War at the Top

What was it really like inside Churchill’s War Cabinet during the Second World War?

Originally published in 1953, War at the Top offers a rare insider account from General Sir Leslie Hollis, who spent nine years at the heart of British power, serving in the Office of the War Cabinet and later as Senior Military Assistant Secretary.

Present at meetings in the underground Cabinet War Rooms and at the great Allied conferences of Cairo, Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, Hollis witnessed first hand the personalities, rivalries and tensions that shaped the course of the war. His account reveals not only the conflicts between the Allies, but also the fierce disagreements within the British leadership itself.

Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Eisenhower, Montgomery, Alan Brooke and de Gaulle all appear in these pages, portrayed by a man who worked alongside them at the highest level of wartime decision-making.

Part memoir, part political and military history, War at the Top is a compelling “fly on the wall” portrait of leadership in wartime, far removed from the polished certainty of the official histories.

ISBN: 978-1-917837-88-0 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-908291-35-6 (epub)