A History of the English - Speaking Peoples A History of the English - Speaking Peoples is a four - volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world , written by Winston Churchill , covering the period from Caesar ' s invasions of Britain ( 55 BC ) to the beginning of the First World War ( 1914 ) . It was started in 1937 and finally published 1956 – 58 , delayed several times by war and his work on other texts . The volumes have been abridged into a single - volume , concise edition . Writing and publishing . Churchill , who excelled in history as a child and whose mother was American , had a firm belief in a so - called " special relationship " between the people of Britain with the Commonwealth of Nations united under the Crown ( New Zealand , Canada , Australia , South Africa etc . ) and the people of the United States who had broken with the Crown and gone their own way . His book thus dealt with the resulting two divisions of the " English - speaking peoples " . At the suggestion of publisher Newman Flower , Churchill began the history during the 1930s , during the period that his official biographer Martin Gilbert termed the " wilderness years " when he was not in government . Work was interrupted in 1939 when the Second World War broke out and then when Churchill was appointed Prime Minister . After the war finished in 1945 , Churchill was busy , first writing his history of that conflict and then as Prime Minister again between 1951 and 1955 , and so it was not until the late 1950s , when Churchill was in his early eighties , that he was able to finish the work . The later volumes were completed when Churchill was over eighty . A full one - third of the last volume was devoted to the military minutiae of the American Civil War . Social history , the agricultural revolution , and the industrial revolution hardly get a mention . Political opponent Clement Attlee suggested the work should have been titled " Things in history that interested me . " Despite these criticisms , the books were bestsellers and reviewed favourably on both sides of the Atlantic . In the " Daily Telegraph " , J . H . Plumb wrote : " This history will endure ; not only because Sir Winston has written it , but also because of its own inherent virtues — its narrative power , its fine judgment of war and politics , of soldiers and statesmen , and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey - day of their empire thought and felt about their country ' s past . " The work was one of Churchill ' s writings mentioned in his Nobel Prize in literature citation . The four volumes are : The BBC produced a series of twenty - six fifty - minute plays loosely based around Churchill ' s work and entitled " Churchill ' s People " which were broadcast in 1974 and 1975 . However , the quality of the productions was judged to be poor and the series received low ratings . Also in the early 1970s , the work was published in magazine format in 112 weekly issues with articles by other historians in the United Kingdom , Canada , Australia , New Zealand , and South Africa . A sequel to Churchill ' s work , " A History of the English - Speaking Peoples Since 1900 " , by Andrew Roberts , was published in 2006 .