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With more than a thousand biographies of Winston Churchill already in print, the arrival of another thousand-page account of his life might reasonably be met with a raised eyebrow. Andrew Roberts's Churchill: Walking with Destiny answers that scepticism within its opening chapters and never lets up. This is, quite simply, the finest single-volume biography of Churchill yet written - a book that manages to feel both exhaustive and exhilarating across its considerable length.

Roberts structures the narrative in two broad halves - preparation and trial - which gives shape and momentum to a life that sprawled across continents, decades and an almost absurd number of careers. From Churchill's lonely, affection-starved childhood at the fringes of aristocratic privilege, through his youthful military adventures in Cuba, India and South Africa, to his entry into Parliament at twenty-five, Roberts traces the making of a character forged as much by rejection and restlessness as by ambition. The prose is vivid, fast-paced and studded with the kind of anecdotes that make you understand why Churchill remains so endlessly fascinating - his wit, his eccentricity, his sheer physical courage under fire in five separate wars.

What elevates this biography above its predecessors is Roberts's access to previously unavailable source material. The private diaries of King George VI, opened with the late Queen's permission, and the newly released verbatim War Cabinet records offer genuine revelations. These are not cosmetic additions. They allow Roberts to recontextualise some of Churchill's most controversial decisions - Gallipoli, the Bengal famine, the strategic bombing campaign - with a level of documentary evidence that earlier biographers simply did not have. Roberts does not shy away from the litany of errors and misjudgments that punctuated Churchill's career, and the list is formidable: opposition to women's suffrage, the disastrous Norway campaign, his underestimation of the Japanese. He is honest about these failings without being sanctimonious, preferring the role of explicator over apologist.

That said, there is a fair criticism to be made that Roberts's admiration for his subject occasionally tips the scales. His treatment of Churchill's imperial outlook and racial attitudes - while acknowledging them plainly - tends to frame them as typical of his era rather than interrogating them with the sharper lens that contemporary scholarship might demand. Similarly, the supporting cast can feel somewhat flattened by Churchill's gravitational pull. Figures as significant as Roosevelt and Alan Brooke are rendered a little two-dimensionally, their agency diminished in service of the central portrait. The book's emphasis on politics and military strategy is unapologetically traditional, and readers looking for deeper cultural or social history may find it wanting.

These are minor reservations, though, against a work of this scale and quality. Roberts writes with the confidence of a historian who has spent a career in Churchill's world and its environs, and it shows. The book is admiring but not hagiographic, deeply researched but never dull, and - crucially for a volume of this heft - consistently engaging from first page to last. For anyone seeking a single, definitive account of Churchill's extraordinary life, this is the one to read.