Anthony McCarten
Darkest Hour
A stand-alone narrative nonfiction companion to Universal / Focus’ big Thanksgiving Day release of the same name, Darkest Hour is a day-by-day, and often hour-by-hour, look at the period immediately following Churchill’s ascendancy to the Prime Ministership on May 10, 1940.
Winston Churchill wrote three of his most influential speeches during this four week span – Britain was at war and he understood the need to capture and define the public mood. Yet Darkest Hour presents a revisionist look at Churchill at this epochal moment history – that of a man plagued by doubt through those turbulent weeks, who nonetheless emerged from them having made himself into the iconic, lionized figure we remember.
To coincide with the release of the film, Anthony McCarten, who wrote the screenplay, gives us an intimate and compelling portrait of the working methods of a man whose remarkable political skills changed the world.
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Anthony McCarten brings all his cinematographic writing skills to bear on re-telling a much narrated story, but now in a wholly new, vibrant and engaging way that brilliantly brings to life the events of those crucial days in 1940, as well as the multi-faceted charcater of the man who led Britain in its darkest hour. Painstakingly researched, but written in a style fitting to the 21st century, this is a work that stands comfortably along any of the many great studies of Winston Churchill as Britain's flawed, but indomitable saviour.
Phil Reed, Director Emeritus Churchill War Museum
McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable.
Michael F. Bishop, Director of the National Churchill Library and Center and Executive Director of the International Churchill Society