Franklin and Winston

Mr. Meacham talked about his book, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, published by Random House. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were the great leaders of World War II who set the stage for the modern world. The book explores the relationship between the two men. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one-a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) in a variety of places, and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. They talked to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children. Mr. Meacham described how their relationships with their parents shaped their interactions. The book utilizes new sources including unpublished letters of President Roosevelt’s secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s joint company to look at the characters of both men. close