The third and final volume of the late William Manchester’s beloved series on Winston Churchill is coming out this autumn, nearly 25 years since the previous book.

In November, Little, Brown and Company will publish The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965.

The new work was started by Manchester and completed by Paul Reid, a former writer for Cox Newspapers.

Manchester, who began the Churchill series in the 1980s, was in poor health during his later years and asked Mr Reid to take over the project.

Little, Brown spokesman Nicole Dewey said that the first two biographies had sold hundreds of thousands of copies and that the publisher still receives frequent inquiries about the third book.

Manchester died in 2004 aged 82.