Travels Through Time #8 – Andrew Roberts, 1940
This episode takes us back to the tense and dramatic days of 8-10 May 1940. Chamberlain suffers humiliation in the House of Commons and Churchill becomes prime minister.
In 72 hours in the middle of May 1940, Britain’s political leadership was transformed. Out went the undistinguished, dithering government led by Neville Chamberlain, known for its failed policy of appeasement. It was replaced by a new regime of ‘growling defiance’, headed by the pugnacious and polarising Winston Churchill.
This political change coincided with the Nazi ‘blitzkrieg’ invasion of western Europe. In this latest episode of Travels Through Time, the historian and biographer Andrew Roberts takes us back to the tense and dramatic days of 8-10 May 1940. We watch as Chamberlain suffers the humiliation of the Norway Debate in the House of Commons, clinging to power at 10 Downing Street. Then, on 10 May, Churchill is summoned to meet George VI. It was a moment, Roberts argues, that Churchill had foreseen as his destiny many decades before.
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