BESTSELLING author Michael Dobbs, described by critics as "Westminster's baby-faced hit man" and "a man who, in Latin America, would have been shot", will be in York tomorrow to talk about his latest book, Churchill's Hour.

Dobbs' uncanny ability to get under the skin of politics is famous, and he will be using the third volume of his acclaimed series of novels about the great wartime prime minister as the starting point for a talk about political leadership in Britain from Churchill to Tony Blair.

Churchill's Hour is set in 1941. Britain has survived the Battle of Britain, but the prospects still look bleak. The war in the Atlantic and in the deserts of North Africa is going badly, and the Blitz is in full swing.

Churchill knows there is only one way Britain can survive - by bringing America into the war. But the relationship between the two countries is tangled, and for Churchill personally the situation is made more complicated when his daughter-in-law begins an affair with Averell Harriman, the most influential American in Britain. Then the Japanese invade Pearl Harbour and everything changes...

Dobbs will be at the York Union in the Derwent Terrace Room, Derwent College, the University of York, at 8pm tomorrow. All welcome.

Updated: 09:31 Wednesday, November 24, 2004