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Sir Winston Churchill at the White House in 1954. Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s book is deliberately provocative.Credit:AP

But this brilliant career came to a sudden halt in 1915 when Churchill’s proposal to breach the Dardanelles failed and resulted in 60,000 Allied troops,including 10,000 Australians,dying on the Gallipoli peninsula. Churchill was forced out of the Cabinet,but bounced back in 1917 and spent most of the 1920s in office,including as Chancellor of the Exchequer for the second half of the decade.

Then came the 1930s and a decade out of office until his return with the outbreak of war in September 1939,and finally,as Prime Minister in May 1940. It might be noted that he was the leader of a national government and had been opposed in taking this role by the King – George VI – and a majority of his colleagues in the Conservative Party.

These were the days before anti-corruption commissions and,as the book points out,Churchill had for many years several rich patrons who invested his funds on the stock market on the basis that he collected any winnings but did not incur any losses.

Somewhat surprisingly,the book does not make so much of the enormous amounts that Churchill was paid for his many books and newspaper articles. The payments for some of the articles were so large as to qualify as disguised bribes,although there is no evidence of anything being provided in return.

As for the works of history,they often had a very tenuous association with the facts,and in later years were largely compiled by teams of researchers. And,to top all this off,his country estate was purchased from him by a group of benefactors after the war on the basis that he could remain there for the rest of his life.

But even Geoffrey Wheatcroft has to agree that Western civilisation owes much to Churchill for his rejection of any notion of coming to terms with Germany in May 1940. This was just after the fall of France and some of his colleagues in the Cabinet were anxious to negotiate with Hitler,but Churchill would have none of it.

It is certainly possible to question many of Churchill’s strategic judgments during the course of the war – and the book certainly does so – but his courage when Britain stood alone against a Germany that had occupied the whole of Western Europe can never be challenged. Wheatcroft is particularly critical of the bombing campaign against Germany,arguing that it had little value and was a war crime. This is now a fashionable view,but its results are still a matter of debate and the notion of treating the Germans inhumanely is risible in the light of their own conduct.

After losing the 1946 general election,Churchill returned to office as Prime Minister between 1951 and 1955. This was not his finest hour,given his deteriorating health and the fact that many of his Victorian views had become wildly outdated. Like many political leaders before and after him,he stayed too long.

Like many political leaders before and after him,he stayed too long.

Wheatcroft can hardly be accused of being mealy mouthed. Just a few examples of his invective are descriptions of Joseph Kennedy as “a rich,corrupt,bigoted,anti-Semitic appeaser”;Lord Louis Mountbatten as “a courtier,a charlatan”;Elliott Roosevelt as “the president’s obnoxious blabbermouth son”;and press baron Lord Beaverbook as “truly wicked,a puppet-master and wire-puller,a flatterer,a seducer and a corrupter,a bully,a liar and a crook,a thorough-going scoundrel,whose influence on journalistic and public life was wholly malign”.

Wheatcroft argues that the Churchill legend has been even more potent in the US than in Britain,and he attributes some of the blame for American intervention in Vietnam,Iraq and Afghanistan to a fear of emulating the appeasement of Germany in the 1930s,and in particular at Munich in 1938. This is a provocative book,and deliberately so,but it demonstrates that there is still plenty of room for argument about Churchill’s long and extraordinary career.

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