Churchill - what biography and what book?

I am currently reading The Churchills by Mary S. Lovell and while I enjoy it, actually a lot, I really want to read more. I have looked and there are so many biographies about Winston Churchill, does anybody have a favorite one to read? Also, if I were to start one book by Winston Churchill, which book should I pick? And what do you like about it?
There are so many amazing lives and destinies mentioned, so from the book alone there are at least ten biographies I would like to read - Evelyn Waugh, T.E. Lawrence, many of the Churchill friends and family.. do you have any favorites?
I could write so much more on the topic, but am on the wwII years and have to continue reading - and I am buying his speeches for sure.

I have not read a biography of Churchill (on my to do list), but from what I understand Martin Gilbert is considered quite the expert. He wrote volumes 3-8 of the official biography (Churchill's son wrote the first 2 vols.) He's also written about 20+ books on different aspects of Churchill.

Probably the single volume Churchill: A Life by Gilbert is a good place to start.

You might also want to check out http://www.churchillbooks.com/. It is a bookstore solely dedicated to books about Churchhill. I'm sure they could offer some good recommendations.

My own choice would be Roy Jenkins. And also, if you're interested, check out his biography of Gladstone.

William Manchester is nice, but it's incomplete, with the two volumes only running up to Churchill's entry into the prime ministry.

My own choice for Churchill books would be the four-volume Marlborough: His Life and Times as abridged by Henry Steele Commager.

Quite illuminating and not so voliminous I found Churchill by Sebastian Haffner.

For Evelyn Waugh, I think the excellent biography by Christopher Sykes is still pretty much the standard, although he does seem to be one of those people who becomes less attractive the more you read about him. A little learning and the Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford are both good, entertaining reads.

As a kid I read Quentin James Reynolds landmark bio of Churchill as well as Leonard Wibberly's Life of Winston Churchill both of which were enough to get a decent overview of Churchill's life. Recently I read Warlord which is very specialized, though it does talk peripherally about other aspects of Churchill's life.

I've never made it through any of Churchill's books, though I've still got the WWII series and the History of the English Speaking People on my "hope to get to someday" list.

For T. E. Lawrence, I recommend Hero: the life and legend of Lawrence of Arabia

6>> I've read the first volume of the WWII series, The Gathering Storm, which was reasonably good; but when I moved on to the second volume, it became utterly tedious (and I suspect the subsequent volumes are as well) and I don't intend ever to finish. The problem with the post-TGS volumes is that Churchill had access to so many war- and diplomatic-dispatches that he made these volumes very much a cut-and-paste job from the dispatch boxes, and it tends to read very much in bureaucratese.

There is a slim book called Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill which takes in a lot of Churchill's personal and historical contradictions. I wouldn't recommend it as a full biography but as something to read after you know something about him.
Also, for Waugh I would recommend Fathers and Sons (by his grandson).

OOOH, I was away for a bit, so nice to come back and find all the recommendations! Thank you thank you! I did not know about the website, that seems to be a good place to start..Isn´t one of the great things of reading that the more you read, the more you find that you want to read? Although I guess the negative effect for me is that the more I buy, and soon there will be no more place. Again, thank you all for your great tips, so many more books I simply have to have now:)

I don't see Churchill's autobiography, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, on your list, which is quite interesting.

I know that this is not the place to plug one's own stuff, but my recent book about Winston's aunt, Lily, Duchess of Marlborough, includes some new material about him as a young man and offers altogether different portraits of this woman and her fascinating husband (Randolph's brother) than those proffered by Lovell.