Breaking Away

By this year, the 60th anniversary of the end of World War Two, most of the major documents, public records and private diaries of the principals have been made available for public examination. In The Great Dominion: Winston Churchill in Canada 1900–1954, David Dilks has used that extensive material to publish this account of relations between Great Britain and Canada, focusing particularly on the nine visits that Winston Churchill made to this country between 1900 and 1954.

Dilks has special qualifications to write this work. Either as author or as research advisor, he has participated in the memoirs of leading figures of the mid-20th century, including Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Neville Chamberlain. On British government and politics in the 1940s and ’50s, he brings a special competence.

The later visits, 1941 to 1954, when Churchill was Prime Minister, have been considered in depth by historians. What are less well known are the...