During the war, Churchill's daughter, Mary - now Mary Soames, nearly 90 - served as a gunner in the women’s auxiliary.  She helped shoot down the German V-1 rockets then bedeviling London. Styling herself as Private M. Churchill, she led a unique double life. Splitting her time between luncheons at Chequers and the turret of an anti-aircraft battery, she was never far from the action. Hitler even hatched a plan to hire spies to seduce her.

Mary attended the Potsdam Conference and arranged a memorable dinner with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, whom she acidly remembers as “small, dapper, and rather twinkly”. And when British voters turned on Churchill in the 1945 election, it was left to Mary to recount the pain her father could never express. The mutual love and affection between Mary Soames and her parents pours forth from every page of A Daughter's Tale.

For more books on Churchill's family life.
For DVDs on Winston Churchill.