The Churchill Factor

“Churchill matters today because he saved our civilisation. And the important point is that only he could have done it.
He is the resounding human rebuttal to all Marxist historians who think history is the story of vast and impersonal economic forces. The point of the Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference.
Time and again in his seven decades in public life we can see the impact of his personality on the world, and on events—far more of them than are now widely remembered.
He was crucial to the beginning of the welfare state in the early 1900s. He helped give British workers job centres and the tea break and unemployment insurance. He invented the RAF and the tank and he was absolutely critical to the action—and Britain’s eventual victory—in the First World War. He was indispensable to the foundation of Israel (and other countries), not to mention the campaign for a united Europe.
At several moments he was the beaver who dammed the flow of events; and never did he affect the course of history more profoundly than in 1940.”

— Boris Johnson in The Churchill Factor