Winston Churchill

What’s the context? 2 May 1945: Raising a Flag over the Reichstag

Posted by: Dr Luke Gibbon, Posted on: 6 May 2015 - Categories: Second World War, What's the context? series

The Battle for Berlin, April-May 1945 The image of the hoisting of the Red Flag over the Reichstag 2 May 1945 has come to represent the ‘total victory’ of Soviet Russia over Nazi Germany in the Second World War. That …

What’s the Context? 4 February 1945: the Yalta Conference opens

Posted by: Gill Bennett, Posted on: 4 February 2015 - Categories: Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Foreign Office Historians, What's the context? series

The Yalta Myth Between 4 and 11 February 1945, while the Second World War still raged both in Europe and in the Far East, the ‘Big Three’—Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill—met at the Black Sea resort of Yalta, supported by large …

Prime Ministers in the First World War

Posted by: Simon Ball, Posted on: 4 August 2014 - Categories: Defence and conflict, First World War, No 10 guest historian series, Prime Ministers and No. 10

The centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War has encouraged a variety of reflections. To previous generations, the role played by their prime ministers would have been amongst the first items worthy of comment. In a …

‘We shall fight on the beaches’: 3 things you never knew about Churchill’s most famous speech

Posted by: Professor Richard Toye, Posted on: 2 December 2013 - Categories: Foreign affairs and diplomacy, No 10 guest historian series, Prime Ministers and No. 10, Second World War

Ask anyone to name Winston Churchill’s best-known speech and nine times out of ten they will answer: We shall fight them on the beaches. It’s not an exact quotation – Churchill did not include the word ‘them’ – but the …