My Early Life

“There is no better way to encounter Churchill as a statesman and a thinker than to engage the writings of the man himself, and there is no surer guide to those writings than James W. Muller, professor emeritus at the University of Alaska, Anchorage … in Thoughts and Adventures and My Early Life, the character of Churchill himself leaps off the page. The scope of the insight in these two books is truly remarkable.”

— Daniel J. Mahoney, Claremont Review of Books

“Churchill’s best-loved work finds new life in a volume that will delight the casual reader as much as it pleases those who wish to understand Churchill’s work in full.”

— Ted R. Bromund, Finest Hour

“Winston Churchill is never far from the thoughts of those who love liberty, but England has seldom had need of him more than now.”

– Daniel Johnson, The Critic, April 2025

“Because My Early Life was published in 1930, there are many people, places, literary allusions, historical events and even words—nautch-girls, marplots, Uitlanders—that require explanation for today’s reader. Professor James W. Muller of the University of Alaska has produced no fewer than 1,450 editorial notes to the text, which explain everything. It is a feat of erudition and scholarship in which he was helped by the late Paul Courtenay.”

—Andrew Roberts, The Spectator, January 25, 2025

“For the benefit of another young generation in an anxious age, St. Augustine’s Press has just published a new edition…, with an engaging introduction by Churchill scholar James W. Muller and copious editorial notes.”

—Katherine Howell, National Review, March 2025

Sir Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) was one of the most famous political figures of the twentieth century. He was also a well-known historian, biographer, and writer. Among his many books are The World Crisis (six volumes), The Second World War (six volumes), and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (our volumes).

James W. Muller is the editor of this St. Augustine’s edition of My Early Life: A Roving Commission. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Chairman of the Board of Academic Advisers of the International Churchill Society, and a by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He edited the definitive edition of Churchill’s 1899 book The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, published in two volumes by St. Augustine’s Press in 2020, and similar editions of two books of essays Churchill published later in the 1930s, Thoughts and Adventures and Great Contemporaries, published in 2024 by Bloomsbury Books.