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No More Champagne

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents No More Champagne by David Laugh, read by Richard Burnip.

The untold story of Winston Churchill's precarious finances – and the most original and surprising book about Churchill to emerge for many years.

The popular image of Churchill – grandson of a duke, drinking champagne and smoking a cigar – conjures up a man of wealth and substance. The reality is that Britain's most celebrated 20th-century statesman lived for most of his life on a financial cliff-edge. Only fragments of information about his finances, or their impact on his public life, have previously emerged.

With the help of unprecedented access to Churchill's private records, David Lough creates the first fully researched narrative of Churchill's private finances and business affairs. As he reveals the scale of Churchill's financial risk-taking, combined with an ability to talk or write himself out of the tightest of corners, the links between the private man and public figure become clear.

Critics Review

The little known and sometime heroic saga of Churchill's struggle to achieve liquidity... [Lough] is a courteous guide, whose knowledge of the arcane world of investment enables him to explain what went wrong and how the Churchills managed to scrape through... a fascinating read'
The Times
You can learn a lot about someone from the state of their bank balance, as David Lough discovers in this riveting examination of Churchill's finances
Daily Mail
Plenty of eye-opening detail... Churchill buffs and economic historians will find valuable insights in the light Lough sheds upon the man and his times'
Financial Times
This excellent and entertaining work is worth reading
Prospect Magazine
Tells the tale of Churchill the adventurer and gambler elegantly. And for a financial biography, Mr Lough's is a surprising page-turner
Economist
Astonishing revelations... Churchill as financial risk-taker, spend-thrift, debtor, reckless gambler. This book makes you wholly rethink the perceived wisdom about the icon'
William Boyd, The Guardian
The first book that focuses on his (mainly losing) battle against borrowing... the detail is excellent'
The Times (2015 Books of the Year)
Lough has painstakingly trawled the archives... Lough is excellent on Churchill's getting and spending... drawing political inferences from these personal matters'
Literary Review
The eighty pages of reference notes are testimony to David Lough's resourcefulness and persistence in research, exposing the lineaments of this personal story with an ultimately telling impact
TLS
A fascinating and fresh study of the man'
Spear's Magazine
The most original and surprising book about Churchill
The Week
A remarkable story of flamboyant improvidence
Daily Mail
Intriguing... Lough knows where the receipts are buried and reveals them with great relish'
Oxford Times

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