Keep Buggering On: How Winston Churchill Won the War

In The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, authors William Manchester and Paul Reid explain the resilience of Winston Churchill in the face of setbacks. His unwavering spirit led the U.K. through the war and on to victory. Richard Aldous, writing about the book in The New York Times in 2012 said:

As Volume 3 opens, the situation facing Churchill and Britain could hardly have been more treacherous. “The Führer’s Reich now basked in a splendorous Alpine dawn born of barbarity, deceit and sheer Teutonic will,” Reid notes. “Britain stood alone in twilight, awaiting the seemingly inevitable descent of darkness.” Although British forces repelled a German invasion that summer, the years 1940-42 would see them endure one humiliation after another. Churchill, though “burdened by defeats, his sensitivities scuffed by the increasing backbiting of backbenchers” and public war-weariness, never flinched. Instead he imbued the war effort with his own constant mantra of “K.B.O.” — Keep Buggering On.