Churchill goes to war : Winston's wartime journeys / Brian Lavery.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-386) and index.

1. A Lavish Lunch and a Good Train -- 2. Voyage to Placentia -- 3. Good Voyage, Churchill -- 4. The Dull Pounding of the Great Seas -- 5. A Flying Hotel in the Fog -- 6. The Longest Flight -- 7. Vanderkloot Brings It Off -- 8. To Moscow with an Atlas -- 9. Agreement in Casablanca -- 10. Wild Dreams in Turkey -- 11. The Queen of the Ocean -- 12. Poetry in the North Atlantic -- 13. The Big Three at Tehran -- 14. Convalescing at Marrakech -- 15. 'Just a Little Bit of Wishful Thinking -- 16. Percentages in Moscow -- 17. Christmas in the Skymaster -- 18. The Ways to Yalta -- 19. 'We Could Not Have Found a Worse Place' -- 20. Amid the Ruins.

"More than an account of Churchill's momentous meetings with Roosevelt, Stalin and other leaders at the height of the Second World War, this book illuminates the practicalities and risks of transporting a prime minister through dangerous skies and across hostile oceans during a time of global war. No life was more valuable to the British spirit than his, as he represented his country's will to resist the Nazis. Yet Churchill always craved excitement and danger and his wartime travels became a consuming passion, often to the detriment of his own health. Living in an age of transport revolutions, dictated principally by the rise of the airliner, this book tells the story of how Churchill fully embraced and exploited such developments as a means to secure major British wartime objectives and ultimately define the very notion of modem statesmanship."--BOOK JACKET.