| Author | Winston Churchill |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | short biographies |
| Genre | Military history,Biography |
| Publisher | Thornton Butterworth Ltd (1937).Odhams Press Ltd (1947). |
Publication date | 1937 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | hardcover |
| Pages | 307 |
Great Contemporaries is a collection of 25 short biographical essays about famous people, written byWinston Churchill.
The original collection was published in 1937 and included 21 essays mainly written between 1928 and 1931. Four were added to the book in the 1939 edition, aboutLord Fisher,Charles Stewart Parnell,Lord Baden-Powell andFranklin D. Roosevelt. In 1941 the essays onBoris Savinkov andLeon Trotsky were removed from editions published at that time, since they had been opponents ofJoseph Stalin, who as leader of Soviet Union was now officially an ally of Britain against Germany inWorld War II, and the article on Roosevelt was removed in 1942 when America also became officially an ally of Britain with Roosevelt as president. The Odhams edition of 1947 reinstated the three essays after the war.
Other subjects of the essays wereEarl of Rosebery, KaiserWilhelm II,George Bernard Shaw,Joseph Chamberlain,Sir John French,John Morley,Hindenburg,H. H. Asquith,Lawrence of Arabia, theEarl of Birkenhead, MarshalFoch,Alfonso XIII,Douglas Haig,Arthur James Balfour,Adolf Hitler,George Nathaniel Curzon,Philip Snowden,Georges Clemenceau, andGeorge V.