Review by Choice Review
Acclaimed author and historian Andrew Roberts has produced a striking cradle-to-grave biography of Churchill. Churchill biography is a crowded field but, drawing on previously untapped sources, Roberts's contribution is well worth the read. Roberts is the first Churchill biographer to examine King George VI's extensive notes from his weekly meetings with Churchill throughout the Second World War. He also had exclusive access to transcripts of War Cabinet meetings, unpublished diaries, letters, and memoirs from Churchill's contemporaries, as well as Chequers visitors' books during Churchill's premierships and his wartime monthly engagement cards. The familiar elements are all here--the dramatic background of great events, the dominating figure of the famous statesman glowering his invincible determination--but we also see his vulnerability as a child, his humor, and his generosity toward political foes. Criticisms and mistakes are also dealt with. No doubt the percentages of this blend will not satisfy everyone, but one must appreciate how enormously difficult it must be to encapsulate in a single volume a life that was by no means uneventful and intersected some of the most momentous events in human history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above; general readers. --Justin D. Lyons, Cedarville University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
in April 1955, on the final weekend before he left office for the last time, Winston Churchill had the vast canvas of Peter Paul Rubens's "The Lion and the Mouse" taken down from the Great Hall at the prime ministerial retreat of Chequers. He had always found the depiction of the mouse too indistinct, so he retrieved his paintbrushes and set about "improving" on the work of Rubens by making the hazy rodent clearer. "If that is not courage," Lord Mountbatten, the First Sea Lord, said later, "I do not know what is." Lack of courage was never Churchill's problem. As a young man he was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery fighting alongside the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier, and subsequently he took part in the last significant cavalry charge in British history at the Battle of Omdurman in central Sudan. In middle age he served in the trenches of World War I, during which time a German high-explosive shell came in through the roof of his dugout and blew his mess orderly's head clean off. Later, as prime minister during World War II, and by now in his mid-60s, he thought nothing of visiting bomb sites during the Blitz or crossing the treacherous waters of the Atlantic to see President Roosevelt despite the very real chance of being torpedoed by German U-boats. Churchill had political courage too, not least as one of the few to oppose the appeasement of Hitler. Many had thought him a warmonger and even a traitor. "I have always felt," said that scion of the Establishment, Lord Ponsonby, at the time of the Munich debate in 1938, "that in a crisis he is one of the first people who ought to be interned." Instead, when the moment of supreme crisis came in 1940, the British people turned to him for leadership. Here was his ultimate projection of courage: that Britain would "never surrender." If courage was not the issue, lack of judgment often was. Famous military disasters attached to his name, including Antwerp in 1914, the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) in 1915 and Narvik in 1940. So too did political controversies, like turning up in person to instruct the police during a violent street battle with anarchists, defying John Maynard Keynes in returning Britain to the gold standard or rashly supporting Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. His views on race and empire were anachronistic even for those times. The carpet bombing of German cities during World War II; the "naughty document" that handed over Romania and Bulgaria to Stalin; comparing the Labour Party to the Gestapo - the list of Churchillian controversies goes on. Each raised questions about his temperament and character. His drinking habits also attracted comment. Such is the challenge facing any biographer of Churchill: how to weigh in the balance a life filled with so much triumph and disaster, adulation and contempt. The historian Andrew Roberts's insight about Churchill's relation to fate in "Churchill: Walking With Destiny" comes directly from the subject himself. "I felt as if I were walking with destiny," Churchill wrote of that moment in May 1940 when he achieved the highest office. But the story Roberts tells is more sophisticated and in the end more satisfying. "For although he was indeed walking with destiny in May 1940, it was a destiny that he had consciously spent a lifetime shaping," Roberts writes, adding that Churchill learned from his mistakes, and "put those lessons to use during civilization's most testing hour." Experience and reflection on painful failures, while less glamorous than a fate written in the stars, turn out to be the key ingredients in Churchill's ultimate success. He did not get off to a particularly happy start. His erratic and narcissistic father, Lord Randolph Churchill, saw the boy as "among the second rate and third rate," predicting that his life would "degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence." His American mother, Jennie, was often not much kinder, sending letters to him at Harrow that must have arrived like a Howler in a Harry Potter novel. Parental judgments became an obvious spur to fame and attention. "Few," Roberts writes, "have set out with more coldblooded deliberation to become first a hero and then a Great Man." After stints in Cuba, India and Sudan, Churchill achieved instant fame during the Boer War after a daring escape from a South African P.O. W camp in 1899. That renown propelled him into Parliament, where he soon added notoriety to his reputation by crossing the floor of the House of Commons, abandoning the Conservative Party for the Liberals. Thereafter, wrote his friend Violet, daughter of the future prime minister H. H. Asquith, he was viewed as "a rat, a turncoat, an arriviste and, worst crime of all, one who had certainly arrived." "We are all worms," Churchill told her. "But I do believe that I am a glowworm." And glow he did, becoming in 1908, at 33, the youngest cabinet member in 40 years and subsequently the youngest home secretary since Peel in 1822. As First Lord of the Admiralty he was credited with making the navy ready for war - his single most important achievement in government before 1940. Even when disaster befell him, Churchill always managed to bounce back. A new prime minister, David Lloyd George, returned him to the wartime cabinet despite the catastrophe of the Dardanelles. When the Liberal Party disintegrated after the rise of Labour, Churchill conveniently "re-ratted" back to the Conservatives, where Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put him unhappily in charge of the nation's finances. By the late 1930s, out of office and despised for his opposition to appeasement, Churchill seemed finished once and for all. But he was ready. "The Dardanelles catastrophe taught him not to overrule the Chiefs of Staff," Roberts writes, "the General Strike and Tonypandy taught him to leave industrial relations during the Second World War to Labour's Ernest Bevin; the Gold Standard disaster taught him to reflate and keep as much liquidity in the financial system as the exigencies of wartime would allow." Less well known is that Churchill also learned from his successes. Cryptographical breakthroughs at the Admiralty during World War I led him to back Alan Ttiring and the Ultra decrypters in the second war; the anti-U-boat campaign of 1917 instructed him about the convoy system; his earlier advocacy of the tank encouraged him to support the development of new weaponry. Research for a life of Marlborough (a book that Leo Strauss called the greatest historical work of the 20th century) taught Churchill the value of international alliances in wartime. If Churchill's entire life was a preparation for 1940, "the man and the moment only just coincided." He was 65 years old when he became prime minister and had only just re-entered front-line politics after a decade out of office. It would be like Tony Blair returning to 10 Downing Street today, ready to put lessons learned during the Iraq war to work. Had Hitler delayed by a few years, Roberts suggests, Churchill would surely have been away from frontrank politics too long to "make himself the one indispensable figure." Experience certainly did not make success inevitable. In France, Marshal Pétain, revered as the "Lion of Verdun" for his glorious career in World War I, made all the wrong decisions as prime minister from June 1940 onward, equating peace with occupation and collaboration. Churchill was the anti-Pétain, but what was it that made him "indispensable"? Hope, certainly, and an ability to communicate resolve with both clarity and force. Recordings of wartime speeches can still provoke goose bumps. In the end, Roberts sums up Churchill's overriding achievement in a single sentence: It was "not that he stopped a German invasion... but that he stopped the British government from making a peace." That turned out to be the whole ballgame. After the Battle of Britain was won and, first, the Russians and, then, the Americans came into the war, Churchill knew that "time and patience will give certain victory." But it also meant a gradual relegation to second if not third place. Britain had entered the war as the most prestigious of the world's great powers. By its conclusion, having lost about a quarter of its national wealth in fighting the war, Britain had become the fraction in the Big Two and a Half, and was effectively bust. Sic transit gloria mundi. Roberts tells this story with great authority and not a little panache. He writes elegantly, with enjoyable flashes of tartness, and is in complete command both of his sources and the vast historiography. For a book of a thousand pages, there are surprisingly no longueurs. Roberts is admiring of Churchill, but not uncritically so. Often he lays out the various debates before the reader so that we can draw different conclusions to his own. Essentially a conservative realist, he sees political and military controversies through the lens of the art of the possible. Only once does he really bristle, when Churchill says of Stalin in 1945, "I like that man." "Where was the Churchill of 1931," he laments, "who had denounced Stalin's 'morning's budget of death warrants'?" Some may find Roberts's emphasis on politics and war old-fashioned, indistinguishable, say, from the approach taken almost half a century ago by Henry Pelling. He is out of step with much of the best British history being written today, where the likes of Dominic Sandbrook, Or Rosenboim and John Bew have successfully blended cultural and intellectual history with the study of high politics. But it would be foolish to say Roberts made the wrong choice. He is Thucydidean in viewing decisions about war and politics, politics and war as the crux of the matter. A life defined by politics here rightly gets a political life. All told, it must surely be the best singlevolume biography of Churchill yet written. Churchill may have walked with destiny, but it was a destiny he had spent a lifetime shaping. Richard aldous, the author of "Reagan and Thatcher" and "Schlesinger," teaches at Bard.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 14, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* For the historian Arthur Bryant, the death of Winston Churchill meant the day of giants is gone forever. But that day dawns again as Roberts retraces the improbable life course that a modern Atlas traverses before fulfilling his boyhood dream of leading Britain through a great national crisis. As Churchill dodges swords and bullets while fighting dervishes in Sudan, Boers in South Africa, and Germans in France, readers see him manifest the physical valor necessary to later lead England through her darkest hour. But Roberts reveals that Churchill's labors as a writer do more than his military adversity to inculcate his unyielding courage. As Churchill pens the histories and biographies that would lead to to a Nobel Prize for literature in 1953, readers see him develop a passionate awareness of history. Roberts identifies one book as a particularly potent influence in priming Churchill for his epoch-making historical role in leading Britain to victory over Hitler: the biography he wrote about his valiant ancestor the first Duke of Marlborough, who, like his descendant, endured political disgrace only to rise again as Britain's wartime hero. Though Roberts frankly acknowledges Churchill's blunders, political and military, this riveting narrative ultimately burnishes the iconic statesman's reputation. A masterful biography, rich in detail and insight.--Bryce Christensen Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Roberts (Napoleon: A Life) serves up an extraordinary biography of Winston Churchill. A resolutely pro-British empire "child of the Victorian era" who was emotionally neglected by his aristocratic father and frivolous American-raised mother, Churchill by his 20s had already reported from, fought in, and sometimes written books about imperial struggles in such places as Cuba, Sudan, India, and South Africa. He leveraged fame due to an escape from Boer captivity to win an election to British parliament in 1900 at age 25. As first lord of the admiralty during WWI, he was scapegoated for the military fiasco of Gallipoli in 1915 and cast into the political wilderness, which strengthened his nonconformist, independent nature, Roberts writes, helping him when he became prime minister in 1940. Roberts captures Churchill's close working relationship with FDR ("the greatest American friend we have ever known"), his distrust of his chiefs of staff, and his excessive faith in Stalin's promises in 1945. He also captures the man, dispelling the myth that Churchill was prone to depression and revealing his deep love for his wife, Clementine; his egotism, his wit, his loyalty to friends, his penchant sometimes for "selfishness, insensitivity, and ruthlessness"; and his "sybaritic" love of good drink and cigars. This biography is exhaustively researched, beautifully written and paced, deeply admiring but not hagiographic, and empathic and balanced in its judgments-a magnificent achievement. Agent: Georgina Capel, Georgina Capel Assoc. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
With his latest work, best-selling author Roberts (Napoleon: A Life) presents a well-researched and exceptionally well-written biography of former British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965). As in the author's equally fine biography of Napoleon, the goal here is neither to glorify nor condemn, but rather to distinguish what led Churchill to greatness. Roberts relays how Churchill believed heritage and character predestined him for his role, and how even Churchill's failures contributed to later successes. Access to previously unavailable archives allows Roberts to paint a detailed portrait of a man he clearly, and deservedly, reveres. The author shows how Churchill found a way to appeal to Englishmen of all classes and mobilize their latent patriotism. This lively story retells the politician's time in captivity during the Second Boer War, an experience that impacted his life and career, especially his later diplomatic relations with Italy and Germany as prime minister. It's easy to agree with Roberts that history would be vastly different if Churchill had not led England during this pivotal time in history. VERDICT This compelling book is likely to become a standard text on Churchill and will be difficult to keep on the shelves.-David Keymer, Cleveland © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Sprawling life of the great British leader, drawing on previously unavailable documents, including notes of wartime counsels kept by King George VI.No stranger to big biographies or larger-than-life subjects, historian and commentator Roberts (Napoleon: A Life, 2014, etc.) faces a special challenge with Winston Churchill (1874-1965), who closely documented himself and still has managed to inspire a roomful of books. Roberts adds materially to the library by consulting troves of documents unknown or not open to other researchers. He also has a sense of both drama and character as well as the context of Churchill's time. As the author writes early on, Churchill "was born into a caste that held immense political and economic power in the largest empire in world history, and that had not yet become plagued by insecurity and self-doubt." Sometimes Churchill's overconfidence led to disaster, as at Gallipoli; other times it helped his nation steel itself for war, as with his "fight them on the beaches" speech at the dawn of World War II. Roberts turns up fascinating fragments, including solid evidence that Churchill was not always the pro-American some biographers have claimed him to be: "You have to try and understand and master America and make her like you," counseled his wife, Clementine. Better still, the narrative underscores Churchill's attention to the smallest details while seeing the big picture of global strategy in matters such as handling an always-fraught alliance with the Soviet Union against Hitler and laying the groundwork for a postwar world with plenty of tensions of its own, including the question of a Jewish state in Palestine. Roberts' portrait comes warts and all, allowing, for instance, that the leader who decried Nazi air attacks on London would order the leveling by bombing of whole German cities. The author delivers a clear, well-limned view of a complex figure who, in no danger of being forgotten, continues to inspire.The most comprehensive single-volume biography of Churchill that we have in print and a boon for any student of the statesman and his times. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
