A fresh perspective on Churchill and wartime life through the eyes of the nurse charged with looking after the Prime Minister. In February 1943, when the course of the Second World War hung in the balance, 68-year-old Prime Minister Winston Churchill was stricken with pneumonia. Doris Miles, from St Mary's Hospital in London, was appointed as his private nurse. During her time with Churchill, she wrote regularly to her husband, a Surgeon-Lieutenant with the Royal Navy, about life at the centre of Britain's war effort, and about Churchill himself. With unrivalled intimacy, her observations show a very human and seldom-seen side of the great man and include many amusing anecdotes. She describes with wry humour their arguments and conversations, and life at Downing Street and Chequers. She writes as well of the everyday events that carried on despite the war; weddings and parties, family and friends, births and deaths, and working life at one of London's busiest hospitals. She describes her feelings, her fears and her hopes for the future. This is a poignant and perceptive collection of previously unpublished letters that shows an ordinary person's perspective of Churchill through a crucial period of the war, as well as how the war affected those at home, unfiltered by the lens of history. It is also a love story, from a newly-wed young woman whose husband went to war. This exclusive wartime source is adroitly woven into the wider context of those turbulent times.

'A daily love letter from a brave young woman to her adored father . . . immensely evocative of wartime Britain, extremely well edited, and occasionally powerfully moving' ANDREW ROBERTS, TLS 'It wasn't easy being a Churchill child - and only Mary managed it with serenity and aplomb, as her diary of wartime ATS service shows' ANNE DE COURCY, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Mary's affectionately intimate and emotionally volatile diaries [...] are an informal record that perfectly complements Churchill's own six authoritative volumes of memoirs of the second world war ... This is a happy book' SPECTATOR 'Gives a new and valuable perspective on Churchill in wartime' THE OLDIE 'A fascinating and intimate insight into the iconic Prime Minister's family life' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'I am not a great or important personage, but this will be the diary of an ordinary person's life in war time. Though I may never live to read it again, perhaps it may not prove altogether uninteresting as a record of my life' In 1939 seventeen-year-old Mary found herself in an extraordinary position at an extraordinary time: it was the outbreak of the Second World War and her father, Winston Churchill, had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty; within months he would be Prime Minister. The young Mary Churchill was uniquely placed to observe this remarkable historical moment, and her diaries -- most of which have never been published -- provide a front-row view of the great events of war, as well as exchanges and intimate moments with her father. But they also capture what it was like to be a young woman during wartime. An impulsive and spirited writer, full of coming-of-age self-consciousness and joie de vivre, Mary's diaries are untrammelled by hindsight or self-censorship or nostalgia. From aid raid sirens at 10 Downing Street to seeing action with the ATS, from cocktail parties with presidents and royals to accompanying her father on key diplomatic trips, Mary's wartime diaries are full of colour, rich in historical insight, and a charming and intimate portrait of life alongside Winston Churchill. Compiled and edited by Mary's daughter, Emma Soames, in collaboration with The Churchill Archives Centre.

'It wasn't easy being a Churchill child - and only Mary managed it with serenity and aplomb, as her diary of wartime ATS service shows' ANNE DE COURCY, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Mary's affectionately intimate and emotionally volatile diaries [...] are an informal record that perfectly complements Churchill's own six authoritative volumes of memoirs of the second world war ... This is a happy book' SPECTATOR 'A fascinating and intimate insight into the iconic Prime Minister's family life' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'I am not a great or important personage, but this will be the diary of an ordinary person's life in war time. Though I may never live to read it again, perhaps it may not prove altogether uninteresting as a record of my life' In 1939 seventeen-year-old Mary found herself in an extraordinary position at an extraordinary time: it was the outbreak of the Second World War and her father, Winston Churchill, had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty; within months he would be Prime Minister. The young Mary Churchill was uniquely placed to observe this remarkable historical moment, and her diaries -- most of which have never been published -- provide a front-row view of the great events of war, as well as exchanges and intimate moments with her father. But they also capture what it was like to be a young woman during wartime. An impulsive and spirited writer, full of coming-of-age self-consciousness and joie de vivre, Mary's diaries are untrammelled by hindsight or self-censorship or nostalgia. From aid raid sirens at 10 Downing Street to seeing action with the ATS, from cocktail parties with presidents and royals to accompanying her father on key diplomatic trips, Mary's wartime diaries are full of colour, rich in historical insight, and a charming and intimate portrait of life alongside Winston Churchill. Compiled and edited by Mary's daughter, Emma Soames, in collaboration with The Churchill Archives Centre.