.JOURNAL OFTIIE CHURCHILL CKNTER AND ... - Winston Churchill

graphic style in places, but almosteverything of consequence is mentioned,however briefly. (The Battle ofBritain takes one sentence.) On certaincontentious topics Lord Blake is curiouslyambivalent. The bombing of Germancities "was defended...as a meansof wrecking German war industry...butwas in reality a campaign ofterror...under the ruthless Sir ArthurHarris....However there is a contraryview that it diverted resources frommore important objectives."Warren Kimball's lengthy dissertationon the special relationship betweenChurchill and Roosevelt is compressedinto two sentences: "[Churchill]never admitted recognition of Roosevelt'sdeep hostility to British 'colonialism,'but he must have felt it. Theirrelationship, under a veneer of candidfriendship, was uneasy and their strategicobjects divergent." Elsewhere LordBlake neatly demolishes the oft-repeatedmyth, arising from his speech inZurich in 1946, that he approved of aEuropean Union in its present form.Churchill, Blake writes, advocated "akind of United States of Europe. Theidea of Britain having the sort of relationshipwith a European federal capitalwhich Texas or California has withWashington was never in his mind."The Keeper of the Archives atChurchill College Cambridge, PiersBrendon, once told a Churchillian audiencethat Sir Martin Gilbert had usedonly about ten percent of the materialavailable in his massive Official Biography.Gilbert murmured, "As much asthat?" How has Lord Blake covered theground in fewer than 20,000 words? Hedeserves some kind of award. As it is,history students with an ever-growingcurriculum to assimilate will be gratefulfor the opportunity to read a balancedbiography of Churchill in less than halfa day.Early Titles: Carry Me Back to Old VirginiaG eorge RichardWinston Churchill: TheEra and the Man, byVirginia Cowles, 370pp., illus. London:Hamish Hamilton,New York: Harper andBrothers, 1953; new revisededition, NewYork: Grosset & Dunlap (paperback)1956. Also published in Swedish, Germanand Spanish. Secondhand value$3-15. Frequency: common.The author has in this instance aconsiderable advantage over mostother biographers of Churchill. She notonly had met her subject but was onterms of friendship with him. VirginiaCowles's work is also different frommany other books on Churchill of itsperiod in that the Second World Warreceives comparatively little attention inrelation to the whole. Rather, the aimwas to give a quite detailed history ofMr. Richard is a Finest Hour contributorfrom Tasmania, Australia.Churchill from childhood through tohis second Prime Ministership. This isachieved by relating many facts whichare now well known about Churchill'shistory but which in 1953 were farfrom common knowledge and doing soin a manner which is well balanced andvery readable.The book is full of the instructiveand informative. Examples include thefact that as a young man Winston heardGladstone speak in the House of Commons;that he believed Julius Caesar tobe the greatest man who ever lived becausehe was the most magnanimous ofall the warriors; and that aged fifteen henearly killed himself with a home madebomb. Churchill's military career is wellchronicled, including the rarely mentionedrescue of a Sudanese baby afterthe Battle of Omdurman and its handingback to its own people. This aspectof the life is greatly enhanced by interviewswith surviving contemporarieswho had served with Churchill in Indiaand in the Boer War.His early Parliamentary career iscovered in some detail; his long friendshipwith David Lloyd George is fullydescribed and well-known incidentssuch as Tonypandy and the Siege ofSidney Street figure prominently. Theperiod immediately prior to World WarI and his dealings with Fisher and LloydGeorge, and with the Irish problem,provide the setting for his activities duringthe 1914-18 cataclysm.The interwar years are well depictedand the author brings home tothe reader Churchill's extremely highlevel and range of activity in this period.Among other things, Churchill in thisera served as Chancellor of the Exchequer;was sent to the political wilderness;achieved a prodigious literary outputand fought one of his more notoriouslosing battles when he supportedthe King in the Abdication crisis.Although Cowles is light on theSecond World War, she does give readerssome insights into Churchill theman at that vital time in his life whenshe describes her wartime lunches andmeetings with him and his family,something latterday biographers are obviouslydenied. She also, quite correctly,states the central failure of the war:"when all is said and done, Communismand not Democracy has been thevictor over a large part of the world,"blaming mainly the Americans.The concluding chapters coverChurchill's spell as leader of the Oppositionfrom 1945 to 1951 and his resumptionof the role of Prime Ministerin 1951, a post he held until two yearsafter this book was published. Cowles'sfinal sentence declares, "He will be rememberedas a statesman but he will becherished as a man," something fewwould disagree with.Whilst The Em and the Man isnot at all revisionist, it does not provide"meaningful psychological interpretations"and discloses no scandals or distractionsfrom the main story. It isprobably the better as a result. It providesa very clear picture of Churchillfrom birth up to the stage when possiblyhis great powers were in decline. Itis a good size for a one-volume biographyof such a complex and manyfacetedindividual and can be recommendedfor inclusion in all Churchill libraries.>»FINEST HOUR 103/38