library assisted me in numerous ways. Peter Hopkirk, Ezel Kural Shaw, and the late Stanford Shaw donated collections to Bilkent without which this book would have been much harder to write. Timothy Dickinson educated me in the nuances of monarchy. J. K. Rowling delivered a commencement address on the subject of failure that I shall not forget. Ian Klaus debated the distinctions between partnerships and alliances with me. Andrew Roberts took the time to review the manuscript.
I am grateful to every one of them.
Portions of the king’s diaries not quoted from published sources are reproduced by permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; excerpts from the Alanbrooke, Dill, and Ismay papers by permission of the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London; the diaries of Lord Halifax by permission of the Borthwick Institute, University of York; and excerpts from Churchill’s published writings by permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill.