Rating: 
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012)
1182 pgs
I may as well begin this review by confessing that I am a major Winston Churchill fan. My children have another name for my condition! This book is the third in a trilogy on Churchill. William Manchester began this series in 1988. I thoroughly enjoyed his first two volumes. I felt they were the best biographies on Churchill that I had read or was aware of. However, health and age caught up with him and it looked like volume three would never go to print. In 2002 Manchester enlisted Paul Reid to take his notes and research and to complete the volume. I, and many others, are glad that he did. While perhaps not gifted with the same eloquence and turns of phrases as Manchester, I am glad volume three was produced so I could complete my set on the life of one of the most notable leaders of the twentieth century.
I won’t attempt to summarize a biography that runs over 1,000 pages. This book actually only covers Churchill’s life from 1940 until his death in 1965. This time period covers his rise as Prime Minister of Great Britain at its darkest hour in World War Two until his resignation as prime minister and his decline in his final years. Certainly what he is best known for is his leadership during World War Two when Britain stood alone against Hitler’s unstoppable military might. Churchill has often been designated the greatest leader of the Twentieth Century, and not without reason.
Rather than summarize over 1000 pages of biography, let me suggest why anyone should devote themselves to reading through roughly 3,000 pages studying the life of someone now dead for over fifty years.
I have studied leadership most of my adult life. I have shelves upon shelves of leadership books in my office. After a while, many of them are repetitive or they fail to offer anything new to the discussion. I discovered that, though I still read such books, I often gleaned more by reading biographies about leaders. In that context, I could see how they handled difficult situations and troublesome people. It was no longer theory but history.
There are some people, such as Churchill who capture people’s imagination. It is not because they were perfect, for most assuredly Churchill was not. What is intriguing is how they overcame their obvious shortcomings and changed their world in the process. The authors state:
“In many ways he was an alarming master. He worked outrageous hours. He was self-centered and could be shockingly inconsiderate. Because of his lisp. And because he growled so often, his speech was often hard to follow” (3).
Several things are evident with Churchill.
For one, he overcame a dysfunctional home. His father Randolph had no time or love for him. Churchill’s parents routinely spent Christmas on exotic vacations while leaving Winston with his nanny. Randolph ignored his son even when he begged for attention. It was Winston’s great ambition to one day serve in the House of Commons with his father, but that never came to pass. It does not take much speculation to consider that much of what drove Churchill was an insatiable desire to prove himself worthy of his father. What is most important is that Churchill overcame his painful past and numerous failures to become one of the greatest leaders in his nation’s illustrious history.
Second, Churchill seized his moment. He was a senior adult before he became prime minister. Yet when he rose to that office it was as if he had been destined for it all of his life. It would seem that God does not raise up leaders merely for their own benefit, but for a specific purpose. Churchill’s clearly was to save his nation from the Nazi war machine that destroyed numerous other countries in their path.
Churchill also grappled with some of the most basic and dramatic of leadership issues. He faced a challenge so difficult, no other leader had been able to successfully address it. He dealt with evil in its basest, most vile form. He dealt with other leaders who often believed they knew better than he did. He dealt with other world leaders who could be extremely difficult to work with and to understand. He also dealt with aging and knowing when to step down and to bless the next generation of leaders. To study the life of Churchill is to study most of the prevalent leadership issues of history as well as our day.
What makes Churchill particularly attractive is that he had so many shortcomings and moments where his humanity was evident. He also had a vast intellect, an impressive command of the English language and a memorable sense of humor. In the following paragraphs, I thought I’d list some of the memorable quotes from this period of Churchill’s life.
“I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived” (5) “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened” (5)
“The Socialist dream is no longer Utopia but Queuetopia” (6)
“Almost all the food faddists I have ever known, nut eaters and the like, have died young after a long period of senile decay” (9)
“I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me” (11)
“This report, by its very length, defends itself against scrutiny” (13)
“It is conceivable that I might well be reborn as a Chinese coolie. In such case I should lodge a protest.” (19)
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” (56)
“You ask what is our aim? I answer in one word: Victory” (57)
“If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us is choking in his own blood upon the ground” (82)
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender” (86)
“People who go to Italy to look at ruins won’t have to go as far as Naples or Pompeii in the future” (91)
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” (147)
“Remember this, never maltreat your enemy by halves” (179)
“When my time is due, it will come” (192)
“A Hun alive is a war in prospect” (200)
“The inherent virtue of Socialism is equal sharing of miseries” (280)
“Why do we regard history as of the past and forget we are making it?” (341)
“Fate holds terrible forfeits for those who gamble on certainty” (403)
“I would rather be right than consistent” (430)
“The almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen” (587)
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, the end of the beginning.” (591)
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy” (592)
“Nothing avails like perfection! . . . May be spelt shorter, ‘paralysis’” (623)
“There is only one thing worse than fighting without allies, and that is fighting without them” (715)
“I have always held . . . that the skin of the bear must not be distributed until the bear has been killed” (731)
“I would rather be taken out in the garden here and now and be shot myself rather than sully my own or my country’s honor by such infamy” (765)
“The truth is so precious that it must always be protected by a bodyguard of lies” (767)
“I believe God is on our side, at least I have done my best to make Him a faithful ally” (783)
“Trying to maintain good relations with a communist is like wooing a crocodile. When it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile, or is preparing to eat you” (813)
“If I were the first day of May I should be ashamed of myself” (824)
“The idea that you can vote yourself into prosperity is one of the most ludicrous that was ever entertained” (871)
“There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess, and there are few mistakes they have ever avoided’ (931)
“When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber” (932)
“Mr. Editor, I leave when the pub closes” (950)
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy” (987)
“I am ready to meet my Maker . . . Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter” (981)
[Speaking of Clement Attlee} “A sheep in sheep’s clothing” (1007)
“I am for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes” (1014)
“I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing” (1032)
“I would never have dared; and if I had dared, I would certainly never have dared to stop” (1044)
“Today is the twenty-fourth of January. It’s the day my father died. It is the day I shall die too” (1052)
I felt that Reid took on an unenviable task to complete what a master storyteller such as Manchester had begun. Comparisons are unavoidable. Overall I would conclude that Reid fell far short of Manchester. He does not have the same charm and delivery of a Churchillian phrase as did Manchester. He also seemed to get bogged down in certain aspects of Churchill’s life that could have been told more succinctly for brevity’s sake. Nevertheless, I far prefer the completed set with Reid’s contribution than an incomplete set, even if the first two volumes are superior.
Nevertheless, I found several phrases by the author that I felt were worthy of Manchester. Perhaps these were Manchester’s phrases, we have no way of knowing. I’ll list a few of them here.
“The furnace of war had smelted out all of the base metals from him” (4)
“It was the curious absence of interest or affection that may have helped make him a great leader” (8)
“Churchill cannot be an alcoholic because no alcoholic could drink that much!” (11)
“He could out argue anyone, even when he was wrong” (14)
“Churchill did not thrust and parry in such duels; he knew only how to thrust” (14)
“He was not a pillar of the church but a buttress. He supported it from the outside.” (19)
“He was an optimist, not a determinist” (20)
“He did not live in the past; the past lived in him” (24)
“Woe unto the typist who had to ask the Great Man to repeat a phrase” (29)
“Now the hour had come for him to mobilize the English language and send it into battle” (114)
“He put his pants on one leg at a time, but his valet held the pants” (276)
“Ambiguity was alien to the man” (313)
“He had a way of seeing gold when others saw dirt” (341)
[F.E. Smith] “Churchill spent his entire life rehearsing his impromptu speeches” (365)
“He had little time for family affairs, and little inclination to find the time” (412)
“Yet any gardener who has ever fled a swarm of wasps knows that size and maneuverability do not always carry the day” (432)
[George Bernard Shaw of the USA and England] “Two countries separated by a common language” (456)
“The tenth army would not so much assume a role as suffer a fate” (589)
“Churchill, always determined, was now confident as well” (671)
“He came, he saw, he consulted” (798)
[Marlborough] “The pursuit of absolute victory without slaughter will, in the long run, result in slaughter without victory” (851)
“In America, consumption was now a way of life; in Britain, consumption was still a disease that took off old people” (974)
This book is probably not for everyone. If you have not read volumes one and two of this series, don’t take on this one. If you are unfamiliar with Churchill, you probably want to begin with a one-volume biography. If you are a slow reader, you may also want to choose a slimmer tome. If you have little knowledge of World War Two, you may find the names and places listed in these pages to be overwhelming.
However, if you are familiar with these issues and you enjoy extensive biographies, then this might be a challenge worthy of your time. I for one feel as if no biography can do a major subject justice in under 1,000 pages. But that’s me. I am becoming an increasingly rare breed! So I share this book with you in this review knowing few will choose to undertake it. If you do, let me know what you thought!
by Richard Blackaby