Literary Polymath, Robin Hawdon, Dazzles With Fictional Account Of Remarkable Dinner Between Winston And Neville In Dinner With Churchill

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On The Table Read Magazine, “the best book magazine in the UK“, in Dinner with Churchill, Robin Hawdon shares a fictionalised dinner that took place on 13^th October 1939 between prime minister of the time, Neville Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill.

Dinner With Churchill

Robin Hawdon uses fact to inform intriguing fiction in Dinner with Churchill. Destined to be adored by Churchill enthusiasts, this is a historical drama, a spy story, and a romance all in one novel. The story centres on Churchill’s well-known and resolute message to Chamberlain, that tyrants must be faced with the same ruthlessness that they employ, or they will win. By hanging his story on the very real, and only time that Churchill and Chamberlain met socially (much to the distress of Westminster), Hawdon makes this novel a Churchillian literary gem.

On the evening of October 13th, 1939, six weeks after war had been declared on Hitler’s Germany, fierce and implacable opponents Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain, met together with their two wives, Clementine and Anne, for a private dinner at Admiralty House. This event caused ripples throughout Westminster as, while Chamberlain was still Prime Minister, all his efforts to negotiate peace with Hitler shattered and Churchill had been recalled to the cabinet after ten years ‘in the wilderness’, his dire warnings of the Nazi threat vindicated.

Shy, insecure teenager, Lucy Armitage, is an innocent baker’s daughter from England’s majestic Lake District who seems to be heading for an unremarkable future in an unremarkable family. However the onset of World War II changes everything. A year before the outbreak of hostilities she is persuaded by her ambitious brother, Tom, and his best friend, Henry (with whom she experiences her first innocent sexual awakening) to go to London to attend secretarial college.

Lucy’s initial experience of the vast capital is an education. Then, with training almost completed, and with war on Germany declared, she is by strange chance conscripted in emergency into the secretarial team at the Admiralty. She suddenly finds herself having to take dictation from Winston Churchill himself, who has been brought back into the government as First Lord of the Admiralty after ten years ‘in the wilderness’.

As the war clouds loom and Winston prepares to take over the leadership of the nation, Lucy’s own personal trials become increasingly fused with those of her famous employer, and with the eternal contest between good and evil regimes that still exists today.

With the introduction of Lucy Armitage as secretary to Churchill adding an additional layer to this convivial and but hugely important moment in political history, Robin Hawdon does what he always does – tell a gripping yarn.

Robin Hawdon

Successful actor Robin Hawdon plyed a parallel trade as a playwright, and was scheduled to film test for the part of the real James Bond which was cancelled when Roger Moore accepted the role.

Currently reviving his screen acting career in advanced age (for the parts that Brian Cox has turned down), Robin’s passion for theatre has resulted in his plays being produced in more than forty countries. He also founded the Bath Fringe Festival, and subsequently became Director of the Theatre Royal Bath, one of England’s premier touring theatres.

Robin’s wife of over forty years, Sheila, is a psychotherapist and writer. They have two daughters, both writers, four grandchildren, and homes in Bath, the South of France and Australia.

With five books published, Dinner with Churchill is his latest novel.

Find more from Robin Hawdon now:

Publisher: https://www.cambriabooks.co.uk/product/dinner-with-churchill/

Amazon: https://amzn.to/460lylg

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