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A brilliant new life of Britain's greatest modern prime minister
Winston Churchill is an icon of modern history, but even though he was at the forefront of the political scene for almost sixty years, he might be remembered only as a minor player in the drama of British government had it not been for World War II. In this magesterial book, Roy Jenkin's unparalleled command of the political history of Britain and his own high-level experience combine in a narrative account of Churchill's astounding career that is unmatched in its shrewd insights, its unforgettable anecdotes, the clarity of its overarching themes, and the author's nuanced appreciation of his extraordinary subject.
From a very young age, Churchill believed he was destined to play a great role in the life of his nation, and he determined to prepare himself. Jenkins shows in fascinating detail how Churchill educated himself for greatness, how he worked out his livelihood (writing) as well as his professional life (politics), how he situated himself at every major site or moment in British imperial and governmental life. His parliamentary career was like no other - with its changes of allegiance (from the Conservative to the Liberal and back to the Conservative Party), its troughs and humiliations, its triumphs and peaks - and for decades almost no one besides his wife discerned the greatness to come. Jenkins effortlessly evokes the spirit of Westminster through all these decades, especially the crisis years of the late 1930s and the terrifying 1940s, when at last it was clear how vital Churchill was to the very survival of England. He evaluates Churchill's other accomplishments, his writings, with equal authority.
Exceptional in its breadth of knowledge and distinguished in its stylish wit and penetrating intelligence, this is one of the finest political biographies of our time.
- Sales Rank: #353990 in Books
- Published on: 2001-11-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.72" h x 2.22" w x 6.22" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 1064 pages
Amazon.com Review
Winston Churchill was querulous, childish, self-indulgent, and difficult, writes English historian Roy Jenkins. But he was also brilliant, tenacious, and capable--in short, "the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street." Jenkins's book stands as the best single-volume biography of Churchill in recent years.
Marked by the author's wide experience writing on British leaders such as Balfour and Gladstone and his tenure as a member of Parliament, his book adds much to the vast library of works on Churchill. While acknowledging his subject's prickly nature, Jenkins credits Churchill for, among other things, recognizing far earlier than his peers the dangers of Hitler's regime. He praises Churchill for his leadership during the war years, especially at the outset, when England stood alone and in imminent danger of defeat. He also examines Churchill's struggle to forge political consensus to meet that desperate crisis, and he sheds new light on Churchill's postwar decline. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Gladstone (1997), Jenkins offers a bloated yet idiosyncratic and accessible life of England's greatest modern prime minister. Jenkins's wry wit and judgments of great men, untainted by awe, partly offset the fact that, as he admits, he has few new facts to add to an already exhaustively recorded life. Jenkins has a propensity for unnecessary French and curious adverbs (unfriendlily), adjectives (spistolatory) and nouns (peripherist) and is at his best exploring Churchill's three out-of-office "wilderness" periods and his writing jobs (requiring a staff of loyal, ill-paid researchers and secretaries to take his clangorous dictation), which helped support his expensive lifestyle. ("I lived in fact from mouth to hand," Churchill confessed.) But as the statesman's many decades wind down, the biographer himself seems to tire, resorting to a litany of itineraries. American audiences may be drawn to Jenkins's revisionist views of Churchill's relationships with Roosevelt, with whom he sees "more a partnership of circumstance and convenience than a friendship of individuals," and with Eisenhower, a "political general" who was "always a little cold for Churchill's taste, with the famous smile barely skin-deep." Jenkins is hard on Churchill for being soft on alleged mountebanks like Lord Beaverbrook. He dwells only briefly on Churchill's family affairs, aside from expressing skepticism about his reputedly warm marriage to Clementine; she often advised her husband wisely, but "managed to be absent at nearly all the most important moments of Churchill's life." Jenkins's judgments and the fact that he has boiled this eventful life down to a single volume will attract many readers to this entertaining, though often exasperating study. 32 pages of photos and maps not seen by PW. (Nov.)Forecast: A main selection of both BOMC and the History Book Club, with a respected author, who will tour New York and Washington, D.C., and an iconic subject, the biography is guaranteed media attention and sales.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A British politician and author of over a dozen books, Jenkins (Gladstone) begins with an important question: given the extensive literature on Winston Churchill, is there anything left to add? Although Jenkins admits that he has not discovered any new factual information, this does not disqualify him from supplying useful insights into Churchill's career. As a veteran politician and administrator, Jenkins is well placed to evaluate Churchill's strengths and weaknesses as a cabinet-level official. For example, Jenkins asserts that Churchill's micro-management at the admiralty during the early months of World War I contributed to disaster, while his leadership at the Ministry of Munitions near the end of the war helped maintain a high level of production. Jenkins's coverage of World War II eschews facile generalizations and provides a detailed picture of Churchill's role as wartime leader, in particular his ability to hold things together during the period of 1940-41, when less confident men would have given up. Churchill fans will enjoy reading this book, while academics will likely stick to Norman Rose's Winston Churchill: The Unruly Giant (LJ 6/15/95). Recommended for larger libraries. Fred Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Heroism in Politics
By M. A Newman
Is there any more fascinating figure than Winston Churchill? I have found him interesting since I read a children's book on him back in 1972 and continue to find him interesting to this very day. There are many books to come out on Churchill. The definative work was begun by Randolph Churchill and continued after his death by Martin Gilbert. This runs several volumes and includes lengthy extracts from Churchill's papers. There is also a one volume abrigement which Gilbert has written. Others have taken up the task of writing the life of the most significant British statesman of the 20th century and these are as a whole a mixed bag. However, despite the vast number of books Roy Jenkins book stands apart from many others.
The main reason is that Jenkins is a former British politician. When he writes about Parliament, he does so with authority as he has walked the same halls as Churchill and has held many of the same positions. Although he was Labor and Churchill Conservative/Liberal/Conservative, Jenkins is able to lay aside party rancor and write a kind of "Churchill without tears." Jenkins saw himself as a moderate member of the Labor Party and left it in the early 80s in reaction to the extremely radical views of the Michael Foot era.
The essential truths about Churchill as Jenkins sees them are personality driven. For although Churchill was a great man, many of the elements that served him well during the second World War, his tenacity, eloquence, and belief in his destiny did not always suit all environments. Traits that were useful standing up against Hitler were not as useful in planning the Dardanelles campaign. There is an object lesson here which Jenkins devotes some attention to.
Other than his book on Churchill, Jenkins has also written books on Asquith (PM during part of the First World War) and Gladstone (Prime Minister during Churchill's father's time). It probably is good that he wrote these works first as they prepared him to produce what amounts to a masterpiece of Churchillian scholarship.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
A Great Political Biography
By Michael B. Crutcher
Roy Jenkins, who has combined careers both as a successful author and politician, has written a sweeping, 912 page one volume biography of Sir Winston Churchill, the "Greatest Englishman."
This begs the question, do we really need another Churchill biography? After all, we have the eight volume "official" biography, begun, with two volumes, by his son Randolph, the remaining six written by Martin Gilbert. Gilbert also produced a dutiful one volume summation. We have two volumes out of a projected three by William Manchester, unfortunately not finished because of Manchester's failing health.
But that is just to scratch the surface. There is a perceptive and competent biography by his life-long friend, Violet Bonham Carter, the diaries of his physician, Lord Moran, and the diaries of his long-time private secretary, John Colville. There is even a revisionist biography, by John Charmley. Churchill said that history would treat him kindly, because he intended to write it. This he accomplished in his six volume history of the Second World War and in autobiographical accounts of his early military exploits. After his three (eventually four) volume account of World War One was published, Arthur Balfour said, "Winston has written a great [in size] book about himself and called it 'The World Crisis.'"
Despite this, Jenkins' volume is enormously welcome. His is likely the last biography to be written by someone who knew him, or at least had met him, served with him in Parliment, and as a major political figure himself, though in a later era, understands the political and Parlimentary atmosphere in which Churchill lived. His biography is the best political appreciation of Churchill career that we are likely to get, political in the sense of understanding how Churchill rose and (often) fell in Parlimentary esteem, how Churchill operated in the cabinet and how he connected (or failed to connect) with the British electorate.
Jenkins is also not afraid to summarize the principal points of a period in Churchill's career, rather than wade through a chronological approach to political problems now too distant from us to have much meaning. He also will offer judgments on the success or failure of Churchill's policies, unlike Gilbert, who is non-judgmental in the extreme. He is perhaps too harsh on Churchill over The Dardanelles campaign of World War I, a great failure but at minimum an inventive effort to avoid more pointless casualities on the Western front. He is skillful in weaving in Churchill's various illnesses and physical declines to explain how the aging warrior became less effective in later years.
The book is extremely well written. If Jenkins is a lesser politician than his subject, he is also a better writer, the author of splendid biographies of such figures as Gladstone and Asquith. These literary gifts are matched with an encyclopedic knowledge of modern history, so that he is able to draw illuminating comparisons. Even to himself. Noting that Churchill dined often with Lloyd George when the latter was Prime Minister in the early 1920's, Jenkins notes in a footnote that as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Wilson cabinet, apart from officials banquets he never had a meal with the Prime Minister.
I note quibbles in other reviews of this book that it is "too English," both in content and style. I would defend the author on both scores. Although there is the occasional reference that falls deaf to American ears, this is a serious biography with a significant level of detail. It does help to have read something about the man and the period as background. But to have denuded the book of this information would have made it a much poorer thing. I would also defend Jenkins' style, which is graceful if sometimes convoluted. To the reviewer who only got started on the book, I would say, go back and give it another shot. You will get used to the language and will be better for the experience. All literature should not be reduced to the level of John Grisham or Stephen King.
I think a more telling criticism is that we read the book and are enlighted, charmed, educated, but...do we ever see the "man in full"? We are tantalized with bits of information about his relationship with his wife, Clementine (why is she always vacationing separately?), but without any real explication of their marriage. There are references to his periods of depression, the "black dog," but how serious were they? Jenkins is good on Churchill as a writer, as one would expect from a fellow writer, and best on Churchill as a politician. But as fine as this biography is, I would rate Manchester's effort as getting closer to the man. There is, in Manchester's first volume, about a thirty page description (if memory serves) of "a day in the life" of Churchill, which somehow says more about Churchill the man than all of Jenkins' 912 pages. Still, Jenkins has written an extemely valuable and readable effort, the best one volume biography in my opinion, and the best we are ever likely to see of Churchill in his political role.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Humility Didn't Fit
By Michael A. Maus
Winston Churchill knew he was talented and spent his adult life proving it. This wonderful book tells the story. I would give it five stars if it weren't so long, yet the details are captivating and well worth the effort.
Jenkins, biographer of earlier British PMs (Gladstone and Asquith) and himself a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Member of Parliament for decades, writes with extraordinary skill. He brings Churchill to life and, in this chronological biography, brings the reader close to the person who led Britain through the darkest days of World War II.
For anyone with even a passing interest in the political life of Great Britain during the twentieth century, this is a "must read."
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