His American biographer William Manchester wrote: "His masterpiece is The World Crisis, published over a period of several years, 1923 to 1931, a six-volume, 3,261-page account of the Great War, beginning with its origins in 1911 and ending with its repercussions in the 1920s.

[2] The British historian Robert Rhodes James writes: "For all its pitfalls as history, The World Crisis must surely stand as Churchill’s masterpiece.

Rhodes James further comments, "Churchill’s literary work showed a certain decline in the 1930s" and that his Marlborough and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples have more of a rhetorical note than The World Crisis.

The reception was generally good, but an unnamed colleague said, "Winston has written an enormous book about himself, and called it The World Crisis."

[6] Although nominally starting in 1911 when Churchill became head of the Admiralty, the narrative commences in 1870 with the Franco-Prussian War and ends with Turkey and the Balkans.

32–33) Again over Agadir and the French in Morocco in 1911 Germany was "prepared to go to the very edge of the precipice", and was surprised by the British reaction (the Mansion House speech of Lloyd George).

1915 is described as a "year of ill-fortune to the cause of the Allies", starting with the Deadlock in the West, mention of Tanks and Smoke, and ending with the Dardanelles campaign (Gallipoli).

Churchill complains in his preface that "upon me alone among the high authorities concerned (with the Dardanelles) was the penalty inflicted – not of loss of office, for that is a petty thing – but of interruption and deprivation of control while the fate of the enterprise was still in suspense".

Or will there spring from the very fires of conflict that reconciliation of the three giant combatants, which would unite their genius and secure to each in safety and freedom a share in rebuilding the glory of Europe?"

There are chapters on Russia, Poland, Ireland, Greece and Turkey, with an Appendix on the Cairo Conference, Iraq, and "the Pacification of the Middle East".

He denies the claim by Wilson’s assistant Ray Stannard Baker that he was "the most militaristic of British leaders" and "an opponent of the League" (of Nations).

[7] The last volume to be published tells (according to the preface) of the conflict between Russia and the two Teutonic empires and the agonies of Central Europe, arising in Vienna.

An abridged and revised edition with an additional chapter on the Battle of the Marne and an introduction by Churchill dated 1 July 1930 was published in 1931 by Thornton Butterworth.

[8] The Daily Herald distributed a cheap two-volume edition printed by Odhams for 3/9d "a miracle of mass production" (so) "for the first time the working people would hear my side of the (Gallipoli) tale" but it did not sell.

[10] The book introduction said that they "go far to destroy any claims Volume III of The World Crisis may have to historical value" although they "didn’t amount to much" according to Manchester.

He purchased his house "Chartwell" in 1922 from £20,000 of The World Crisis royalties and a small legacy from a cousin Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest.

He had filed memos, documents and letters, and in 1920 had them set in type by Sir Frederick Macmillan, so that they were readily usable and could be pasted onto large sheets of paper with written comments and transition sections added.

[20] However, despite the checking by Admiral Jackson, the evidence indicates that Churchill "initiated the Dardanelles project, and pushed it forward with vigour, overruling or ignoring the doubts and criticisms of his service advisors.

He then resumed his active political career in the House of Commons but was not initially included in Lloyd George's Coalition Government in December 1916.

They were mainly untrained naval recruits, and he was criticised when over 2,500 were interned or became casualties, but they had prolonged the defence of Antwerp for several days, perhaps a week, and they almost certainly enabled Dunkirk and Calais to be secured.

[23] The Dardanelles campaign, which was originally to be a naval assault, and Intervention against the Bolshevist forces in Russia were both supported halfheartedly by Cabinet and the often-absent Prime Minister (Lloyd George in the latter case).