Description: Churchill's BombA hidden history of Britain's first nuclear weapons programme Author(s): Graham Farmelo Format: Paperback Publisher: Faber & Faber, United Kingdom Imprint: Faber & Faber ISBN-13: 9780571249794, 978-0571249794 Synopsis Churchill's Bomb - from the author of the Costa award-winning biography The Strangest Man - reveals a new aspect of Winston Churchill's life, so far completely neglected by historians: his relations with his nuclear scientists, and his management of Britain's policy on atomic weapons. Churchill was the only prominent politician to foresee the nuclear age and he played a leading role in the development of the Bomb during World War II. He became the first British Prime Minister with access to these weapons, and left office following desperate attempts during the Cold War to end the arms race. Graham Farmelo traces the beginnings of Churchill's association with nuclear weapons to his unlikely friendship with H. G. Wells, who coined the term 'atomic bombs'. In the 1930s, when Ernest Rutherford and his brilliant followers, such as Chadwick and Cockcroft, gave Britain the lead in nuclear research, Churchill wrote several widely read newspaper articles on the huge implications of their work. British physicists, in 1940, first showed that the Bomb was a practical possibility. But Churchill, closely advised by his favourite scientist, the controversial Frederick Lindemann, allowed leadership to pass to the US, where the Manhattan Project made the Bomb a terrible reality. British physicists played only a minor role in this vast enterprise, while Churchill ignored warnings from the scientist Niels Bohr that the Anglo-American policy would lead to a post-war arms race. After the war, the Americans reneged on personal agreements between Roosevelt and Churchill to share research. Clement Attlee, in a fateful decision, ordered the building of a British Bomb to maintain the country's place among the great powers. Churchill inherited it and ended his political career obsessed with the threat of thermonuclear war. Churchill's Bomb is an original and controversial book, full of political and scientific personalities and intrigues, which reveals a little-known side of Britain's great war-leader.
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Book Title: Churchill's Bomb
Number of Pages: 592 Pages
Publication Name: Churchill's Bomb: a Hidden History of Britain's First Nuclear Weapons Programme
Language: English
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Item Height: 197 mm
Subject: Government, History
Publication Year: 2014
Type: Textbook
Item Weight: 454 g
Author: Graham Farmelo
Subject Area: Biographies & True Stories
Item Width: 130 mm
Format: Paperback
