Historians for All Time: Thucydides, Winston S. Churchill and Their Great Wars

Abstract

Professor Taylor Sanders recommended that I compare Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War with Winston S. Churchill's account of the First World War, The World Crisis. After browsing through these two interesting books, I agreed to analyze Thucydides and Churchill as historians and to determine the influence of the History of the Peloponnesian War on the writing of The World Crisis. . . . I also sought to compare the similarities between the lives of Thucydides and Churchill, especially their family, intellectual and political backgrounds. I could then discuss how these parallels influenced each author's composition of his history. I hoped that such a study would help me determine the worth of these two great historical works. I had hoped to tie the entire paper together with some acknowledgement by Churchill of his indebtedness to the Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian War for the development of his own historiographical style. . . . Although certain scholars, such as William Manchester, compare Churchill the historian with Thucydides, none puts forth any evidence that Churchill himself saw these similarities. Therefore, I was forced to rely entirely on my own inferences concerning the often striking parallels between the History of the Peloponnesian War and The World Crisis. I did, however, find one important link between the ancient Athenian strategos and the Twentieth Century British Prime Minister in the works of Thomas Babbington, Lord Macaulay. Macaulay wrote about the superiority of Thucydides as a historian, and a young Winston Churchill voraciously read and even memorized the Victorian historian's books. Furthermore, an older Churchill would copy Macaulay's style in his own literary endeavors. [From Preface]