History: The "as seen on BBC" line on its cover gives the reader an immediate clue to the content of this provocative book, which explores the contrasting leadership styles of two iconic figures of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.
While the scholarship of the author is wide-ranging, the book is more a work of synthesis than a thesis based on original research. Professional historians and specialists might have many criticisms on matters of detail and on the broader interpretation of the lives of the two men.
But Andrew Roberts, with his gift for summarising a large body of academic work, has reached many tens of thousands of viewers with his programmes on BBC. This book will bring his ideas to a wide audience.
History - and particularly the lives of great men and women - makes for good television. Despite the obvious drawbacks of using such a medium, the historian reaches a wide audience and that counts for a lot nowadays.
Roberts holds strong views. He trails his coat irritatingly and unnecessarily throughout the text. But he presents the subjects of this book, Churchill and Hitler, in a lively, interesting and provocative way. Although contrasting the two leaders made good television viewing, I feel that the format is far less successful as a book. A more detailed exploration of the leadership style of Winston Churchill might have had a more rewarding outcome.
The decline in historical consciousness - not so much in evidence in this country to date - weakens the public capacity to debate national and international issues in an informed manner. If world leaders lose a critical historical sense, there is a distinct danger that they can be easily manipulated by opportunistic interpretations of the past. Compare and contrast Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Both Churchill and de Gaulle were immersed in history and in the history of their respective nations. This is reflected in their memoirs and published works. Did that love of history alone turn them into great leaders? It certainly did not. But it was not an impediment.
Both de Gaulle and Churchill would fit into the author's category of inspirational leaders. (They would have made a better comparative study.) Hitler, he argues, was merely charismatic.
"Natural sceptics will follow an inspirational leader, but be rightly suspicious of a charismatic one," Roberts writes. "In politics, therefore, scepticism is a healthy reaction that should be nurtured and encouraged."
Yet Roberts writes with undisguised admiration for Churchill as imperialist, as anti-nationalist, and as an isolated figure in parliament in the 1930s, holding to a consistent line in his opposition to Hitler. He describes how Churchill had been written off even by his friends in the early 1930s. Beaverbrook called him a "busted flush" and another friend saw him as "a disastrous relic of the past".
Within 10 years, in May 1940, the "busted flush" was prime minister of Great Britain. In her hour of greatest need, his power of oratory in time of war was one of his greatest assets. In fact, he suffered from a slight stammer and a lisp, and although he managed to overcome the latter, he never eliminated the former.
What brought Churchill to the fore? At times of unprecedented national crisis, political rivalry and partisanship have a marginal role to play in the selection of a leader. Churchill was perceived to have had those qualities necessary to combat defeatism. Among his other assets as a leader was his capacity to wage a successful campaign to defeat defeatism and to personify an unshakable belief in the inevitability of victory.
Roberts traces Churchill's perception of himself as a man of destiny to his youth. He wrote to his mother from India in 1897: "I am conceited, I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending as death in a skirmish on the North-West Frontier."
His reaction was somewhat similar in 1931 when he was knocked down by a taxi crossing Fifth Avenue in New York: "There was a moment . . . of a world aglare, of a man aghast . . . I do not understand why I was not broken like an eggshell or squashed like a gooseberry."
Fate held out something greater for him to achieve. The author argues that Churchill had lost his Anglican faith in his early 20s. In his own words, he was "lacking in the religious sense". Therefore, Roberts argues, he developed an elemental, almost pagan belief in fate and destiny rather reminiscent of Napoleon's.
But not of Hitler's. Hitler increasingly saw himself as the supreme being who could control providence, something that was quite alien to Churchill's (admittedly also highly egotistical) belief system.
A belief in destiny was insufficient by itself. Churchill had to provide credible leadership. During the fall of France in June 1940, he broadcast to the people: "We are sure that in the end all will come right." That was not merely an aspiration. It was for him a viable military objective only achievable with the support of the US and help from any other quarter, including Stalin. Churchill helped to bring that alliance into being and sustained it throughout the war years.
Churchill, as Roberts shows, was not merely a public persona. He was not solely a fine parliamentarian. He was an effective national leader capable of taking harsh decisions. He cut the war cabinet in half and radically reduced the number of cabinet committees. He was ruthless when the necessity arose. Friendship was no guarantee that anyone would hold on to their job. He fired those who were not up to it. The best people possible were needed in positions of responsibility. Churchill did not surround himself with yes-men and yes-women. He turned diversity of opinion into a mechanism for reaching the best decisions. One of his graver flaws was his tendency to attempt to micro-manage. But he was made aware of his own weakness in that regard.
When Churchill took over the cabinet in May 1940, at the age of 66, one senior figure said: "The days of mere co-ordination were out for good. We are now going to get direction, leadership, action - with a snap in it."
In this single volume, Andrews successfully writes history "with a snap in it" for a wide audience, and it will encourage readers to go deeper into the biographies of the two men who, in their own respective ways, changed the world.
Fortunately for humanity, Churchill helped defeat defeatism and Hitler, thus marking him out as one of the great leaders of the 20th century.
Dr Dermot Keogh is head of the History Department at University College Cork