[1] Starkey argues throughout that it was Winston's absorption in the 17th century that helped him to be the first to recognise the menace of a new European hegemony, warning Parliament about the Nazis before Hitler had even come to power.

Religious difference between Catholic France and Protestant Holland and the tensions in England with a catholic King and a Protestant parliament John Churchill chose political principles over personal loyalty and betrayed James and joined William III and Mary II in the Glorious Revolution that set Britain on the course to democracy, and committed her to war with Louis XIV's France.

William of Orange died and Queen Anne came to power and Marlborough previously sidelined, as was Winston Churchill, came to the fore to fight the French and its expansionist ideas culminating in the Battle of Blenheim.

Volume two was published in October 1934 and a copy presented to Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of a coalition government.

The tactics of concentrated German tanks on the same battlefield of Belgium in the second world war had the same effect leading Winston Churchill to abandon France.