Darkest Hour by Anthony Mccarten

Darkest Hour by Anthony Mccarten

"McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable."--Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director of the International Churchill Society

From the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter of The Theory of Everything comes a revelatory look at the period immediately following Winston Churchill's ascendancy to Prime Minister

"He was speaking to the nation, the world, and indeed to history...."

May, 1940. Britain is at war. The horrors of blitzkrieg have seen one western European democracy after another fall in rapid succession to Nazi boot and shell. Invasion seems mere hours away.

Just days after becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill must deal with this horror--as well as a skeptical King, a party plotting against him, and an unprepared public. Pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, how could he change the mood and shore up the will of a nervous people?

In this gripping day-by-day, often hour-by-hour account of how an often uncertain Churchill turned Britain around, the celebrated Bafta-winning writer Anthony McCarten exposes sides of the great man never seen before. He reveals how he practiced and re-wrote his key speeches, from 'Blood, toil, tears and sweat' to 'We shall fight on the beaches'; his consideration of a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, and his underappreciated role in the Dunkirk evacuation; and, above all, how 25 days helped make one man an icon.

Using new archive material, McCarten reveals the crucial behind-the-scenes moments that changed the course of history. It's a scarier--and more human--story than has ever been told.

Anthony McCarten is a novelist, dramatist, journalist, television writer, and four-time Academy Award nominee who was born in New Zealand. He is most known for writing and producing biopics such as The Theory of Everything (2014), Darkest Hour (2017), Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), and The Two Popes (2019), as well as producing films that entertain and inspire audiences by examining some of history's most fascinating figures. For The Theory of Everything and The Two Popes, he garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and won two BAFTA awards for the former. Notably, Eddie Redmayne, Gary Oldman, and Rami Malek won successive Oscars for Best Actor in the first three of these films. After Titanic, Bohemian Rhapsody is the second highest-grossing box-office drama of all time.

Darkest Hour, his nonfiction book, was a Sunday Times bestseller. He is based in London.