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Churchill: Walking with Destiny
A landmark reconsideration of the iconoclastic war leader, based on extensive new material, from private letters to war cabinet meetings, by the bestselling, award-winning author of Napoleon and The Storm of War.
When we seek an example of unalloyed courage, the man who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the visionary leader, immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In The Storm of War, Andrew Roberts gave us a tantalizing glimpse of Churchill the war leader. Now, at last, we have the full and definitive biography, as personally revealing as it is compulsively readable, about one of the great leaders of all time.
Roberts was granted exclusive access to extensive new material: the transcripts of war cabinet meetings - the equivalent of the Nixon and JFK tapes - diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs, and detailed notes taken by the king after their bi-weekly meetings. Having read every one of Churchill's letters, including deeply personal ones that Churchill's son Randolph had previously chosen to withhold, and spoken to more than one hundred people who knew or worked with him, Roberts identifies the hidden forces fueling Churchill's drive. Churchill put his faith in the British Empire and fought as hard to preserve it as he did to defend London. Having started his career in India and South Africa, he understood better than most idealists how hard it can be to pacify reluctant people far from home.
We think of Churchill as a hero of the age of mechanized warfare, but Roberts's masterwork reveals that he has as much to teach us about the challenges we face today and the fundamental values of courage, tenacity, leadership, and moral conviction.
When we seek an example of unalloyed courage, the man who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the visionary leader, immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In The Storm of War, Andrew Roberts gave us a tantalizing glimpse of Churchill the war leader. Now, at last, we have the full and definitive biography, as personally revealing as it is compulsively readable, about one of the great leaders of all time.
Roberts was granted exclusive access to extensive new material: the transcripts of war cabinet meetings - the equivalent of the Nixon and JFK tapes - diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs, and detailed notes taken by the king after their bi-weekly meetings. Having read every one of Churchill's letters, including deeply personal ones that Churchill's son Randolph had previously chosen to withhold, and spoken to more than one hundred people who knew or worked with him, Roberts identifies the hidden forces fueling Churchill's drive. Churchill put his faith in the British Empire and fought as hard to preserve it as he did to defend London. Having started his career in India and South Africa, he understood better than most idealists how hard it can be to pacify reluctant people far from home.
We think of Churchill as a hero of the age of mechanized warfare, but Roberts's masterwork reveals that he has as much to teach us about the challenges we face today and the fundamental values of courage, tenacity, leadership, and moral conviction.
1105 pages, Hardcover
First published October 4, 2018
About the author
Andrew Roberts
191 books1,228 followersDr Andrew Roberts, who was born in 1963, took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). He has written or edited twelve books, and appears regularly on radio and television around the world. Based in New York, he is an accomplished public speaker, and is represented by HarperCollins Speakers’ Bureau (See Speaking Engagements and Speaking Testimonials). He has recently lectured at Yale, Princeton and Stanford Universities and at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
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February 16, 2023
“At last I had the authority to give direction over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial…I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.”
- Winston Churchill, upon becoming Prime Minister in 1940
How do you fit a life as long and full as Winston Churchill’s into a single volume? The answer is that you need a big book, one that is figuratively (and nearly literally) the size of Churchill himself. Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking With Destiny is a big book. I do not mean to dwell on the size of this volume, but it is prodigious. It is 982 pages of text, not including endnotes, index, and bibliography, and it attempts to at least mention every incident of Churchill’s existence, from his birth in 1874, to his death ninety years later.
Churchill’s resume is one of those things that tend to make you feel bad about yourself. He was a soldier, reporter, writer, and politician. He fought dervishes, escaped from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp, and held almost every cabinet position in the British government. He made mistakes that would have destroyed the careers of lesser men, but nevertheless rose to become Hitler’s chief nemesis, enough of a thorn to be name-checked in der Führer’s speeches. He delivered epigrams with the flair of Samuel Johnson, won the Nobel Prize in literature, amassed and squandered great fortunes, and did it all while consuming heroic quantities of alcohol and cigars (though, as Roberts is at pains to point out, on numerous occasions, he seldom got drunk).
On the other hand, I wore sweatpants all day yesterday, and will probably do the same today.
***
The sheer amount of things Churchill did is frankly a bit exhausting, as is this exhaustive book. Things are rolling from the very start with a relentless pace that matches its subject. Fitting Churchill’s whole life between just two covers requires that kind of pacing, and also a bit of cramming. On a single page, for instance, Roberts covers the suicide of Churchill’s brother in law, the death of his American mother, and the sexual assault of his son at school. This is a take-a-breath-and-hold it storytelling style, with little space for reflection. Roberts also makes full use of oft-amusing footnotes to add further trivia to the proceedings.
The structure of Walking With Destiny is purely chronological. Thankfully, each chapter includes the relevant period that is being covered, so all you have to do to stay oriented is look at the top of the page to know exactly where you are on the timeline. This is a little thing, but it's a nice thing, and it's the nice little things that make life better.
***
Unfortunately, in order to get all the facts on page, there is a tradeoff in analytical depth. Churchill made a lot of decisions in his life, some good, some catastrophic, but none of them get the treatment they deserve. Roberts gives Churchill a pass for the Dardanelles operation, for instance, but does so in a rather conclusory manner, cherry-picking quotes and referring vaguely to “modern historians” to support Churchill’s pet operation. But this shotgun approach is never satisfactory (especially since, at other points, Roberts acknowledges Gallipoli as a mistake). With space limitations an obvious factor, hugely momentous choices – such as unleashing the furies of Bomber Command on Dresden – do not even get an airing.
To be sure, Roberts does a fine job as an investigator, utilizing a wide variety of sources, including recently-revealed diary entries from King George VI. However, there is nothing here that radically changes my perception of Churchill. Despite its great length, Walking With Destiny is short on keen insights. Saying that Churchill was haunted by his father and loved the Empire is not a unique observation. Rather, the portrait presented is very much a colonial-era throwback, a familiar Great Man history that is so blushingly positive that it feels exceedingly out of place in a post-colonial world (more on that below).
***
I took a lot of notes during my reading, but in nearly 1,000 pages, I don’t think I highlighted a single line of Roberts’ prose. This surprised me a bit, since this was a pleasurable reading experience (which is important when we're talking about a 982-page infant-sized book). Then it struck me: Roberts makes so much use of Churchill’s own words, that he essentially allows his biographical subject to write his own biography. This is not a literary problem, since Churchill is one of history’s unparalleled narrators. It is, however, a historical problem. Churchill has already done incredible damage to the record by his hugely popular memoirs, which masquerade as objective history. Roberts doesn’t simply allow this trend to continue. He gives it a modern-day boost. It is telling that almost every chapter begins with not one, but two Churchill quotes.
***
Before I continue, I should add that I really enjoyed this for what it is: a deeply-researched and obsessively detailed hagiography. By the end, I felt I knew Churchill personally, intimately, and I missed him when he was gone. It was especially hard to read about Churchill's long demise. As unconquerable as he was, Churchill could not defeat Time, and this made me feel incredibly mortal. Nevertheless, Walking With Destiny did nothing to convince me that Roberts' interpretation of Churchill is accurate. It is so laudatory that I am left to assume that the chapter where Winston created the world while drinking a scotch-and-soda, and then wrote a seven-volume series of books about it on the seventh day, was left on the cutting room floor.
Part of the problem with attempting to do so much in only a single volume is that Roberts is not able to expand his view to include multidimensional portraits of the other people in Churchill’s life. The result is that Churchill sucks all the air out of the room. Colossal, world-historical figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt are reduced to nonentities with no agency of their own, pawns to Churchill’s will.
In the same vein, everyone who criticizes Churchill, such as Alan Brooke and Andrew Cunningham, are libeled as bitter know-nothings, their entire lives apparently motivated by a sincere desire to destroy Churchill’s reputation in their private writings. At one point, Roberts comes off as personally affronted that Field Marshal Brooke thought that Churchill was a terrible strategist. Instead of providing honest critiques (and instead of accepting that it was possible to criticize Churchill in good faith), Roberts too often prefers to quote from such unbiased sources as Churchill’s daughter, who unsurprisingly found her father’s every action “brilliant!” or “superb!”
Don’t get me wrong: Roberts acknowledges the screw ups. But that is all he does. And I mean that quite specifically. When Churchill drops the ball, Roberts will write something to the affect that his actions had been “unfortunate” or that it was not his “finest hour” (yes – he actually uses that very phrase). This gentle scolding is as far as he will go. I find that very difficult to accept, especially since one facet of Churchill’s character was his proud belief in white supremacy, manifested most infamously in his attitude towards giving self-government to India. I am not advocating that Churchill be removed from the curriculum of school children (which Roberts insists is occurring). To the contrary, I fully support huge books on Churchill, and the proposition that he was a major figure in the defeat of Adolf Hitler (which has to be counted among the more important moments in history). But in 1,000 pages, you have to give the bad along with the good, and you have to do it truthfully. Frankly, Churchill had some pretty major blind spots and character flaws, and those should have been accounted for, rather than given the yada-yada treatment as though he didn't floss enough. In other words, it's not enough to just mention the bad, the misguided, and the ugly; you have to reflect on it, too.
***
This is a good book that falls well short of being a classic. I want to repeat that first part: this is a good book. If you wanted to read a book on Churchill, and you asked me if you should read this book on Churchill, I'd say yes. If you don’t know anything about him, you will learn a lot. Even if you know a bunch about him, you will discover new things. Also, if you read this on a plane or a bus or a train, people will be super impressed by the huge book you have. Unless you have a Kindle. If you have a Kindle, people will probably just assume you are reading James Patterson.
***
Yet, Roberts could have done more. This should have been a Lincoln-esque tale of a man who overcame a series of failures to rise, at the precise moment his country – indeed, the free nations of earth – needed him to rise, to ultimately prevail on the world’s stage at a time of inestimable danger, when good and evil grappled on the edge of a knife. Instead, Roberts gives us Sir Winston the Great White Imperialist, who would have won World War I if he hadn’t been surrounded by idiots; who invented the tank and the British Air Force and his own persona; who was the only man in the wide world who saw the danger in Hitler and Stalin before the cataclysm; and who single-handedly guided the Allies to victory in World War II.
This is inaccurate. Worse, it’s not that interesting. I am far more fascinated by complex and flawed heroes, because there is something incredibly noble and powerful about human beings overcoming their contradictions and imperfections to achieve greatness. There is nothing inherently appealing about a perfect knight, for the simple reason that such a figure exists only in myths and fairy tales.
- Winston Churchill, upon becoming Prime Minister in 1940
How do you fit a life as long and full as Winston Churchill’s into a single volume? The answer is that you need a big book, one that is figuratively (and nearly literally) the size of Churchill himself. Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking With Destiny is a big book. I do not mean to dwell on the size of this volume, but it is prodigious. It is 982 pages of text, not including endnotes, index, and bibliography, and it attempts to at least mention every incident of Churchill’s existence, from his birth in 1874, to his death ninety years later.
Churchill’s resume is one of those things that tend to make you feel bad about yourself. He was a soldier, reporter, writer, and politician. He fought dervishes, escaped from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp, and held almost every cabinet position in the British government. He made mistakes that would have destroyed the careers of lesser men, but nevertheless rose to become Hitler’s chief nemesis, enough of a thorn to be name-checked in der Führer’s speeches. He delivered epigrams with the flair of Samuel Johnson, won the Nobel Prize in literature, amassed and squandered great fortunes, and did it all while consuming heroic quantities of alcohol and cigars (though, as Roberts is at pains to point out, on numerous occasions, he seldom got drunk).
On the other hand, I wore sweatpants all day yesterday, and will probably do the same today.
***
The sheer amount of things Churchill did is frankly a bit exhausting, as is this exhaustive book. Things are rolling from the very start with a relentless pace that matches its subject. Fitting Churchill’s whole life between just two covers requires that kind of pacing, and also a bit of cramming. On a single page, for instance, Roberts covers the suicide of Churchill’s brother in law, the death of his American mother, and the sexual assault of his son at school. This is a take-a-breath-and-hold it storytelling style, with little space for reflection. Roberts also makes full use of oft-amusing footnotes to add further trivia to the proceedings.
The structure of Walking With Destiny is purely chronological. Thankfully, each chapter includes the relevant period that is being covered, so all you have to do to stay oriented is look at the top of the page to know exactly where you are on the timeline. This is a little thing, but it's a nice thing, and it's the nice little things that make life better.
***
Unfortunately, in order to get all the facts on page, there is a tradeoff in analytical depth. Churchill made a lot of decisions in his life, some good, some catastrophic, but none of them get the treatment they deserve. Roberts gives Churchill a pass for the Dardanelles operation, for instance, but does so in a rather conclusory manner, cherry-picking quotes and referring vaguely to “modern historians” to support Churchill’s pet operation. But this shotgun approach is never satisfactory (especially since, at other points, Roberts acknowledges Gallipoli as a mistake). With space limitations an obvious factor, hugely momentous choices – such as unleashing the furies of Bomber Command on Dresden – do not even get an airing.
To be sure, Roberts does a fine job as an investigator, utilizing a wide variety of sources, including recently-revealed diary entries from King George VI. However, there is nothing here that radically changes my perception of Churchill. Despite its great length, Walking With Destiny is short on keen insights. Saying that Churchill was haunted by his father and loved the Empire is not a unique observation. Rather, the portrait presented is very much a colonial-era throwback, a familiar Great Man history that is so blushingly positive that it feels exceedingly out of place in a post-colonial world (more on that below).
***
I took a lot of notes during my reading, but in nearly 1,000 pages, I don’t think I highlighted a single line of Roberts’ prose. This surprised me a bit, since this was a pleasurable reading experience (which is important when we're talking about a 982-page infant-sized book). Then it struck me: Roberts makes so much use of Churchill’s own words, that he essentially allows his biographical subject to write his own biography. This is not a literary problem, since Churchill is one of history’s unparalleled narrators. It is, however, a historical problem. Churchill has already done incredible damage to the record by his hugely popular memoirs, which masquerade as objective history. Roberts doesn’t simply allow this trend to continue. He gives it a modern-day boost. It is telling that almost every chapter begins with not one, but two Churchill quotes.
***
Before I continue, I should add that I really enjoyed this for what it is: a deeply-researched and obsessively detailed hagiography. By the end, I felt I knew Churchill personally, intimately, and I missed him when he was gone. It was especially hard to read about Churchill's long demise. As unconquerable as he was, Churchill could not defeat Time, and this made me feel incredibly mortal. Nevertheless, Walking With Destiny did nothing to convince me that Roberts' interpretation of Churchill is accurate. It is so laudatory that I am left to assume that the chapter where Winston created the world while drinking a scotch-and-soda, and then wrote a seven-volume series of books about it on the seventh day, was left on the cutting room floor.
Part of the problem with attempting to do so much in only a single volume is that Roberts is not able to expand his view to include multidimensional portraits of the other people in Churchill’s life. The result is that Churchill sucks all the air out of the room. Colossal, world-historical figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt are reduced to nonentities with no agency of their own, pawns to Churchill’s will.
In the same vein, everyone who criticizes Churchill, such as Alan Brooke and Andrew Cunningham, are libeled as bitter know-nothings, their entire lives apparently motivated by a sincere desire to destroy Churchill’s reputation in their private writings. At one point, Roberts comes off as personally affronted that Field Marshal Brooke thought that Churchill was a terrible strategist. Instead of providing honest critiques (and instead of accepting that it was possible to criticize Churchill in good faith), Roberts too often prefers to quote from such unbiased sources as Churchill’s daughter, who unsurprisingly found her father’s every action “brilliant!” or “superb!”
Don’t get me wrong: Roberts acknowledges the screw ups. But that is all he does. And I mean that quite specifically. When Churchill drops the ball, Roberts will write something to the affect that his actions had been “unfortunate” or that it was not his “finest hour” (yes – he actually uses that very phrase). This gentle scolding is as far as he will go. I find that very difficult to accept, especially since one facet of Churchill’s character was his proud belief in white supremacy, manifested most infamously in his attitude towards giving self-government to India. I am not advocating that Churchill be removed from the curriculum of school children (which Roberts insists is occurring). To the contrary, I fully support huge books on Churchill, and the proposition that he was a major figure in the defeat of Adolf Hitler (which has to be counted among the more important moments in history). But in 1,000 pages, you have to give the bad along with the good, and you have to do it truthfully. Frankly, Churchill had some pretty major blind spots and character flaws, and those should have been accounted for, rather than given the yada-yada treatment as though he didn't floss enough. In other words, it's not enough to just mention the bad, the misguided, and the ugly; you have to reflect on it, too.
***
This is a good book that falls well short of being a classic. I want to repeat that first part: this is a good book. If you wanted to read a book on Churchill, and you asked me if you should read this book on Churchill, I'd say yes. If you don’t know anything about him, you will learn a lot. Even if you know a bunch about him, you will discover new things. Also, if you read this on a plane or a bus or a train, people will be super impressed by the huge book you have. Unless you have a Kindle. If you have a Kindle, people will probably just assume you are reading James Patterson.
***
Yet, Roberts could have done more. This should have been a Lincoln-esque tale of a man who overcame a series of failures to rise, at the precise moment his country – indeed, the free nations of earth – needed him to rise, to ultimately prevail on the world’s stage at a time of inestimable danger, when good and evil grappled on the edge of a knife. Instead, Roberts gives us Sir Winston the Great White Imperialist, who would have won World War I if he hadn’t been surrounded by idiots; who invented the tank and the British Air Force and his own persona; who was the only man in the wide world who saw the danger in Hitler and Stalin before the cataclysm; and who single-handedly guided the Allies to victory in World War II.
This is inaccurate. Worse, it’s not that interesting. I am far more fascinated by complex and flawed heroes, because there is something incredibly noble and powerful about human beings overcoming their contradictions and imperfections to achieve greatness. There is nothing inherently appealing about a perfect knight, for the simple reason that such a figure exists only in myths and fairy tales.
March 3, 2019
I am a big fan of Churchill. I have an extensive library of books by and about Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965). I was going to purchase this book for my library, but I found the typeface so tiny I was unable to read it. I do have reduced vision and primarily use audiobooks so I ended up purchasing this book in audiobook format. Unfortunately, I did not have access to the maps, illustrations and photographs in the printed format. This is the first major biography of Churchill since “Churchill: A Biography” by Roy Jenkins in 2001. My favorite is Winston’s own memoirs, but I do like the multiple volumes by William Manchester. Andrew Roberts is a British historian. A goal of Roberts was to write this in one volume but the tiny print the publisher had to use to achieve the goal makes it unrealistic. The book is 1152 pages.
The book is well written and is divided into two section: his life prior to 1940 and his life after 1940. Roberts has new information from newly released documents and letters including meeting notes from King George VI. It appears that the King and Churchill had a good working relationship. But the majority of information is well known to Churchill fans and scholars. In trying to keep this into one volume, Roberts did not provide extensive analytic depth. I did not find the book to be hagiographic as some reviews have stated; but, it does have a bit of a Churchillian spin to it because he quoted a great deal from Churchill. I liked the last chapter as it provided a summary of the pros and cons about Churchill. Even with the addition of the new information, I did not learn anything new about Churchill, but I always like to read about my hero. If you have not read about Churchill before, this book will provide the latest overview of him.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is fifty hours and twenty-eight minutes. Stephen Thorne does a good job narrating the book. Thorne is a British actor and well-known audiobook narrator. It was great listening to his beautiful voice.
The book is well written and is divided into two section: his life prior to 1940 and his life after 1940. Roberts has new information from newly released documents and letters including meeting notes from King George VI. It appears that the King and Churchill had a good working relationship. But the majority of information is well known to Churchill fans and scholars. In trying to keep this into one volume, Roberts did not provide extensive analytic depth. I did not find the book to be hagiographic as some reviews have stated; but, it does have a bit of a Churchillian spin to it because he quoted a great deal from Churchill. I liked the last chapter as it provided a summary of the pros and cons about Churchill. Even with the addition of the new information, I did not learn anything new about Churchill, but I always like to read about my hero. If you have not read about Churchill before, this book will provide the latest overview of him.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is fifty hours and twenty-eight minutes. Stephen Thorne does a good job narrating the book. Thorne is a British actor and well-known audiobook narrator. It was great listening to his beautiful voice.
September 30, 2018
I thought Martin Gilbert was the last word on Churchill (of course, he prepared the pathway for Roberts I am sure to a degree) but with Andrew Robert’s WALKING WITH DESTINY I gained an insight on Churchill and his world that seems totally fresh and almost brand new to me. I literally laughed and chuckled as I read some of the amusing bon mots of Churchill and curious stories. That is a remarkable achievement.
Churchill said: ‘After seeing many nations, after travelling through Europe, and after having been a prisoner of the Boers, I have come to see that, after all, the chief characteristic of the English-speaking people as compared with other white people is that they wash, and wash at regular periods. England and America are divided by a great ocean of salt water, but united by an eternal bathtub of soap and water.’
Boring and tedious and old hat ANDREW ROBERT'S book is not.
Thrilling and illuminating are the only words for it; the prose is like a torrent of clear fresh water clearing away mysteries and old misconceptions.
We learn much about Churchill’s personal relations and among the most heart-rending are the difficult relations he had with his son, Randolph with whom there was almost a love-hate- relationship. Stories of alleged sexual dalliances outside of marriage by Mrs. Churchill or Churchill himself are not ignored but clearly documented. Some things Roberts leaves up to the reader, wisely.
Roberts has reviewed 41 sets of new papers, the King’s diaries from WWII, Mary Soames’ 1940 diary, the verbatim war cabinet minutes (written in a short hand code that neverhad been deciphered until Roberts got a hold of them). Every quote, every reference is meticulously documented. In addition there are wonderful insights and quotes from the Maisky diaries -Ivan Maisky was the Soviet ambassador to the Court of St James. Maisky’s recently translated diaries featured meetings with Churchill, Anthony Eden and HG Wells. Then there are interesting quotes by Churchill about JFK in the Kay Halle letters at the JFK library. Churchill called JFK “that splendid leader” and asked if there was a photo of himself in the White House.
In Walking with Destiny I learned Churchill’s biography of his father Lord Randolph Churchill ‘was at least partially intended as an explanation of the political somersaults being executed by the author at the time of writing it’. Roberts truthfully tells us… “it is almost worthless as historical biography today, because of the total lack of objectivity and Churchill’s willingness, indeed seeming eagerness, to ignore any evidence that undermined his hagiographical case…..”With this book, which became an overnight bestseller, Churchill dragooning his father into finally doing something useful for him. His casual cruelty as a father was of course not so much as hinted at…” This is a great precis of a book I only knew as a title. Even our Churchill could not overcome his desire to make his father seem greater than he was. Quite human, actually.
In WALKING WITH DESTINY we learn what books Churchill read, what places in America he visited and the people he visited with. Roberts sprinkles his book with references to places associated with Churchill’s WWI service such as Plug Street Experience visitors centre at Rue de Messines 156, Ploegsteert, Comines-Warneton 7782, Belgium. It is indeed eerie to contemplate that Adolf Hitler was stationed only miles from Churchill. Churchill , we learn from personal letters, lamented the loss of his fellow officers and men from his Scottish regiment. They were not numbers to him but men: volunteers from Ayr, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leicester and Oldham including. Private W. Russell who was 19 years old when he was killed on 7th February 1916. Churchill had in 1899 stood for election in the northern industrial mill-town of Oldham - and lost. Places in Britain were not just names to Churchill but homes of the British people he had visited and come to know.
We learn what his favorite movies were and the famous actors and authors he knew personally (Churchill had a crush on Ethel Barrymore a legendary actress and beauty of her time). I had no idea that Churchill spent a delightful and refreshing sojourn at the Casa del Desierto in Barstow, California later was added to the National Register of Historic Places ). Churchill said, “We have stopped for two hours at this oasis. We have left the train for a bath in the hotel” It is not far from Bakersfield and on the road to Phoenix.
Before Pearl Harbor Churchill had visited 24 of the 48 states in addition to the District of Columbia. At one point Churchill was introduced to an audience by Mark Twain. He met Theodore Roosevelt. Churchill visited Civil War battlefields with Eisenhower and the famous historian Douglas Southall Freeman. I had no idea that Churchill had crisscrossed the USA several times and visited almost every site of historical or cultural interest such as the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Carnegie Hall, The Brooklyn Academy of Music and so on. Roberts writes “Churchill understood from an early age that his father, a leading light of the Conservative party in the first half of the 1880s, was a famous national celebrity, and he asked him for autographs to sell to his classmates.” Who knew?
Roberts writes: “Churchill made a far more extraordinary series of predictions on a Sunday evening in July 1891 in a basement room of Dr Welldon’s house after chapel evensong, when he was discussing his plans with his friend Murland (later Sir Murland) Evans, who worked in the War Office during the First World War and was a man of irreproachable and fastidious recollection. ‘I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world;’ Churchill told Evans, ‘great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger – London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London. I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. This country will be subjected somehow, to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster … dreams of the future are blurred but the main objective is clear. I repeat – London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the capital and save the Empire’ This was completely new to me and I have read dozens of books about Churchill.
Before he left for Cuba, in 1895 the director of British Military Intelligence, Colonel Edward Chapman, asked Churchill to discover anything they could on the penetration and striking power of the Spanish army’s new type of bullet. The Spanish had German Mausers and their weapons were superior to that of the American’s in 1898. Roberts writes: “This was Churchill’s inauguration into the world of Secret Intelligence, which was to become hugely important to him later on. Also interesting, this I did not know. I thought he did it on a lark by himself or as a journalist. Over and over again Roberts has new facts, new insights.
Throughout the book there are marvellous quotations from Churchill’s works which unless you have read Churchill’s massive oeuvre in entire, you will find many less known quotations. Churchill wrote ‘Chance, Fortune, Luck, Destiny, Fate, Providence seem to me only different ways of expressing the same thing, to wit, that a man’s own contribution to his life story is dominated by an external superior power.’ Roberts writes of Churchill, {His} capacity for memorizing huge amounts of prose and verse stayed with him for life, and would continue to astonish contemporaries well into his old age. Many were the occasions that he would quote reams of poetry or songs or speeches half a century after having learned them. He was omnivorous in what his mind’s ear chose, which included long Shakespeare soliloquies but also much of the repertoires of music hall performers such as Marie Lloyd, George Robey, ‘Little Tich’, and George Chirgwin (‘the White-Eyed Kaffir’)
We learn from Roberts how Churchill’s life and experience prepared him for leadership in WWII. Roberts writes with great detail: “By the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill had delivered 1,695 speeches and travelled 82,633 miles to give them, an extraordinary display of energy, far more than normal politicians even of the front rank, and an indication of his decades-long drive and energy. By the time he came to deliver his great wartime addresses in the first half of the 1940s, therefore, Churchill was as experienced and assured a public speaker as it was possible for a Briton to be.”
I felt I almost came to know Churchill during while reading WALKING WITH DESTINY. I could almost feel the soul of the great man as I read and pondered this work and chuckled with his witticisms. Roberts certainly did his best to treat this good and noble but imperfect human being with honesty and yet giving credit where it is due.
Churchill was a great statesman but as Roberts point out time and again but also a wise political thinker and a great author –one of the greatest of all time in any language. Churchill is needed today when so many are deceived by the Siren call of the Bold State, Marxist influenced Multiculturalism and Socialism in general. No one in the 20th century compares to Sir Winston Churchill whose greatness is like granite –it endures. And as JFK famously said:
“For no statement or proclamation can enrich his name now--the name Sir Winston Churchill is already legend.”
Robert’s book is very engaging and would make any reader reappraise what he knows and has read.
In short, WALKING WITH DESTINY is the very best education I know to learn about Churchill, his British society, his contemporaries, his family and his world.
EVERY EDUCATED PERSON SHOULD READ and STUDY Churchill: WALKING WITH DESTINY. This is a great read, a must read. WALKING WITH DESTINY is a great book by one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and authors.
Churchill said: ‘After seeing many nations, after travelling through Europe, and after having been a prisoner of the Boers, I have come to see that, after all, the chief characteristic of the English-speaking people as compared with other white people is that they wash, and wash at regular periods. England and America are divided by a great ocean of salt water, but united by an eternal bathtub of soap and water.’
Boring and tedious and old hat ANDREW ROBERT'S book is not.
Thrilling and illuminating are the only words for it; the prose is like a torrent of clear fresh water clearing away mysteries and old misconceptions.
We learn much about Churchill’s personal relations and among the most heart-rending are the difficult relations he had with his son, Randolph with whom there was almost a love-hate- relationship. Stories of alleged sexual dalliances outside of marriage by Mrs. Churchill or Churchill himself are not ignored but clearly documented. Some things Roberts leaves up to the reader, wisely.
Roberts has reviewed 41 sets of new papers, the King’s diaries from WWII, Mary Soames’ 1940 diary, the verbatim war cabinet minutes (written in a short hand code that neverhad been deciphered until Roberts got a hold of them). Every quote, every reference is meticulously documented. In addition there are wonderful insights and quotes from the Maisky diaries -Ivan Maisky was the Soviet ambassador to the Court of St James. Maisky’s recently translated diaries featured meetings with Churchill, Anthony Eden and HG Wells. Then there are interesting quotes by Churchill about JFK in the Kay Halle letters at the JFK library. Churchill called JFK “that splendid leader” and asked if there was a photo of himself in the White House.
In Walking with Destiny I learned Churchill’s biography of his father Lord Randolph Churchill ‘was at least partially intended as an explanation of the political somersaults being executed by the author at the time of writing it’. Roberts truthfully tells us… “it is almost worthless as historical biography today, because of the total lack of objectivity and Churchill’s willingness, indeed seeming eagerness, to ignore any evidence that undermined his hagiographical case…..”With this book, which became an overnight bestseller, Churchill dragooning his father into finally doing something useful for him. His casual cruelty as a father was of course not so much as hinted at…” This is a great precis of a book I only knew as a title. Even our Churchill could not overcome his desire to make his father seem greater than he was. Quite human, actually.
In WALKING WITH DESTINY we learn what books Churchill read, what places in America he visited and the people he visited with. Roberts sprinkles his book with references to places associated with Churchill’s WWI service such as Plug Street Experience visitors centre at Rue de Messines 156, Ploegsteert, Comines-Warneton 7782, Belgium. It is indeed eerie to contemplate that Adolf Hitler was stationed only miles from Churchill. Churchill , we learn from personal letters, lamented the loss of his fellow officers and men from his Scottish regiment. They were not numbers to him but men: volunteers from Ayr, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leicester and Oldham including. Private W. Russell who was 19 years old when he was killed on 7th February 1916. Churchill had in 1899 stood for election in the northern industrial mill-town of Oldham - and lost. Places in Britain were not just names to Churchill but homes of the British people he had visited and come to know.
We learn what his favorite movies were and the famous actors and authors he knew personally (Churchill had a crush on Ethel Barrymore a legendary actress and beauty of her time). I had no idea that Churchill spent a delightful and refreshing sojourn at the Casa del Desierto in Barstow, California later was added to the National Register of Historic Places ). Churchill said, “We have stopped for two hours at this oasis. We have left the train for a bath in the hotel” It is not far from Bakersfield and on the road to Phoenix.
Before Pearl Harbor Churchill had visited 24 of the 48 states in addition to the District of Columbia. At one point Churchill was introduced to an audience by Mark Twain. He met Theodore Roosevelt. Churchill visited Civil War battlefields with Eisenhower and the famous historian Douglas Southall Freeman. I had no idea that Churchill had crisscrossed the USA several times and visited almost every site of historical or cultural interest such as the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Carnegie Hall, The Brooklyn Academy of Music and so on. Roberts writes “Churchill understood from an early age that his father, a leading light of the Conservative party in the first half of the 1880s, was a famous national celebrity, and he asked him for autographs to sell to his classmates.” Who knew?
Roberts writes: “Churchill made a far more extraordinary series of predictions on a Sunday evening in July 1891 in a basement room of Dr Welldon’s house after chapel evensong, when he was discussing his plans with his friend Murland (later Sir Murland) Evans, who worked in the War Office during the First World War and was a man of irreproachable and fastidious recollection. ‘I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world;’ Churchill told Evans, ‘great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger – London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London. I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. This country will be subjected somehow, to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster … dreams of the future are blurred but the main objective is clear. I repeat – London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the capital and save the Empire’ This was completely new to me and I have read dozens of books about Churchill.
Before he left for Cuba, in 1895 the director of British Military Intelligence, Colonel Edward Chapman, asked Churchill to discover anything they could on the penetration and striking power of the Spanish army’s new type of bullet. The Spanish had German Mausers and their weapons were superior to that of the American’s in 1898. Roberts writes: “This was Churchill’s inauguration into the world of Secret Intelligence, which was to become hugely important to him later on. Also interesting, this I did not know. I thought he did it on a lark by himself or as a journalist. Over and over again Roberts has new facts, new insights.
Throughout the book there are marvellous quotations from Churchill’s works which unless you have read Churchill’s massive oeuvre in entire, you will find many less known quotations. Churchill wrote ‘Chance, Fortune, Luck, Destiny, Fate, Providence seem to me only different ways of expressing the same thing, to wit, that a man’s own contribution to his life story is dominated by an external superior power.’ Roberts writes of Churchill, {His} capacity for memorizing huge amounts of prose and verse stayed with him for life, and would continue to astonish contemporaries well into his old age. Many were the occasions that he would quote reams of poetry or songs or speeches half a century after having learned them. He was omnivorous in what his mind’s ear chose, which included long Shakespeare soliloquies but also much of the repertoires of music hall performers such as Marie Lloyd, George Robey, ‘Little Tich’, and George Chirgwin (‘the White-Eyed Kaffir’)
We learn from Roberts how Churchill’s life and experience prepared him for leadership in WWII. Roberts writes with great detail: “By the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill had delivered 1,695 speeches and travelled 82,633 miles to give them, an extraordinary display of energy, far more than normal politicians even of the front rank, and an indication of his decades-long drive and energy. By the time he came to deliver his great wartime addresses in the first half of the 1940s, therefore, Churchill was as experienced and assured a public speaker as it was possible for a Briton to be.”
I felt I almost came to know Churchill during while reading WALKING WITH DESTINY. I could almost feel the soul of the great man as I read and pondered this work and chuckled with his witticisms. Roberts certainly did his best to treat this good and noble but imperfect human being with honesty and yet giving credit where it is due.
Churchill was a great statesman but as Roberts point out time and again but also a wise political thinker and a great author –one of the greatest of all time in any language. Churchill is needed today when so many are deceived by the Siren call of the Bold State, Marxist influenced Multiculturalism and Socialism in general. No one in the 20th century compares to Sir Winston Churchill whose greatness is like granite –it endures. And as JFK famously said:
“For no statement or proclamation can enrich his name now--the name Sir Winston Churchill is already legend.”
Robert’s book is very engaging and would make any reader reappraise what he knows and has read.
In short, WALKING WITH DESTINY is the very best education I know to learn about Churchill, his British society, his contemporaries, his family and his world.
EVERY EDUCATED PERSON SHOULD READ and STUDY Churchill: WALKING WITH DESTINY. This is a great read, a must read. WALKING WITH DESTINY is a great book by one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and authors.
Read
January 31, 20231. (February 13, 2019, Chapters 1-3)
First off, Roberts loves Churchill, no question, but he is not blind to his faults and he's not about to let any reader of his book be blind to them, either, in which pursuit he lets Churchill speak for himself much of the time.
On the issue of women voting, the young Churchill was profoundly chauvinist, arguing that 'only the most undesirable class of women are eager for the right,' and that 'Those women who discharged their duty to the state viz. marrying and giving birth to children, are adequately represented by their husbands...'
Churchill's comments on the Talib (later the Taliban) and Islamic fundamentalism after his service in India are so clearly illustrative of Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." that all Americans can do is read them and weep.
After standing for Parliament once and losing, Churchill wins his second contest. Roberts writes
Before the new MP had even taken his seat, he had fought in four wars, published five books...written 215 newspaper and magazine articles, participated in the greatest cavalry charge in half a century and made a spectacular escape from prison.
2. (February 17, 2019, Chapters 4-8)
Churchill? Was a progressive. He shouldn't have been. He was born in a ducal mansion in the age of Victoria, a child of Empire who was convinced of the rightness and privilege and power of that Empire. He lived a life of privilege, too, even when he couldn't pay for it. But I don't know what other than "progressive" you would call someone who charged into Parliament at the age of 25 and
*worked to lose the House of Lords their right of veto over bills passed by the House of Commons, said House of Lords containing many of his own relatives
*opposed tariffs, writing 'High protective tariffs, although they might increase the profits of capital, are to the poor and the poorest of the poor a cursed engine of robbery and oppression.'
*believed in Free Trade (Part of Churchill's belief in Free Trade was based on the widespread conviction that it promoted world peace.(See the Golden Arches Doctrine.)
*opposed the Aliens Bill in 1904 which was intended to restrict the immigration into Britain of Jews escaping from pogroms in Tsarist Russia.
*introduced labor exchanges, where unemployed workers were put in touch with potential employers.
*won a half-holiday for shop workers
*helped push through an Old Age Pensions Act in 1908, five shillings each (£23 today) for 600,000 old people ('It is not much,' Churchill was to say of the very modest pension provision, 'unless you have not got it.')
*with Lloyd George introduced unemployment insurance
*reduced coal miners' work days to eight hours
*improved mine safety
*increased taxes, even and especially on the wealthy
In 1910 he became Home Secretary, where he reviewed death sentences and commuted half of them, worked for prison reform and got it, sent 300 Metropolitan Police officers, armed only with rolled up raincoats, to disperse a riot in Tonypandy in Wales (every reader of Josephine Tey will thrill to that passage), and still found time to marry Clementine Hozier, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the vote for women. She wrote to The Times in opposition to the anti-suffragist sentiment in the Letters to the Editor.
The question seems no longer to be "Should women have votes?" but "Ought women not to be abolished altogether?"
I'd like to read her biography, too.
In 1911 he became First Lord of the Admiralty and swept down on that unfortunate organization like Hurricane Winston, cleaning house of bad admirals and bad policy in equal measure. He had his eye on Germany, who were building a very large, very modern navy very quickly, and he started England building ships, lots of them. This left him open to charges of warmongering by his enemies, of which he had by then many, and whose opprobriums against him read like an Edwardian Twitter feed. Lloyd George told newspaper proprietor Sir George Riddell, somewhat scornfully, that all Churchill could ever think about was how to sink the German Fleet as soon as war broke out. Uh, yeah, pretty sure that's how you win wars. But at the same time Churchill was building ships he offered Kaiser Wilhelm no less than three opportunities for both nations to together stand down their arms races, and was refused every time. Roberts writes
...if Churchill had died before 1939 he would principally be known as the man who got the Royal Navy ready for the Great War.
Progressive or not, his assumption of white racial and in particular British superiority was unquestionable, at least thus far in his life.
...Churchill's assumption of white racial superiority was palpable throughout his articles and subsequent book, My African Journey....That the local people had their own religions, tribal dress and systems of morality and justice did not seem to occur to him...Churchill felt a genuine and profound sense of paternalist duty towards the natives of the British Empire.
But progressive he undoubtedly also was. No one is ever only one thing, and Churchill contained multitudes.
3. (March 10, 2019, Chapters 9-11)
While Roberts doesn't try to hide Churchill's faults, he does spend what feels sometimes like an inordinate amount of time explaining them away, and never fails to point out the moral of the story afterward. Hence the entire chapter on Gallipoli.
Referring to the expedition as 'a legitimate war gamble' allowed detractors for ever afterwards to allege that [Churchill's] gambler's instinct had led him to gamble away men's lives, and indeed there is no getting away from the terrible losses. The British Empire killed and wounded numbered 114,743, of whom 21,882 died in action and 8,899 in hospital. The French had 17,235 recorded burials.
And then, inevitably, Roberts goes on to say
The Dardanelles debacle taught Churchill a great deal that was to stand him in excellent stead during the Second World War..."I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes,' Churchill wrote to Clementine soon after resigning. He had made colossal mistakes during the Dardanelles debacle, but the lessons he learned from them were of immense value a quarter of a century later.
Churchill was forced from government and then, astonishingly, went to serve under fire on the Western Front in the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards.
One of its officers, Harold Macmillan, later recalled that 'There was great opposition to "the damned politician", but in two days he had won them all over.'
It's easy to see why.
...Churchill found a sentry asleep at his post. 'I frightened him dreadfully but did not charge him with the crime,' he told Clementine. 'He was only a lad...the penalty is death or at least two years.' Instead, he kept watch so that others could sleep...He quickly got his section of the line dry with boarded and drained trenches, and provided his men with thick parapets, good wire and clear fields of fire.
As well as, because Churchill, many other good soldier practices and a few bad ones, like taking part in over 30 officers' patrols in the 300 yards of no man's land, a job well below his pay grade, at times getting close enough to hear the German troops talking. Fun fact: At one point he and Adolf Hitler were ten miles across the front lines from each other. If only.
He was recalled to government as the Minister of Munitions, where he immediately began to remediate the Allies' chronic undersupply of bullets and bombs and gas. By now he had learned to fly, a manifestation of his eternal curiosity into the all! new! and improved! technology rolling over the industrial landscape, all of which he was determined to adapt to Britain's military benefit as quickly as possible. But not quickly enough for the dead.
One in ten British men between the ages of twenty and forty-five had died in the war, some 744,000, as well as 14,600 merchant seamen, and 1,000 civilians. A further 150,000 Britons died of Spanish influenza that winter.
Probably about thirty seconds after the Armistice Churchill set about writing a five-volume history of the Great War.
'No war is so sanguinary as the war of exhaustion,' [Churchill] wrote. 'No plan could be more unpromising than the plan of frontal attack. Yet on these two brutal expedients the military authorities of France and Britain consumed, during three successive years, the flower of their national manhood.'
It also engendered an antipathy for war in that part of Europe still standing that caused the survivors to wilfully ignore the growing threat of fascism and Adolf Hitler in Germany and communism and Stalin in Russia. Churchill almost alone among his contemporaries saw the danger, but it would be years before people stopped shouting "What about the Dardanelles?" at him during public speeches, and his determination to speak truth to power would very nearly end his career.
4. (March 10, Chapters 12-18)
Following the war he prophesied disaster at the harsh provisions levied against Germany in the Versailles Treaty.
He instead urged the humane treatment of Germany, warning of the 'grave consequences for the future' should the Russians and Germans ever come together.
No one was listening. In the meantime, he helped Gertrude Bell and Lawrence of Arabia redraw the Middle East into political entities that would favor British oil contracts, supported the return to the Gold Standard (what he later stigmatized as the greatest blunder of his life), started writing screenplays and made a pretty good living at it, went on another, very lucrative lecture tour of Canada and the US.
'We realize one hundred million pounds sterling a year from our liquor taxes,' Churchill told the Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper, 'which I understand you give to your bootleggers.'
and was actually on Wall Street on Black Monday and lost a ton of money playing the stock market.
He was in and out of government and then in 1931, finally, thoroughly, and completely out (almost) when he would not support Dominion status for India, not thinking those Hindus yet fit for self-governance. ("India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.")
Now he was in what was called the Wilderness, those years when he served as a back bencher. At one point he had only three supporters in Parliament, and then one of them died. During this time he wrote his biography of his ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough.
The one-million-word book, published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938, took him as long to research and write as it took Marlborough to fight the War of Spanish Succession...For Churchill, writing history was a natural adjunct to making it.
Roberts adds
The breadth of Churchill's hinterland -- his many and varied interests beyond politics -- meant that he could regard politics with more detachment than most professional politicians, and thus not make the compromises others did in order to gain, or remain in, office.
Good thing, too, because Churchill in an act of monumental stupidity and self-harm vociferously supported Edward VIII's marriage to Wallis Simpson, which only gave his enemies more ammunition to use against him. At the same time Hitler was busy consolidating power at home in massive rearmament, the Night of the Long Knives, and creating the Luftwaffe in violation of the Versailles Treaty, and eventually abroad on the march into the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Churchill sounded the alarm again and again and was not believed, a modern-day Cassandra. Roberts writes
One of the reasons why Churchill became prime minister in 1940 was that, although few had heeded his speeches, many others remembered that he had made them.
Given the number of times the Western powers could have pushed back on Hitler and that they never chose to do so until it was almost too late, later Churchill would call World War II "the unnecessary war." Europe's determination to remain oblivious to the threat makes for exceedingly frustrating reading today.
And then on August 23, 1939, Hitler made a pact with Russia which handed Russia the Baltic states and half of Poland. This cleared the way for Hitler to invade the other half, while Chamberlain went fishing in Scotland. Parliament was recalled on August 24th, but it took Chamberlain until September 3rd to declare the nation at war, when he offered Churchill "the position of first lord of the Admiralty with a seat in the War Cabinet."
It was about damn time.
5. (April 7, 2019, Chapters 19-31)
And it was nearly too late. For almost two years the news was almost uniformly bad, from Dunkirk to the London Blitz to Tobruk, leavened by very few bright spots like the Battle of Britain, which inspired one of Churchill's most famous speeches ('Never was so much owed by so many to so few').
No fewer than 1,733 Luftwaffe planes were shot down over England between 10 July and 31 October 1940, at the cost of 915 RAF fighters.
Churchill, in discussion with his Home Secretary, says
'It is striking that none of the aristocracy chose the R.A.F. -- they left it to the lower-middle class...The P.M. then waxed eloquent on the disappearance of the aristocracy from the stage and their replacement by these excellent sons of the lower-middle classes*.’
But for the moment, Britain was up against it all alone. That moment lasted until 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia in June and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December. Once an endless supply of American matériel and a seemingly endless supply of Russian soldiers for cannon fodder on the Eastern Front (In the calendar year 1943, when 70,000 Western servicemen, including bomber crews, died fighting Germany, two million Russian soldiers were killed, nearly thirty times the number.) were made available, victory, which Churchill had been claiming unwaveringly all along, was finally assured. It would only take another three and a half years.
The war hadn’t even ended when Churchill’s party was turned out of office in April. Roberts writes
Apart from Churchill himself the Tories had nothing genuinely popular to offer.
Churchill resigned as prime minister on May 23, 1945.
*Those "lower-middle classes" fought and bled and died for the Empire for six years and at that twice in forty years, and they understandably wanted a fairer share of that Empire on the other end.
6. (April 7, Chapters 32-Conclusion)
Churchill was 70 years old by then but he couldn’t bring himself to retire, so he took his place as leader of the opposition. Because Churchill, he wrote the six-volume The Second World War in his spare time. In March 1946 he gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri.
The reaction was immediate and almost unanimously denunciatory…The press, not just on the left, was overwhelmingly negative in both Britain and America, let alone elsewhere…Churchill was generally accused of being a reactionary warmonger who failed to appreciate the Russian sacrifices in the war, and the essentially benevolent nature of ‘Uncle Joe.’
‘Warmonger,’ again. And he was right, again. A prophet has no honor in his own country, even if he did just save it.
As majority governments inevitably do, the opposition eventually overreached itself, and a month away from 77 years of age Churchill became prime minister again in October 1951. He summed up his agenda as ’Houses and meat and not being scuppered’ and finally managed to end rationing in 1954, nine years after the end of the war. In 1952 he saw in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the II.
’I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the anthem, “God Save the Queen!”’
He was more or less forced from office in April 1955, but it was time, and he enjoyed most of the decade that followed, finishing and publishing “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which he had put aside back in 1939 to fight a war, and talking long trips on Aristotle Onassis’ yacht. He died on January 9, 1965. He would have enjoyed his own funeral, featuring nine military bands and a flyby of 16 RAF aircraft, which was watched on television by 350 million people worldwide.
Churchill was the last aristocrat to rule Britain,’ Roberts writes. …he was the first significant political figure to spot the twin totalitarian dangers of Communism and Nazism, and to point out the best ways of dealing with both…. Above all, Churchill was a student of history, in particular of British history, and always used the past to inform the present. And then there were his unparalleled gifts of writing and of speech, without which it could be fairly said that World War II could not have been won.
One could even say Churchill wrote his way to victory.
****
Note: There’s a story in this book about how Clementine had to take occasional vacations from being married to Winston, he being so energetic and challenging and exhausting a companion. He was all those things to this reader on the page, too, and I had to take frequent vacations from him of my own. You have been warned.
First off, Roberts loves Churchill, no question, but he is not blind to his faults and he's not about to let any reader of his book be blind to them, either, in which pursuit he lets Churchill speak for himself much of the time.
On the issue of women voting, the young Churchill was profoundly chauvinist, arguing that 'only the most undesirable class of women are eager for the right,' and that 'Those women who discharged their duty to the state viz. marrying and giving birth to children, are adequately represented by their husbands...'
Churchill's comments on the Talib (later the Taliban) and Islamic fundamentalism after his service in India are so clearly illustrative of Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." that all Americans can do is read them and weep.
After standing for Parliament once and losing, Churchill wins his second contest. Roberts writes
Before the new MP had even taken his seat, he had fought in four wars, published five books...written 215 newspaper and magazine articles, participated in the greatest cavalry charge in half a century and made a spectacular escape from prison.
2. (February 17, 2019, Chapters 4-8)
Churchill? Was a progressive. He shouldn't have been. He was born in a ducal mansion in the age of Victoria, a child of Empire who was convinced of the rightness and privilege and power of that Empire. He lived a life of privilege, too, even when he couldn't pay for it. But I don't know what other than "progressive" you would call someone who charged into Parliament at the age of 25 and
*worked to lose the House of Lords their right of veto over bills passed by the House of Commons, said House of Lords containing many of his own relatives
*opposed tariffs, writing 'High protective tariffs, although they might increase the profits of capital, are to the poor and the poorest of the poor a cursed engine of robbery and oppression.'
*believed in Free Trade (Part of Churchill's belief in Free Trade was based on the widespread conviction that it promoted world peace.(See the Golden Arches Doctrine.)
*opposed the Aliens Bill in 1904 which was intended to restrict the immigration into Britain of Jews escaping from pogroms in Tsarist Russia.
*introduced labor exchanges, where unemployed workers were put in touch with potential employers.
*won a half-holiday for shop workers
*helped push through an Old Age Pensions Act in 1908, five shillings each (£23 today) for 600,000 old people ('It is not much,' Churchill was to say of the very modest pension provision, 'unless you have not got it.')
*with Lloyd George introduced unemployment insurance
*reduced coal miners' work days to eight hours
*improved mine safety
*increased taxes, even and especially on the wealthy
In 1910 he became Home Secretary, where he reviewed death sentences and commuted half of them, worked for prison reform and got it, sent 300 Metropolitan Police officers, armed only with rolled up raincoats, to disperse a riot in Tonypandy in Wales (every reader of Josephine Tey will thrill to that passage), and still found time to marry Clementine Hozier, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the vote for women. She wrote to The Times in opposition to the anti-suffragist sentiment in the Letters to the Editor.
The question seems no longer to be "Should women have votes?" but "Ought women not to be abolished altogether?"
I'd like to read her biography, too.
In 1911 he became First Lord of the Admiralty and swept down on that unfortunate organization like Hurricane Winston, cleaning house of bad admirals and bad policy in equal measure. He had his eye on Germany, who were building a very large, very modern navy very quickly, and he started England building ships, lots of them. This left him open to charges of warmongering by his enemies, of which he had by then many, and whose opprobriums against him read like an Edwardian Twitter feed. Lloyd George told newspaper proprietor Sir George Riddell, somewhat scornfully, that all Churchill could ever think about was how to sink the German Fleet as soon as war broke out. Uh, yeah, pretty sure that's how you win wars. But at the same time Churchill was building ships he offered Kaiser Wilhelm no less than three opportunities for both nations to together stand down their arms races, and was refused every time. Roberts writes
...if Churchill had died before 1939 he would principally be known as the man who got the Royal Navy ready for the Great War.
Progressive or not, his assumption of white racial and in particular British superiority was unquestionable, at least thus far in his life.
...Churchill's assumption of white racial superiority was palpable throughout his articles and subsequent book, My African Journey....That the local people had their own religions, tribal dress and systems of morality and justice did not seem to occur to him...Churchill felt a genuine and profound sense of paternalist duty towards the natives of the British Empire.
But progressive he undoubtedly also was. No one is ever only one thing, and Churchill contained multitudes.
3. (March 10, 2019, Chapters 9-11)
While Roberts doesn't try to hide Churchill's faults, he does spend what feels sometimes like an inordinate amount of time explaining them away, and never fails to point out the moral of the story afterward. Hence the entire chapter on Gallipoli.
Referring to the expedition as 'a legitimate war gamble' allowed detractors for ever afterwards to allege that [Churchill's] gambler's instinct had led him to gamble away men's lives, and indeed there is no getting away from the terrible losses. The British Empire killed and wounded numbered 114,743, of whom 21,882 died in action and 8,899 in hospital. The French had 17,235 recorded burials.
And then, inevitably, Roberts goes on to say
The Dardanelles debacle taught Churchill a great deal that was to stand him in excellent stead during the Second World War..."I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes,' Churchill wrote to Clementine soon after resigning. He had made colossal mistakes during the Dardanelles debacle, but the lessons he learned from them were of immense value a quarter of a century later.
Churchill was forced from government and then, astonishingly, went to serve under fire on the Western Front in the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards.
One of its officers, Harold Macmillan, later recalled that 'There was great opposition to "the damned politician", but in two days he had won them all over.'
It's easy to see why.
...Churchill found a sentry asleep at his post. 'I frightened him dreadfully but did not charge him with the crime,' he told Clementine. 'He was only a lad...the penalty is death or at least two years.' Instead, he kept watch so that others could sleep...He quickly got his section of the line dry with boarded and drained trenches, and provided his men with thick parapets, good wire and clear fields of fire.
As well as, because Churchill, many other good soldier practices and a few bad ones, like taking part in over 30 officers' patrols in the 300 yards of no man's land, a job well below his pay grade, at times getting close enough to hear the German troops talking. Fun fact: At one point he and Adolf Hitler were ten miles across the front lines from each other. If only.
He was recalled to government as the Minister of Munitions, where he immediately began to remediate the Allies' chronic undersupply of bullets and bombs and gas. By now he had learned to fly, a manifestation of his eternal curiosity into the all! new! and improved! technology rolling over the industrial landscape, all of which he was determined to adapt to Britain's military benefit as quickly as possible. But not quickly enough for the dead.
One in ten British men between the ages of twenty and forty-five had died in the war, some 744,000, as well as 14,600 merchant seamen, and 1,000 civilians. A further 150,000 Britons died of Spanish influenza that winter.
Probably about thirty seconds after the Armistice Churchill set about writing a five-volume history of the Great War.
'No war is so sanguinary as the war of exhaustion,' [Churchill] wrote. 'No plan could be more unpromising than the plan of frontal attack. Yet on these two brutal expedients the military authorities of France and Britain consumed, during three successive years, the flower of their national manhood.'
It also engendered an antipathy for war in that part of Europe still standing that caused the survivors to wilfully ignore the growing threat of fascism and Adolf Hitler in Germany and communism and Stalin in Russia. Churchill almost alone among his contemporaries saw the danger, but it would be years before people stopped shouting "What about the Dardanelles?" at him during public speeches, and his determination to speak truth to power would very nearly end his career.
4. (March 10, Chapters 12-18)
Following the war he prophesied disaster at the harsh provisions levied against Germany in the Versailles Treaty.
He instead urged the humane treatment of Germany, warning of the 'grave consequences for the future' should the Russians and Germans ever come together.
No one was listening. In the meantime, he helped Gertrude Bell and Lawrence of Arabia redraw the Middle East into political entities that would favor British oil contracts, supported the return to the Gold Standard (what he later stigmatized as the greatest blunder of his life), started writing screenplays and made a pretty good living at it, went on another, very lucrative lecture tour of Canada and the US.
'We realize one hundred million pounds sterling a year from our liquor taxes,' Churchill told the Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper, 'which I understand you give to your bootleggers.'
and was actually on Wall Street on Black Monday and lost a ton of money playing the stock market.
He was in and out of government and then in 1931, finally, thoroughly, and completely out (almost) when he would not support Dominion status for India, not thinking those Hindus yet fit for self-governance. ("India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.")
Now he was in what was called the Wilderness, those years when he served as a back bencher. At one point he had only three supporters in Parliament, and then one of them died. During this time he wrote his biography of his ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough.
The one-million-word book, published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938, took him as long to research and write as it took Marlborough to fight the War of Spanish Succession...For Churchill, writing history was a natural adjunct to making it.
Roberts adds
The breadth of Churchill's hinterland -- his many and varied interests beyond politics -- meant that he could regard politics with more detachment than most professional politicians, and thus not make the compromises others did in order to gain, or remain in, office.
Good thing, too, because Churchill in an act of monumental stupidity and self-harm vociferously supported Edward VIII's marriage to Wallis Simpson, which only gave his enemies more ammunition to use against him. At the same time Hitler was busy consolidating power at home in massive rearmament, the Night of the Long Knives, and creating the Luftwaffe in violation of the Versailles Treaty, and eventually abroad on the march into the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Churchill sounded the alarm again and again and was not believed, a modern-day Cassandra. Roberts writes
One of the reasons why Churchill became prime minister in 1940 was that, although few had heeded his speeches, many others remembered that he had made them.
Given the number of times the Western powers could have pushed back on Hitler and that they never chose to do so until it was almost too late, later Churchill would call World War II "the unnecessary war." Europe's determination to remain oblivious to the threat makes for exceedingly frustrating reading today.
And then on August 23, 1939, Hitler made a pact with Russia which handed Russia the Baltic states and half of Poland. This cleared the way for Hitler to invade the other half, while Chamberlain went fishing in Scotland. Parliament was recalled on August 24th, but it took Chamberlain until September 3rd to declare the nation at war, when he offered Churchill "the position of first lord of the Admiralty with a seat in the War Cabinet."
It was about damn time.
5. (April 7, 2019, Chapters 19-31)
And it was nearly too late. For almost two years the news was almost uniformly bad, from Dunkirk to the London Blitz to Tobruk, leavened by very few bright spots like the Battle of Britain, which inspired one of Churchill's most famous speeches ('Never was so much owed by so many to so few').
No fewer than 1,733 Luftwaffe planes were shot down over England between 10 July and 31 October 1940, at the cost of 915 RAF fighters.
Churchill, in discussion with his Home Secretary, says
'It is striking that none of the aristocracy chose the R.A.F. -- they left it to the lower-middle class...The P.M. then waxed eloquent on the disappearance of the aristocracy from the stage and their replacement by these excellent sons of the lower-middle classes*.’
But for the moment, Britain was up against it all alone. That moment lasted until 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia in June and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December. Once an endless supply of American matériel and a seemingly endless supply of Russian soldiers for cannon fodder on the Eastern Front (In the calendar year 1943, when 70,000 Western servicemen, including bomber crews, died fighting Germany, two million Russian soldiers were killed, nearly thirty times the number.) were made available, victory, which Churchill had been claiming unwaveringly all along, was finally assured. It would only take another three and a half years.
The war hadn’t even ended when Churchill’s party was turned out of office in April. Roberts writes
Apart from Churchill himself the Tories had nothing genuinely popular to offer.
Churchill resigned as prime minister on May 23, 1945.
*Those "lower-middle classes" fought and bled and died for the Empire for six years and at that twice in forty years, and they understandably wanted a fairer share of that Empire on the other end.
6. (April 7, Chapters 32-Conclusion)
Churchill was 70 years old by then but he couldn’t bring himself to retire, so he took his place as leader of the opposition. Because Churchill, he wrote the six-volume The Second World War in his spare time. In March 1946 he gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri.
The reaction was immediate and almost unanimously denunciatory…The press, not just on the left, was overwhelmingly negative in both Britain and America, let alone elsewhere…Churchill was generally accused of being a reactionary warmonger who failed to appreciate the Russian sacrifices in the war, and the essentially benevolent nature of ‘Uncle Joe.’
‘Warmonger,’ again. And he was right, again. A prophet has no honor in his own country, even if he did just save it.
As majority governments inevitably do, the opposition eventually overreached itself, and a month away from 77 years of age Churchill became prime minister again in October 1951. He summed up his agenda as ’Houses and meat and not being scuppered’ and finally managed to end rationing in 1954, nine years after the end of the war. In 1952 he saw in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the II.
’I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the anthem, “God Save the Queen!”’
He was more or less forced from office in April 1955, but it was time, and he enjoyed most of the decade that followed, finishing and publishing “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which he had put aside back in 1939 to fight a war, and talking long trips on Aristotle Onassis’ yacht. He died on January 9, 1965. He would have enjoyed his own funeral, featuring nine military bands and a flyby of 16 RAF aircraft, which was watched on television by 350 million people worldwide.
Churchill was the last aristocrat to rule Britain,’ Roberts writes. …he was the first significant political figure to spot the twin totalitarian dangers of Communism and Nazism, and to point out the best ways of dealing with both…. Above all, Churchill was a student of history, in particular of British history, and always used the past to inform the present. And then there were his unparalleled gifts of writing and of speech, without which it could be fairly said that World War II could not have been won.
One could even say Churchill wrote his way to victory.
****
Note: There’s a story in this book about how Clementine had to take occasional vacations from being married to Winston, he being so energetic and challenging and exhausting a companion. He was all those things to this reader on the page, too, and I had to take frequent vacations from him of my own. You have been warned.
June 6, 2023
One of the great lives of the 20th Century
I was given this doorstopper of a book by my history-loving son Benjamin Crumm, who also is active on Goodreads, and over the months we have been reading this highly detailed biography of Winston Churchill together. Occasionally, over the phone, we get to discuss our reactions to various sections. So, thanks to Andrew Roberts, this has been a fun family activity.
This thick volume was intended by Roberts to be as much of a “definitive” biography of Churchill as is ever possible in the field of history. At the end of the book, Roberts lays out that quite persuasively. It was only over the last decade, since about 2010 or so, that many archives finally opened to researchers, including full access to King George VI’s diaries, verbatim reports of the War Cabinet, a treasure trove of Churchill’s children’s personal papers and much more.
That’s how Roberts was able to take us so thoroughly through Churchill’s entire life. For example, in the course of this book you will learn the context of each of the dozens of books written by Churchill, which I found fascinating. I had always known that he was a best-selling author and that revenue from his writing helped to support his household, but I did not know that “he published 6.1 million words in 37 books—more than Shakespeare and Dickens combined—and delivered 5 million in public speeches.” Roberts doesn’t cover every single public oration, but he certainly gives us the context and some great quotes from scores of those speeches.
So this leads me to an important tip for other readers considering tackling this volume: Don’t start unless you want to fully immerse yourselves in lots of fascinating and occasionally less-fascinating details about Churchill’s life.
This is an epic read. You’ll be lost in its pages for quite a while!
What’s most surprising to me is that, despite this depth, some aspects of Churchill’s life are compressed to the point of a virtual whistle stop. Roberts understands, for example, that there are plenty of other detailed accounts of the North African campaign in World War II, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge so that those are covered in relatively brief sections. If you want much more detail on Churchill’s involvement in North Africa, get a copy of Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson’s “An Army at Dawn,” which I can also highly recommend. There’s less available to American readers, for example, on Churchill’s involvement with the tragedy of Gallipoli in World War II, so Roberts gives us a lot more detail about that military disaster. Roberts is well aware of what’s out there on our library shelves already and tailors this account to fill in many gaps.
Early in my reading of this book, I posted a Goodreads update pointing out how Roberts’ research reveals lots of factual errors in the popular film “The Darkest Hour.” That’s true, of course. That movie changes, compresses and heightens details until the plot is no longer accurate in its details. However, by the end of Roberts’ book, it’s clear that the movie did get the central theme right, as Roberts puts it: “The important point about Churchill in 1940 is not that he stopped a German invasion that year, but that he stopped the British Government from making peace.” Roberts makes the case that, without Churchill’s rhetoric and granite leadership, other British leaders would have tried to turn the UK into a vassal state of the Third Reich to halt Hitler’s army.
I’m glad I invested the hours in this book. As is my habit, my hardcover copy now goes into my library shelf with scores of pages dog-eared so I can find key passages in the future and hundreds of underlined and margin notes as well. As a journalist who continues to write at least occasionally about issues stemming from the WWII era, I’m likely to quote Roberts in the future. So, my copy is well marked to find the most memorable details in the future.
Finally, let me stress: Roberts is no apologist. Toward the end of his book, he devotes almost an entire page to reminding us of Churchill’s many flaws and mistakes, all of which Roberts already has detailed for us in this biography.
Despite all those failings, however, Churchill also had just the right mix of strengths for the hour at hand. He truly was one of the greatest lives of the 20th Century.
I was given this doorstopper of a book by my history-loving son Benjamin Crumm, who also is active on Goodreads, and over the months we have been reading this highly detailed biography of Winston Churchill together. Occasionally, over the phone, we get to discuss our reactions to various sections. So, thanks to Andrew Roberts, this has been a fun family activity.
This thick volume was intended by Roberts to be as much of a “definitive” biography of Churchill as is ever possible in the field of history. At the end of the book, Roberts lays out that quite persuasively. It was only over the last decade, since about 2010 or so, that many archives finally opened to researchers, including full access to King George VI’s diaries, verbatim reports of the War Cabinet, a treasure trove of Churchill’s children’s personal papers and much more.
That’s how Roberts was able to take us so thoroughly through Churchill’s entire life. For example, in the course of this book you will learn the context of each of the dozens of books written by Churchill, which I found fascinating. I had always known that he was a best-selling author and that revenue from his writing helped to support his household, but I did not know that “he published 6.1 million words in 37 books—more than Shakespeare and Dickens combined—and delivered 5 million in public speeches.” Roberts doesn’t cover every single public oration, but he certainly gives us the context and some great quotes from scores of those speeches.
So this leads me to an important tip for other readers considering tackling this volume: Don’t start unless you want to fully immerse yourselves in lots of fascinating and occasionally less-fascinating details about Churchill’s life.
This is an epic read. You’ll be lost in its pages for quite a while!
What’s most surprising to me is that, despite this depth, some aspects of Churchill’s life are compressed to the point of a virtual whistle stop. Roberts understands, for example, that there are plenty of other detailed accounts of the North African campaign in World War II, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge so that those are covered in relatively brief sections. If you want much more detail on Churchill’s involvement in North Africa, get a copy of Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson’s “An Army at Dawn,” which I can also highly recommend. There’s less available to American readers, for example, on Churchill’s involvement with the tragedy of Gallipoli in World War II, so Roberts gives us a lot more detail about that military disaster. Roberts is well aware of what’s out there on our library shelves already and tailors this account to fill in many gaps.
Early in my reading of this book, I posted a Goodreads update pointing out how Roberts’ research reveals lots of factual errors in the popular film “The Darkest Hour.” That’s true, of course. That movie changes, compresses and heightens details until the plot is no longer accurate in its details. However, by the end of Roberts’ book, it’s clear that the movie did get the central theme right, as Roberts puts it: “The important point about Churchill in 1940 is not that he stopped a German invasion that year, but that he stopped the British Government from making peace.” Roberts makes the case that, without Churchill’s rhetoric and granite leadership, other British leaders would have tried to turn the UK into a vassal state of the Third Reich to halt Hitler’s army.
I’m glad I invested the hours in this book. As is my habit, my hardcover copy now goes into my library shelf with scores of pages dog-eared so I can find key passages in the future and hundreds of underlined and margin notes as well. As a journalist who continues to write at least occasionally about issues stemming from the WWII era, I’m likely to quote Roberts in the future. So, my copy is well marked to find the most memorable details in the future.
Finally, let me stress: Roberts is no apologist. Toward the end of his book, he devotes almost an entire page to reminding us of Churchill’s many flaws and mistakes, all of which Roberts already has detailed for us in this biography.
Despite all those failings, however, Churchill also had just the right mix of strengths for the hour at hand. He truly was one of the greatest lives of the 20th Century.
April 19, 2021
Masterful. One of the best biographies I’ve ever read.
March 7, 2023
Greatest Man of the Twentieth Century?
When Sir Winston Spencer Churchill died aged 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. It is certain that he is one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century and in his moment of calling in May 1940, he saved the United Kingdom and subsequently the rest of the world from Nazi peril. There have been thousands of books written on WSC, including the excellent study by Roy Jenkins in 2001 which I highly recommend; so one may ask, why would you turn to Andrew Roberts’ biography? This is because it is beautifully written and complete. Over 1000 pages long, this is no holiday read. But to cover such a long, fascinating and eventful life, anything shorter would not do it justice. Roberts always wanted to write this book, famously quoting Churchill ‘I felt that all my previous life had been just a preparation for this moment’ and new that Jenkins’ work would be hard to top.
So why did he write it? Firstly Roberts is extremely passionate about Churchill, writing five books on him, this is expert knowledge at its best. Secondly the story should never be forgotten, a man who fought in five wars on five continent, wrote thousands of words himself and ultimately saved his nation when it needed him. However, thirdly and possibly most important, over 40 new sources were recently deposited at the Churchill archives, including the private diaries of HM King George VI, which has allowed an even more intimate and full depiction than any of the previous work on him. Churchill was a man who believed he was destined to save England from a great terror as a schoolboy, but also was convinced that he would die young, much has his father, Lord Randolph Churchill did.
The Second World War was Churchill’s finest hour. He showed immense bravery, both to continue the fight against Germany in 1940 when all those around him, including Viscount Halifax and Neville Chamberlin where supplying huge pressure for a negotiated piece. One must also appreciate that at 70 years old, Churchill travelled over 127,000 miles across the world during WWII, to the USA, Tehran and Moscow, at great danger to himself, in order to undertake the meetings he needed with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin and others. This is extraordinary. What is also fascinating and equally important is Churchill’s relationship with George VI, something which is shown uniquely to this book, as the two supported each other in order to lead.
But make no mistake this is no hagiography. Roberts highlights WSC’s mistakes and there are many of them, as the man said himself ‘I would have made nothing if it wasn’t for my mistakes.’ These include the Gallipoli Campaign in the First World War which ended his political career at the time and cast him into the wilderness. The 1925 decision to join the Gold Standard and supporting Edward VIII in the abdication crisis, are to name two others. In his long years he made many, but as Roberts shows, he learnt from them and they helped him grow as a person. Ultimately these mistakes were not that serious as to overshadow what good he did. The mistakes must be documented, but also shown in context. Roberts also tackles some of the recent and unjust criticisms of Churchill in recent years. For example the blaming for the Bengal Famine, the Tonypandy riots, the sinking of the Lusitania or the use of gas in Iraq. All of these vicious diatribes have been debunked many times and Roberts explains why they are unfair myths, put against Churchill. Furthermore Roberts shows he was not a racist, as he did a number of good things for none whites and none British people, for example, apposing the Boars treatment of native South Africans or his support for tribes in the Sudan. It is important to remember he was a product of his time, and this as with all historical figures must be put into context. Churchill is hugely misquoted and the majority of ‘negative’ quotes around India come from a political enemy Leo Amery, with no one else citing them.
This book is one of the best history books I’ve read and even with the huge content, I will read this again and again. It allows the the read to see WSC’s faults and appreciate his virtues. His huge capacity for work, his sense of humour, his ability to see the bigger picture and take risks. His bravery (not just politically but militarily), his friendships which lasted a lifetime, his loyalty to his wife Clementine and his vulnerabilities. He extraordinarily broke down into tears often, in public! It also shows his lifelong obsession with trying to please his father, long after his death, culminating in a dream with him in WSC’s later years after WWII. The story is fantastic and couldn’t have been written by a better historian. I highly recommend it.
When Sir Winston Spencer Churchill died aged 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. It is certain that he is one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century and in his moment of calling in May 1940, he saved the United Kingdom and subsequently the rest of the world from Nazi peril. There have been thousands of books written on WSC, including the excellent study by Roy Jenkins in 2001 which I highly recommend; so one may ask, why would you turn to Andrew Roberts’ biography? This is because it is beautifully written and complete. Over 1000 pages long, this is no holiday read. But to cover such a long, fascinating and eventful life, anything shorter would not do it justice. Roberts always wanted to write this book, famously quoting Churchill ‘I felt that all my previous life had been just a preparation for this moment’ and new that Jenkins’ work would be hard to top.
So why did he write it? Firstly Roberts is extremely passionate about Churchill, writing five books on him, this is expert knowledge at its best. Secondly the story should never be forgotten, a man who fought in five wars on five continent, wrote thousands of words himself and ultimately saved his nation when it needed him. However, thirdly and possibly most important, over 40 new sources were recently deposited at the Churchill archives, including the private diaries of HM King George VI, which has allowed an even more intimate and full depiction than any of the previous work on him. Churchill was a man who believed he was destined to save England from a great terror as a schoolboy, but also was convinced that he would die young, much has his father, Lord Randolph Churchill did.
The Second World War was Churchill’s finest hour. He showed immense bravery, both to continue the fight against Germany in 1940 when all those around him, including Viscount Halifax and Neville Chamberlin where supplying huge pressure for a negotiated piece. One must also appreciate that at 70 years old, Churchill travelled over 127,000 miles across the world during WWII, to the USA, Tehran and Moscow, at great danger to himself, in order to undertake the meetings he needed with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin and others. This is extraordinary. What is also fascinating and equally important is Churchill’s relationship with George VI, something which is shown uniquely to this book, as the two supported each other in order to lead.
But make no mistake this is no hagiography. Roberts highlights WSC’s mistakes and there are many of them, as the man said himself ‘I would have made nothing if it wasn’t for my mistakes.’ These include the Gallipoli Campaign in the First World War which ended his political career at the time and cast him into the wilderness. The 1925 decision to join the Gold Standard and supporting Edward VIII in the abdication crisis, are to name two others. In his long years he made many, but as Roberts shows, he learnt from them and they helped him grow as a person. Ultimately these mistakes were not that serious as to overshadow what good he did. The mistakes must be documented, but also shown in context. Roberts also tackles some of the recent and unjust criticisms of Churchill in recent years. For example the blaming for the Bengal Famine, the Tonypandy riots, the sinking of the Lusitania or the use of gas in Iraq. All of these vicious diatribes have been debunked many times and Roberts explains why they are unfair myths, put against Churchill. Furthermore Roberts shows he was not a racist, as he did a number of good things for none whites and none British people, for example, apposing the Boars treatment of native South Africans or his support for tribes in the Sudan. It is important to remember he was a product of his time, and this as with all historical figures must be put into context. Churchill is hugely misquoted and the majority of ‘negative’ quotes around India come from a political enemy Leo Amery, with no one else citing them.
This book is one of the best history books I’ve read and even with the huge content, I will read this again and again. It allows the the read to see WSC’s faults and appreciate his virtues. His huge capacity for work, his sense of humour, his ability to see the bigger picture and take risks. His bravery (not just politically but militarily), his friendships which lasted a lifetime, his loyalty to his wife Clementine and his vulnerabilities. He extraordinarily broke down into tears often, in public! It also shows his lifelong obsession with trying to please his father, long after his death, culminating in a dream with him in WSC’s later years after WWII. The story is fantastic and couldn’t have been written by a better historian. I highly recommend it.
May 9, 2023
I listened to this book while walking and picked it up and put it down for over a year....yes I know I walk slowly. Parts of it were so moving and I was engrossed...other parts were ministry officers and battle names. I learned so much.
June 14, 2021
The Churchill Project, with Richard Branson, take on Boris Johnson
https://twitter.com/winstoncproject
==============================
Epigraph: "Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft." (Churchill)
It's also a master course on human nature, because we see people in all sorts of situations and how they respond. As Faulkner rightly said: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” It is always with us because people are always with us. The same situations are always with us and and how humans behave in the same way, including badly at times. But also how good can prevail. As Churchill himself said: "never give up, never, never, never."
==========
I like the warts and all approach of this biography. The author is British, which I think is a factor in this. The American writer, William Manchester, was American, and his biography, "The Last Lion," bordered on hagiography. British friends have told me that there are two British figures who many Americans practically worship, C.S. Lewis and Churchill, that the Brits do not in the least. The key to the Churchill story, as the title of this book indicates, is that he was the right person at the right time to lead the people against the Axis Powers. He was immediately voted out of office after the war was over.
=========
Have not read much about Churchill for quite some time. This time, I more fully recognize he's what is called a grandiose-depressive, that goes back to his parents' treatment of him....
"The neglect and emotional cruelty at the hands of his parents that could have crushed a lesser person instead gave Churchill an unquenchable desire to succeed in life, not only in general but in his father’s chosen profession of politics."
.
But, in classic fashion, he was in denial and continued to idolize his parents, including his unstable politician father, who died of brain disease.
From Alice Miller's "The Gifted Child"....
"The person who is “grandiose” is admired everywhere and needs this admiration; indeed, he cannot live without it. He must excel brilliantly in everything he undertakes, which he is surely capable of doing (otherwise he just does not attempt it). He, too, admires himself, for his qualities— his beauty, cleverness, talents— and for his success and achievements. Beware if one of these fails him, for then the catastrophe of a severe depression is imminent."
Churchill went through two major depressive periods with what he called "the black dog." One era he referred to as "the wilderness years," from 1929-1939. He was out of favor in Parliament, with no influence as a "back bencher." During this period, he attacked Gandhi and began his opposition to the end of the British Raj, as India moved toward more autonomy. However, powerless, Churchill took up painting as a past time and other hobbies to stay busy.
The second era was after his final stint as Prime Minister, which ended in 1955. Now, he faced old age, and constant depression, until his death in 1965 at age 90.
========
For all my reading about Churchill, I am understanding something important for the first time. While he was playing Cassandra in Parliament trying to warn the nation about Hitler (he had spies in Germany gathering data on the build up of German arms), he was also not making any friends opposing the India Bill that would grant India more autonomy that would eventually lead to independence.
This was a classic Churchill contradiction. He was spot on about Hitler, but dead wrong about India.
https://twitter.com/winstoncproject
==============================
Epigraph: "Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft." (Churchill)
It's also a master course on human nature, because we see people in all sorts of situations and how they respond. As Faulkner rightly said: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” It is always with us because people are always with us. The same situations are always with us and and how humans behave in the same way, including badly at times. But also how good can prevail. As Churchill himself said: "never give up, never, never, never."
==========
I like the warts and all approach of this biography. The author is British, which I think is a factor in this. The American writer, William Manchester, was American, and his biography, "The Last Lion," bordered on hagiography. British friends have told me that there are two British figures who many Americans practically worship, C.S. Lewis and Churchill, that the Brits do not in the least. The key to the Churchill story, as the title of this book indicates, is that he was the right person at the right time to lead the people against the Axis Powers. He was immediately voted out of office after the war was over.
=========
Have not read much about Churchill for quite some time. This time, I more fully recognize he's what is called a grandiose-depressive, that goes back to his parents' treatment of him....
"The neglect and emotional cruelty at the hands of his parents that could have crushed a lesser person instead gave Churchill an unquenchable desire to succeed in life, not only in general but in his father’s chosen profession of politics."
.
But, in classic fashion, he was in denial and continued to idolize his parents, including his unstable politician father, who died of brain disease.
From Alice Miller's "The Gifted Child"....
"The person who is “grandiose” is admired everywhere and needs this admiration; indeed, he cannot live without it. He must excel brilliantly in everything he undertakes, which he is surely capable of doing (otherwise he just does not attempt it). He, too, admires himself, for his qualities— his beauty, cleverness, talents— and for his success and achievements. Beware if one of these fails him, for then the catastrophe of a severe depression is imminent."
Churchill went through two major depressive periods with what he called "the black dog." One era he referred to as "the wilderness years," from 1929-1939. He was out of favor in Parliament, with no influence as a "back bencher." During this period, he attacked Gandhi and began his opposition to the end of the British Raj, as India moved toward more autonomy. However, powerless, Churchill took up painting as a past time and other hobbies to stay busy.
The second era was after his final stint as Prime Minister, which ended in 1955. Now, he faced old age, and constant depression, until his death in 1965 at age 90.
========
For all my reading about Churchill, I am understanding something important for the first time. While he was playing Cassandra in Parliament trying to warn the nation about Hitler (he had spies in Germany gathering data on the build up of German arms), he was also not making any friends opposing the India Bill that would grant India more autonomy that would eventually lead to independence.
This was a classic Churchill contradiction. He was spot on about Hitler, but dead wrong about India.
June 2, 2020
Author is obviously a Churchill fan and that's to be kept in mind. However the fact that he keeps going back on Churchill's childhood neglect as the reason for his perseverance and will, is really annoying. It's enough to mention it, saying it could be a motivating factor, but to keep implying it was one of the main reasons for his success is ridiculous. Churchill was a man built for greatness, and he achieved all of through sheer will. And even if his childhood circumstances were favorable, I doubt it would have changed the many things he achieved and the ideologies he had. This is purely hypothetical ofcourse - just like the author was in every other chapter.
Also, one point to note is most of the book is a lot of direct quotations from various characters, with minimal commentary from the author, who was just sewing events together. This, I realized, is what made this book wonderful. The ending, where the author himself expressed views on the various events in Churchill's life- almost categorizing them, arbitrarily, into good and bad left me annoyed. In conclusion, even though I loved the book, I liked the author for his compilation - not his writing.
Also, one point to note is most of the book is a lot of direct quotations from various characters, with minimal commentary from the author, who was just sewing events together. This, I realized, is what made this book wonderful. The ending, where the author himself expressed views on the various events in Churchill's life- almost categorizing them, arbitrarily, into good and bad left me annoyed. In conclusion, even though I loved the book, I liked the author for his compilation - not his writing.
August 2, 2023
“The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year — and … to explain why it didn’t happen.”
This is how Winston Churchill summarized the qualities desirable in a politician in a 1902 interview, and characteristically went on, about the job on an MP, ”He is asked to stand, he wants to sit and is expected to lie.”
You can already see, from these two examples, that in his biography Churchill. Walking with Destiny, Robert Andrews gives abundant due to Churchill’s wit and his mastery of the English language, which gives additional attraction to the account of an extraordinary life. My introductory quotation also shows that Churchill was vividly aware of the fact that politicians ought to be able to make adequate assessments of future developments and to derive sound decisions from these. Today, Churchill is still rightly admired for the lucidity with which he opposed the Chamberlainite government’s Appeasement Policy in his “Wilderness Years”, claiming that such an approach, directed to Hitler, is like feeding a crocodile in the hope of being eaten last, but while Roberts gives due emphasis to Churchill’s adherence to anti-Appeasement and his determination not to settle for an armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, he also mentions the numerous political misjudgements made by Churchill, most obviously his Gallipoli campaign as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, whose failure Roberts does not completely put at Churchill’s door, however, but also, for example, his loyalty to Edward VIII in the abdication crisis, his restoration of the gold standard at its 1914 parity to 1£=4.86$, his support of employing the Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence or his resistance against Dominion status for India. All in all, Roberts does not write a hagiographic biography, and yet it is clear that he has – quite reasonably and justly, I should like to add – high admiration for Winston Churchill as the man who saved Liberty.
For when he was made Prime Minister after Chamberlain’s mishandling of the war became utterly undeniable, the situation was anything but rosy: France had been defeated by Nazi Germany without much ado, the Soviet Union was still in cahoots with Hitler, and there was no sign of any likelihood for the United States to enter the war against Germany, and not only was England to suffer the defeat at Dunkirk but was also undergoing the London Blitz and other bombardments. Still, Churchill was adamant that any German offer of negotiations be rejected. He did not clearly see out his way of this war but he was sure that the Empire would be victorious in the end, and, what is more, he imbued the British public with a sense of optimism and responsibility for upholding human values and ideals against the threat of Nazism. One may not want to picture what the world would look like today if there had been another politician in No 10 at this crucial point in world history.
As Roberts makes clear, part of Churchill’s daring energy and determination was fuelled by a deep-seated conflict with his father, who had always denied him the recognition he craved as a boy and as a young man. Nevertheless, this was not the only motive Churchill had for soldiering on as there was also his undying belief in the British Empire as a force of progress, of justice and individual freedom. This may sit uncomfortably in our day and age, where the Empire is regarded in an exclusively critical light, all the more so as Churchill’s Victorian ideals also meant that he would not suffer any part of the British-ruled territories to secede from the Empire. He would also take pains to make sure that Asian parts of the Empire should be liberated from Japanese occupation by British rather than American forces, which made him an uncomfortable ally to the Americans and often caused frictions. Still, had it not been for Churchill’s deeply-rooted adherence to the ideal of Empire, which, by the way, also prompted him to act with decency in many, though not all, of his political decisions, he might not have mustered up the stamina to steer Great Britain through the crucial years of 1940 and 1941.
A quotation from his speech at Chamberlain’s funeral may show Churchill’s tendency to stick to his convictions, a tendency that is unfortunately very rare with modern-day politicians:
Later in life, he once again uttered his belief in the superiority of the British people, even downplaying his own crucial role in the war by omitting the fact that his numerous speeches and his personal courage inspired his fellow country-people with the bravery to accept and master the historical challenge posed by Nazi Germany. He says of Britons:
Around this drama of a man led by his convictions, be they anachronistic or not, to change the course of history for the better, Roberts also draws a colourful and detailed picture of Winston Churchill as a human being – a task he is helped in by having had access to hitherto barred sources like the diaries of King George VI. At times, I found his approach too much directed at breadth at the cost of deep-focus analyses when they might have led to even more balanced judgements as when in the midst of wartime decisions we suddenly get a paragraph on the demise of one of Churchill’s cats or a reading list of his books on his way to one of the war conferences, but at least this approach also has the merit of presenting Churchill as a three-dimensional human being with also everyday grievances. Still, as I said, there were moments when I would have cherished the author to have stuck to political questions in a more multi-faceted approach.
Nevertheless, reading this seminal, and voluminous, work on Churchill’s life never proved boring one single moment, especially since it also paid homage to Churchill’s inimitable wit – I noted down many of his famous quips [1] – but it also widened my knowledge on my favourite historical person.
[1] Of course, I cannot quite resist giving at least some:
Being annoyed by de Gaulle’s chauvinistic tendency to set French needs over those of the wartime alliance, he once said, “I, of course, am exceedingly pro-French, unfortunately, the French are exceedingly pro-voking.”
When in 1944 a reporter told Churchill that they shouldn’t make the same mistakes over German reparations as they did after the Great War, Churchill assured him: “I am sure that the mistakes of that time will not be repeated. We shall probably make another set of mistakes.”
With regard to the pets he kept, he once said: “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you quite as an equal.”
His judgement on John Foster Dulles in a nutshell was “Dull, duller, Dulles.”
When he once offered a glass of whiskey and soda to a Mormon visitor at Chartwell, the man said: “May I have water, Sir Winston? Lions drink it.” His response: “Asses drink it, too.”
This is how Winston Churchill summarized the qualities desirable in a politician in a 1902 interview, and characteristically went on, about the job on an MP, ”He is asked to stand, he wants to sit and is expected to lie.”
You can already see, from these two examples, that in his biography Churchill. Walking with Destiny, Robert Andrews gives abundant due to Churchill’s wit and his mastery of the English language, which gives additional attraction to the account of an extraordinary life. My introductory quotation also shows that Churchill was vividly aware of the fact that politicians ought to be able to make adequate assessments of future developments and to derive sound decisions from these. Today, Churchill is still rightly admired for the lucidity with which he opposed the Chamberlainite government’s Appeasement Policy in his “Wilderness Years”, claiming that such an approach, directed to Hitler, is like feeding a crocodile in the hope of being eaten last, but while Roberts gives due emphasis to Churchill’s adherence to anti-Appeasement and his determination not to settle for an armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, he also mentions the numerous political misjudgements made by Churchill, most obviously his Gallipoli campaign as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, whose failure Roberts does not completely put at Churchill’s door, however, but also, for example, his loyalty to Edward VIII in the abdication crisis, his restoration of the gold standard at its 1914 parity to 1£=4.86$, his support of employing the Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence or his resistance against Dominion status for India. All in all, Roberts does not write a hagiographic biography, and yet it is clear that he has – quite reasonably and justly, I should like to add – high admiration for Winston Churchill as the man who saved Liberty.
For when he was made Prime Minister after Chamberlain’s mishandling of the war became utterly undeniable, the situation was anything but rosy: France had been defeated by Nazi Germany without much ado, the Soviet Union was still in cahoots with Hitler, and there was no sign of any likelihood for the United States to enter the war against Germany, and not only was England to suffer the defeat at Dunkirk but was also undergoing the London Blitz and other bombardments. Still, Churchill was adamant that any German offer of negotiations be rejected. He did not clearly see out his way of this war but he was sure that the Empire would be victorious in the end, and, what is more, he imbued the British public with a sense of optimism and responsibility for upholding human values and ideals against the threat of Nazism. One may not want to picture what the world would look like today if there had been another politician in No 10 at this crucial point in world history.
As Roberts makes clear, part of Churchill’s daring energy and determination was fuelled by a deep-seated conflict with his father, who had always denied him the recognition he craved as a boy and as a young man. Nevertheless, this was not the only motive Churchill had for soldiering on as there was also his undying belief in the British Empire as a force of progress, of justice and individual freedom. This may sit uncomfortably in our day and age, where the Empire is regarded in an exclusively critical light, all the more so as Churchill’s Victorian ideals also meant that he would not suffer any part of the British-ruled territories to secede from the Empire. He would also take pains to make sure that Asian parts of the Empire should be liberated from Japanese occupation by British rather than American forces, which made him an uncomfortable ally to the Americans and often caused frictions. Still, had it not been for Churchill’s deeply-rooted adherence to the ideal of Empire, which, by the way, also prompted him to act with decency in many, though not all, of his political decisions, he might not have mustered up the stamina to steer Great Britain through the crucial years of 1940 and 1941.
A quotation from his speech at Chamberlain’s funeral may show Churchill’s tendency to stick to his convictions, a tendency that is unfortunately very rare with modern-day politicians:
”The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations: but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour.”
Later in life, he once again uttered his belief in the superiority of the British people, even downplaying his own crucial role in the war by omitting the fact that his numerous speeches and his personal courage inspired his fellow country-people with the bravery to accept and master the historical challenge posed by Nazi Germany. He says of Britons:
”It was a nation and race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon the give the roar.”
Around this drama of a man led by his convictions, be they anachronistic or not, to change the course of history for the better, Roberts also draws a colourful and detailed picture of Winston Churchill as a human being – a task he is helped in by having had access to hitherto barred sources like the diaries of King George VI. At times, I found his approach too much directed at breadth at the cost of deep-focus analyses when they might have led to even more balanced judgements as when in the midst of wartime decisions we suddenly get a paragraph on the demise of one of Churchill’s cats or a reading list of his books on his way to one of the war conferences, but at least this approach also has the merit of presenting Churchill as a three-dimensional human being with also everyday grievances. Still, as I said, there were moments when I would have cherished the author to have stuck to political questions in a more multi-faceted approach.
Nevertheless, reading this seminal, and voluminous, work on Churchill’s life never proved boring one single moment, especially since it also paid homage to Churchill’s inimitable wit – I noted down many of his famous quips [1] – but it also widened my knowledge on my favourite historical person.
[1] Of course, I cannot quite resist giving at least some:
Being annoyed by de Gaulle’s chauvinistic tendency to set French needs over those of the wartime alliance, he once said, “I, of course, am exceedingly pro-French, unfortunately, the French are exceedingly pro-voking.”
When in 1944 a reporter told Churchill that they shouldn’t make the same mistakes over German reparations as they did after the Great War, Churchill assured him: “I am sure that the mistakes of that time will not be repeated. We shall probably make another set of mistakes.”
With regard to the pets he kept, he once said: “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you quite as an equal.”
His judgement on John Foster Dulles in a nutshell was “Dull, duller, Dulles.”
When he once offered a glass of whiskey and soda to a Mormon visitor at Chartwell, the man said: “May I have water, Sir Winston? Lions drink it.” His response: “Asses drink it, too.”
January 4, 2019
Terrific and all encompassing. I learned a lot about Churchill I hadn't realized. The author although a fan of Winston isn't afraid to point out his faults which gives him contrast and reality as a character. I especially loved the context the author gave around all of WC's little sarcastic comments and digs at the expense often of others. He had a brilliant wit about him.
In the game if you could have an hour conversation with one person living or dead he definitely moved way up the board.
If I had one critique I wish there was more interaction time given to him and Montgomery. Reading a lot from the American perspective I would have like more about WC and the Field Marshall. Likewise but to a lesser extent with Ike, Marshall and I'm not sure if he really ever interacted with Patton. I would have loved to here WC's thoughts on the Montgomery and Patton rivalry.
It is still amazing the force of nature he was when even people in his own government doubted him again and again.
In the game if you could have an hour conversation with one person living or dead he definitely moved way up the board.
If I had one critique I wish there was more interaction time given to him and Montgomery. Reading a lot from the American perspective I would have like more about WC and the Field Marshall. Likewise but to a lesser extent with Ike, Marshall and I'm not sure if he really ever interacted with Patton. I would have loved to here WC's thoughts on the Montgomery and Patton rivalry.
It is still amazing the force of nature he was when even people in his own government doubted him again and again.
June 16, 2023
― “I realized that I must be on my best behaviour,’ as he later put it, ‘punctual, subdued, reserved; in short, display all the qualities with which I am least endowed.”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
― “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings,’ he said in a debate in October. ‘The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
― “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward,”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
Among the major historical figures of the last few centuries, there are a couple who fascinate me. One of these is Sir Winston Churchill. In a poll conducted by the BBC in 2002, he was named the greatest Briton ever. For me, one of Churchill's most endearing qualities was his wonderful sense of humor, especially his famous quick wit (a few examples provided above). Churchill was also a celebrated orator. Of course, he also remains a very controversial figure. In a career spanning some 70 years, Churchill made some significant mistakes. One of the most serious was when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he proposed the ill-fated naval attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula on the northern side of the Dardanelles during World War I. Undetected mines sank three ships and severely damaged three others. In the wake of the failed naval attack, the Allies launched a major land invasion of Gallipoli. The Allies lost 45,000 men killed.
Despite his many mistakes, Churchill proved to be one of the giants of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, he correctly sensed the true nature of Hitler and the Third Reich. He resisted Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement strategy, repeatedly arguing that appeasement was not only a sign of weakness but an invitation for war. His arguments were unpopular, even ridiculed. Britain simply couldn’t grasp the full extent of Hitler’s evil intent and viewed Churchill as a warmonger, while, in reality, he had read Hitler remarkably accurately.
Yet during Britain's darkest hours in World War II, Churchill's leadership as Prime Minister was vital in maintaining morale and leading the country to eventual victory over Nazi Germany. He was a man of great moral and physical courage. (If you doubt his physical courage, I would encourage you to read Candice Millard’s excellent book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill). His wartime speeches, broadcast on the BBC, brimmed with his determined spirit. Unmoved by bombings and setbacks, and convinced of eventual victory, he reassured his listeners and strengthened Britain’s will. His fighting spirit, indomitable will, and infinite courage proved contagious. In his now-famous speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, he said
― “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. 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 fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
But Churchill also showed great compassion for his people. He went out in the streets; he visited the bombed sites; he spoke to the people. He cried openly at the stories of loss, destruction, and deprivation. He was also a lifelong student of history. He loved to study Britain’s past, and framed Britain’s wartime struggle in the larger context of British history. Churchill was also a writer who wrote 72 books in his lifetime. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”
Author Andrew Roberts has produced an incredible biography of this great man. It is superbly written and richly resourced. Despite its length (982 pages excluding notes and references), it remains interesting throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of reading. Is it the best one-volume biography of Winston Churchill? I cannot say, as I have not yet read Martin Gilbert’s, Roy Jenkins, or and Geoffrey Best’s biographies. (I have read all three volumes of William Manchester’s great biography.) But I sense that Robert’s account could become the definitive biography of Winston Churchill for some time to come.
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
― “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings,’ he said in a debate in October. ‘The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
― “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward,”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
Among the major historical figures of the last few centuries, there are a couple who fascinate me. One of these is Sir Winston Churchill. In a poll conducted by the BBC in 2002, he was named the greatest Briton ever. For me, one of Churchill's most endearing qualities was his wonderful sense of humor, especially his famous quick wit (a few examples provided above). Churchill was also a celebrated orator. Of course, he also remains a very controversial figure. In a career spanning some 70 years, Churchill made some significant mistakes. One of the most serious was when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he proposed the ill-fated naval attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula on the northern side of the Dardanelles during World War I. Undetected mines sank three ships and severely damaged three others. In the wake of the failed naval attack, the Allies launched a major land invasion of Gallipoli. The Allies lost 45,000 men killed.
Despite his many mistakes, Churchill proved to be one of the giants of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, he correctly sensed the true nature of Hitler and the Third Reich. He resisted Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement strategy, repeatedly arguing that appeasement was not only a sign of weakness but an invitation for war. His arguments were unpopular, even ridiculed. Britain simply couldn’t grasp the full extent of Hitler’s evil intent and viewed Churchill as a warmonger, while, in reality, he had read Hitler remarkably accurately.
Yet during Britain's darkest hours in World War II, Churchill's leadership as Prime Minister was vital in maintaining morale and leading the country to eventual victory over Nazi Germany. He was a man of great moral and physical courage. (If you doubt his physical courage, I would encourage you to read Candice Millard’s excellent book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill). His wartime speeches, broadcast on the BBC, brimmed with his determined spirit. Unmoved by bombings and setbacks, and convinced of eventual victory, he reassured his listeners and strengthened Britain’s will. His fighting spirit, indomitable will, and infinite courage proved contagious. In his now-famous speech to the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, he said
― “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. 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 fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
― Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny
But Churchill also showed great compassion for his people. He went out in the streets; he visited the bombed sites; he spoke to the people. He cried openly at the stories of loss, destruction, and deprivation. He was also a lifelong student of history. He loved to study Britain’s past, and framed Britain’s wartime struggle in the larger context of British history. Churchill was also a writer who wrote 72 books in his lifetime. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”
Author Andrew Roberts has produced an incredible biography of this great man. It is superbly written and richly resourced. Despite its length (982 pages excluding notes and references), it remains interesting throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of reading. Is it the best one-volume biography of Winston Churchill? I cannot say, as I have not yet read Martin Gilbert’s, Roy Jenkins, or and Geoffrey Best’s biographies. (I have read all three volumes of William Manchester’s great biography.) But I sense that Robert’s account could become the definitive biography of Winston Churchill for some time to come.
June 10, 2021
Churchill was of an energy and dynamic that when he succumbed to the witherings of old age it is like watching a light dim into darkness. This is a fine single-volume by Andrew Roberts, who clearly defends Churchill throughout with detailed arguments. That is not to say he does not acknowledge the foibles and mistakes in Sir Winston’s political tenures. It also contains one of my favorite responses to teetotalism ever:
“Another a Mormon present said, ‘Strong drink rageth and stingeth like a serpent.’ ‘I have long been looking for a drink like that,’ Churchill retorted.”
“Another a Mormon present said, ‘Strong drink rageth and stingeth like a serpent.’ ‘I have long been looking for a drink like that,’ Churchill retorted.”
October 12, 2021
I've already read a Churchill bio or two; but this one is the one that deserves the title "magisterial." The book practically gave me two heroes: Winston Churchill and the book's author, Andrew Roberts. This is the third massive historical book in a row that I listened to by Roberts; his work is diligent, discretely witty, and perfectly paced.
Speaking of wit… Is there anyone like Churchill? No one would ever have complained if Churchill had had all the same character qualities and skills minus the wit. We wouldn't even have thought to ask for it. Without having seen the benefits (over and over, through this biography), I'm not sure I would have wanted a witty statesman. Sounds cheesy, maybe even dangerous. But Churchill's wit and way with words proved to be an indispensable element of his work saving the free world. He understood the challenge of keeping up public morale, and he'd been preparing rhetorical tools to stand in the gap for London since he was a teenager. One of the more insightful comments of the book, I felt, was that Churchill's entertaining but somewhat flowery speeches had been falling out of fashion—until circumstances arose in 1939 that matched and called for his height of rhetoric. People don't want technocrats in times of crisis; they need leaders.
I don't want the aristocratic culture that gave us Churchill to arrive on my own shores (perhaps it is already here, however?). But one thing the God of history did when he permitted that culture to grow in Britain was to save one last Victorian with the combination of 1) who-cares-what-the-middle-class-thinks and 2) noblesse oblige necessary to lead the country through war. Roberts was honest about Churchill's faults (he lists them out in an excruciating seriatim toward the end) but clearly admired and defended Churchill. I never felt that Roberts strayed into hagiography, so I did not begrudge that admiration. I felt it entirely appropriate.
Highly recommended. Especially if you have a large greenhouse to build and need good listening! The narrator was also excellent, though the one who did Roberts' book on WWII was a bit better, truly tops.
Speaking of wit… Is there anyone like Churchill? No one would ever have complained if Churchill had had all the same character qualities and skills minus the wit. We wouldn't even have thought to ask for it. Without having seen the benefits (over and over, through this biography), I'm not sure I would have wanted a witty statesman. Sounds cheesy, maybe even dangerous. But Churchill's wit and way with words proved to be an indispensable element of his work saving the free world. He understood the challenge of keeping up public morale, and he'd been preparing rhetorical tools to stand in the gap for London since he was a teenager. One of the more insightful comments of the book, I felt, was that Churchill's entertaining but somewhat flowery speeches had been falling out of fashion—until circumstances arose in 1939 that matched and called for his height of rhetoric. People don't want technocrats in times of crisis; they need leaders.
I don't want the aristocratic culture that gave us Churchill to arrive on my own shores (perhaps it is already here, however?). But one thing the God of history did when he permitted that culture to grow in Britain was to save one last Victorian with the combination of 1) who-cares-what-the-middle-class-thinks and 2) noblesse oblige necessary to lead the country through war. Roberts was honest about Churchill's faults (he lists them out in an excruciating seriatim toward the end) but clearly admired and defended Churchill. I never felt that Roberts strayed into hagiography, so I did not begrudge that admiration. I felt it entirely appropriate.
Highly recommended. Especially if you have a large greenhouse to build and need good listening! The narrator was also excellent, though the one who did Roberts' book on WWII was a bit better, truly tops.
February 10, 2019
I have read a number of books that include Winston Churchill as a key actor. This is first time that I have read a full biography of him. And this book has rewarded its purchase price many times over.
Several aspects of the volume that are noteworthy.
1. The arc of his life and how the trajectory was so much influenced by his family background. Key actors include John Churchill, who was a major leader in the wars on the continent in the early 1700s. His victory at Blenheim was a high point and she was made Duke of Marlborough as a result. He was awarded support to build a new home, which he called (not surprisingly) Blenheim. Winston Churchill spent much time in this great building. The Duke was a contentious person, a trait not unknown to Winston. . . .
2. Churchill's father, Randolph, was another key element in his life. He rose in the political hierarchy--before being tossed aside. He had a distant relationship with his son, who strove to earn his father's approval--even after his death.
The path of his life is well told, from early triumph to a trip into the political wilderness to his comeback as Prime Minister as World War II began. The details are a strength of this book. The book gives the reader an honest view of Churchill. He had brilliant insights--and blind spots. He sometimes didn't see weaknesses in ideas that he proposed. But he was also visionary--seeing the potential of tanks and airplanes in World War I.
All in all, a terrific book, well written.
Several aspects of the volume that are noteworthy.
1. The arc of his life and how the trajectory was so much influenced by his family background. Key actors include John Churchill, who was a major leader in the wars on the continent in the early 1700s. His victory at Blenheim was a high point and she was made Duke of Marlborough as a result. He was awarded support to build a new home, which he called (not surprisingly) Blenheim. Winston Churchill spent much time in this great building. The Duke was a contentious person, a trait not unknown to Winston. . . .
2. Churchill's father, Randolph, was another key element in his life. He rose in the political hierarchy--before being tossed aside. He had a distant relationship with his son, who strove to earn his father's approval--even after his death.
The path of his life is well told, from early triumph to a trip into the political wilderness to his comeback as Prime Minister as World War II began. The details are a strength of this book. The book gives the reader an honest view of Churchill. He had brilliant insights--and blind spots. He sometimes didn't see weaknesses in ideas that he proposed. But he was also visionary--seeing the potential of tanks and airplanes in World War I.
All in all, a terrific book, well written.
November 3, 2018
On the author's speaking tours publicising this book, Dr Roberts states that this is the 1,011th biography of Winston Churchill. The obvious question is, why write about a subject so well covered before?
First of all, Andrew Roberts has had access to new sources, including exclusive access to King George VI diary, an invaluable window in to the life of Churchill, as he met the King every Tuesday during the war and seems to have used the time to let off steam in confidential surroundings. The author also has had access to Pamela Churchill's love letters, none of which seem to have been to her husband Randolph.
Despite the books great length, it is a very readable account of Sir Winston's life, written beautifully. This book is bound to become a classic.
First of all, Andrew Roberts has had access to new sources, including exclusive access to King George VI diary, an invaluable window in to the life of Churchill, as he met the King every Tuesday during the war and seems to have used the time to let off steam in confidential surroundings. The author also has had access to Pamela Churchill's love letters, none of which seem to have been to her husband Randolph.
Despite the books great length, it is a very readable account of Sir Winston's life, written beautifully. This book is bound to become a classic.
February 6, 2019
Rivals (and, I think, narrowly beats) Carlo d'Este's biography of Churchill. This was fantastic. Incidentally, I'm fairly certain this is the only work of non-fiction that has moved me to tears.
November 26, 2023
I`ve learned much by this biography!!
And a very good researched piece of literature too...
Great job done by Andrew Roberts.
Churchill was a fascinating character, and just the right man for the sombre trial which befell whole Europe!!!
Churchill indeed was a flawed hero; we have much to thank him for...
His greatest achievement was to not make peace with the Nazis...
Keeping England at war with Germany and giving hope to the Brits...
If you want to learn about courage and the life of Churchill, then go for it!!!
And a very good researched piece of literature too...
Great job done by Andrew Roberts.
Churchill was a fascinating character, and just the right man for the sombre trial which befell whole Europe!!!
Churchill indeed was a flawed hero; we have much to thank him for...
His greatest achievement was to not make peace with the Nazis...
Keeping England at war with Germany and giving hope to the Brits...
If you want to learn about courage and the life of Churchill, then go for it!!!
February 2, 2020
Es increíble que me haya leído varias biografías de Hitler, cuando no es en absoluto un hombre al quien admirar y que nunca me hubiera hecho de una de Churchill, había que solucionar eso, así que me he buscado una y he encontrado la de este autor, que es considerada una de las mejores.
Antes de entrar en materia del protagonista de mis últimas noches, voy a hablar del enorme trabajo de investigación y la preciosa narración de la vida de una de las grandes personalidades del siglo XX, me ha encantado su estilo narrativo, lo ha hecho fácil de leer, y me ha encantado que fuera lo más objetivo posible, me refiero a que con estas personalidades siempre hay rumores a su alrededor, algunos inventados por enemigos, otros inventados por la prensa y que al final terminan siendo por algunos biografos o historiadores tomados como verdades o certezas, así que se agradece que un autor no ponga sobre blanco y negro cosas que no son en absoluto situaciones confirmables.
Es verdad que se nota que el autor es verdadero fan de Churchill, así que desde mi punto de vista ha sido algo condescendiente con el personaje, pero se le perdona porque realmente lo ha hecho algo personal y se nota, pero con todo y eso ha logrado un trabajo realmente bueno y condescendiente o no, ha logrado que me forje una idea de la personalidad de Churchill y me ha llegado a fondo.
Ahora entro en materia, conocer la vida y la personalidad de Winston Churchill ha sido realmente algo que me ha encantado, si ya lo admiraba antes, ahora, después de conocerlo a través de esta biografía me declaro fan incondicional de este hombre.
Fue un hombre realmente sorprendente, inteligente e ingenioso, me he soltado varias buenas carcajadas con algunas de sus frases y réplicas sarcasticas.
Hay mucha historia sobre este hombre de antes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, grandes logros, también momentos bastante malos y oscuros, pero siempre supo como salir de sus golpes a base de pelea, pero sobre todo de no moverse un ápice de sus propias convicciones.
Fue un político incómodo, siempre decía cosas que a la mayoría no gustaba, lo tildaban de necio, loco y agresivo, incluso de ser un peligro para la política y para el reino, pero lo cierto es que pocas veces se equivocaba en sus apreciaciones y eso es lo que siempre lo tuvo en el ojo del huracán.
Creo que lo que más me ha gustado de este hombre es que siempre obró con una ética personal impecable, era un hombre muy noble y bueno en esencia y eso, desde mi punto de vista fue su talón de aquiles, no es que fuera tonto, pero desde mi punto de vista pecó de ingenuo cuando negoció con Stalin y no lo digo por la alianza en sí, si no por lo que dijo y pensaba de este personaje después de sus reuniones.
Más allá de lo que yo pueda opinar, que a decir verdad tengo muchas opiniones sobre este hombre, tengo que decir que indudablemente fue todo un personaje, que se ganó a pulso su lugar en la historia, que fue un hombre totalmente admirable, no solo por lo que hizo y sus logros si no también por su personalidad y por su perseverancia, su inteligencia y su personalidad.
He disfrutado enormemente con este libro, primeramente por lo bien que está escrito, lo apegado a los hechos, conocer tantas cosas que desconocía, pero sobre todo por haber podido conocer un personaje que sin duda a partir de hoy admiro profundamente.
Antes de entrar en materia del protagonista de mis últimas noches, voy a hablar del enorme trabajo de investigación y la preciosa narración de la vida de una de las grandes personalidades del siglo XX, me ha encantado su estilo narrativo, lo ha hecho fácil de leer, y me ha encantado que fuera lo más objetivo posible, me refiero a que con estas personalidades siempre hay rumores a su alrededor, algunos inventados por enemigos, otros inventados por la prensa y que al final terminan siendo por algunos biografos o historiadores tomados como verdades o certezas, así que se agradece que un autor no ponga sobre blanco y negro cosas que no son en absoluto situaciones confirmables.
Es verdad que se nota que el autor es verdadero fan de Churchill, así que desde mi punto de vista ha sido algo condescendiente con el personaje, pero se le perdona porque realmente lo ha hecho algo personal y se nota, pero con todo y eso ha logrado un trabajo realmente bueno y condescendiente o no, ha logrado que me forje una idea de la personalidad de Churchill y me ha llegado a fondo.
Ahora entro en materia, conocer la vida y la personalidad de Winston Churchill ha sido realmente algo que me ha encantado, si ya lo admiraba antes, ahora, después de conocerlo a través de esta biografía me declaro fan incondicional de este hombre.
Fue un hombre realmente sorprendente, inteligente e ingenioso, me he soltado varias buenas carcajadas con algunas de sus frases y réplicas sarcasticas.
Hay mucha historia sobre este hombre de antes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, grandes logros, también momentos bastante malos y oscuros, pero siempre supo como salir de sus golpes a base de pelea, pero sobre todo de no moverse un ápice de sus propias convicciones.
Fue un político incómodo, siempre decía cosas que a la mayoría no gustaba, lo tildaban de necio, loco y agresivo, incluso de ser un peligro para la política y para el reino, pero lo cierto es que pocas veces se equivocaba en sus apreciaciones y eso es lo que siempre lo tuvo en el ojo del huracán.
Creo que lo que más me ha gustado de este hombre es que siempre obró con una ética personal impecable, era un hombre muy noble y bueno en esencia y eso, desde mi punto de vista fue su talón de aquiles, no es que fuera tonto, pero desde mi punto de vista pecó de ingenuo cuando negoció con Stalin y no lo digo por la alianza en sí, si no por lo que dijo y pensaba de este personaje después de sus reuniones.
Más allá de lo que yo pueda opinar, que a decir verdad tengo muchas opiniones sobre este hombre, tengo que decir que indudablemente fue todo un personaje, que se ganó a pulso su lugar en la historia, que fue un hombre totalmente admirable, no solo por lo que hizo y sus logros si no también por su personalidad y por su perseverancia, su inteligencia y su personalidad.
He disfrutado enormemente con este libro, primeramente por lo bien que está escrito, lo apegado a los hechos, conocer tantas cosas que desconocía, pero sobre todo por haber podido conocer un personaje que sin duda a partir de hoy admiro profundamente.
August 10, 2021
Full review to come, and believe me, this book deserves a solid review. Amazing primary sources, detailed breakdown of Churchill's life, dreams, motivations, follies, successes, and blunders. While the author clearly respected Churchill for the amazing life he lived, he did not sugar coat the errors and missteps Churchill made. A must read for anyone interested in Churchill or the late British empire.
July 17, 2023
I have always been fascinated by Churchill, but never dug into him too deeply because, well, you know, other things to read and do. Then I visited the War Rooms and Churchill Museum in London and was hooked. So I started reading Roberts' biography together with a couple of friends, kind of a mini-book club. Absolutely fascinating. This isn't an uncritical biography, as the author points out plenty of mistakes made by Churchill during his long and intense life, as well as a number of his outmoded ideas, by modern standards. Like his staunch love and support for the British empire, which he saw as a force of good in the world. Then again, the man was something to be reckoned with and played a crucial role not just in saving the world's democracies from Hitler, but also in passing crucial welfare legislation in the UK, as well as in reconstructing the country after the war. And of course there is his sense of humor, and his deep knowledge and appreciation of history. My own political views are largely at odds with those of Churchill, but this book is a great example of how one can admire, and even partially agree with, someone whose outlook on life is very different from one's own. If only we practiced that a bit more in this period of radical partisanship and political polarization.
October 12, 2019
Fantástico
May 12, 2019
Roberts craftily packs a library of life into a single volume, with a particular focus on the World War II years when Churchill was Prime Minister and fulfilling his childhood prophecy of saving the country and the Empire. Churchill's flaws and poor decisions are fairly presented alongside his virtues and victories, with just enough attention given to his drinking habit. My only significant critiques are that the author is repetitive at times, and needlessly brings up several myths and conspiracy theories only to show them without merit. I would rather not read of them at all. But this book more than met my expectation for detail on the death and legacy of its subject. I also loved that there were plenty of maps, that they were together at the front of the book for easy reference, and that little old Fulton, Missouri was noted on one among just a few cities in North America.
I read this slower than usual, partly for a better understanding ahead of meeting the author at a recent event. But other reasons came up: My unfamiliarity with WWII from it's beginning and from the British perspective, and because for any quote of Churchill, I had to read it in his unique drawl in my head.
Overall, a terrific experience.
I read this slower than usual, partly for a better understanding ahead of meeting the author at a recent event. But other reasons came up: My unfamiliarity with WWII from it's beginning and from the British perspective, and because for any quote of Churchill, I had to read it in his unique drawl in my head.
Overall, a terrific experience.
June 29, 2020
https://thebestbiographies.com/2020/0...
Andrew Roberts’s biography “Churchill: Walking with Destiny” was published in the fall of 2018 and quickly became a bestseller in both the US and UK. Roberts is an award-winning British author and journalist who has written more than a dozen books including “Napoleon: A Life” (which inspired a BBC tv series), “The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War” and “House of Windsor.”
Within weeks of its release this book was hailed as one of the very best single-volume biographies of Winston Churchill ever published. Because this is the first biography of Churchill I’ve read, I am unable to offer an opinion on the matter. What is clear to me, however, is that Roberts’s biography of Churchill is magisterial, impressively thorough and keenly perceptive. It also benefits from the author’s access to personal papers and notes unavailable to previous biographers of Churchill.
Anyone familiar with Winston Churchill’s life will appreciate the difficulty inherent in compressing his remarkably eventful nine decades into a single volume. But Roberts seems to have accomplished the task with authority, clarity and precision. The book bursts with revealing observations and anecdotes and quickly proves a fruitful (if not effortless) reading experience.
Churchill is easy to lionize and while Roberts’s tome can occasionally feel like an instrument of praise, it is remarkably objective. The narrative critically embraces Churchill’s complexity and never fails to explore his personal faults as well as his professional mistakes. And the author’s attention to the lessons Churchill took from each misstep is as insightful as the description of the sins themselves.
The highlight of the biography for me: the final eighteen pages which are dedicated to the evaluation of Churchill’s life and legacy. Readers who may have overlooked or forgotten any of Churchill’s illustrious accomplishments or conspicuous flaws will find them carefully evaluated and fluently reviewed.
But in my experience, the very best biographies are found at the intersection of penetrating, insightful history and vibrant, captivating narrative. For all the well-deserved praise it has received, “Walking with Destiny” is superb as history but less successful as engaging literature.
Hardcore history enthusiasts might embrace a dry recitation of facts, but readers seeking a colorful exploration of Churchill’s life will find the narrative lamentably stiff. Anyone who has previously marveled at Churchill’s exceedingly interesting relationship with Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, will discover that much of the intangible magic surrounding their personal and professional connections is missing here.
Roberts does a remarkable job focusing on Churchill’s bubble – explaining what happened and often…but not always…why. But for readers new to Churchill and his surroundings this biography provides little context, almost no foreshadowing and only a fleeting sense of “the big picture.” As a result, this biography is most valuable to readers who are already familiar with Churchill’s life.
Overall, Andrew Roberts’s biography of Winston Churchill is a literary tale of two cities. Readers seeking a balanced, comprehensive and detailed history of Churchill’s life in a single volume will find this a biographical masterpiece. But anyone seeking to embrace this famously fascinating British politician through a narrative as captivating and colorful as Churchill himself are likely to find it somewhat disappointing.
Overall rating: 3¾ stars
Andrew Roberts’s biography “Churchill: Walking with Destiny” was published in the fall of 2018 and quickly became a bestseller in both the US and UK. Roberts is an award-winning British author and journalist who has written more than a dozen books including “Napoleon: A Life” (which inspired a BBC tv series), “The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War” and “House of Windsor.”
Within weeks of its release this book was hailed as one of the very best single-volume biographies of Winston Churchill ever published. Because this is the first biography of Churchill I’ve read, I am unable to offer an opinion on the matter. What is clear to me, however, is that Roberts’s biography of Churchill is magisterial, impressively thorough and keenly perceptive. It also benefits from the author’s access to personal papers and notes unavailable to previous biographers of Churchill.
Anyone familiar with Winston Churchill’s life will appreciate the difficulty inherent in compressing his remarkably eventful nine decades into a single volume. But Roberts seems to have accomplished the task with authority, clarity and precision. The book bursts with revealing observations and anecdotes and quickly proves a fruitful (if not effortless) reading experience.
Churchill is easy to lionize and while Roberts’s tome can occasionally feel like an instrument of praise, it is remarkably objective. The narrative critically embraces Churchill’s complexity and never fails to explore his personal faults as well as his professional mistakes. And the author’s attention to the lessons Churchill took from each misstep is as insightful as the description of the sins themselves.
The highlight of the biography for me: the final eighteen pages which are dedicated to the evaluation of Churchill’s life and legacy. Readers who may have overlooked or forgotten any of Churchill’s illustrious accomplishments or conspicuous flaws will find them carefully evaluated and fluently reviewed.
But in my experience, the very best biographies are found at the intersection of penetrating, insightful history and vibrant, captivating narrative. For all the well-deserved praise it has received, “Walking with Destiny” is superb as history but less successful as engaging literature.
Hardcore history enthusiasts might embrace a dry recitation of facts, but readers seeking a colorful exploration of Churchill’s life will find the narrative lamentably stiff. Anyone who has previously marveled at Churchill’s exceedingly interesting relationship with Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, will discover that much of the intangible magic surrounding their personal and professional connections is missing here.
Roberts does a remarkable job focusing on Churchill’s bubble – explaining what happened and often…but not always…why. But for readers new to Churchill and his surroundings this biography provides little context, almost no foreshadowing and only a fleeting sense of “the big picture.” As a result, this biography is most valuable to readers who are already familiar with Churchill’s life.
Overall, Andrew Roberts’s biography of Winston Churchill is a literary tale of two cities. Readers seeking a balanced, comprehensive and detailed history of Churchill’s life in a single volume will find this a biographical masterpiece. But anyone seeking to embrace this famously fascinating British politician through a narrative as captivating and colorful as Churchill himself are likely to find it somewhat disappointing.
Overall rating: 3¾ stars
June 30, 2021
Μεγάλοι άνδρες σαν τον Τσώρτσιλ με κάνουν να πιστεύω ότι ορισμένες φορές περπατούν υπερήρωες στη γη.
July 13, 2021
I just didn’t want this book to end.
January 19, 2021
Fifty hours on audiobook 😅 Again convinced that Churchill was the right man for the job at the right time. I appreciate that Roberts showed Churchill’s strengths and flaws. He was a fascinating combination of pugnacity, tender-hearted-ness, grit, conviction, humor, and generosity, to name just a few qualities.
Two things I’ve thought about since wrapping up the book: 1. I didn’t realize he and Clementine (wife) had lost a little daughter (2 yo) in 1921. I wonder about the everyday grief he must have lived with in the midst of his life and career. 2. Churchill had his “wilderness years” after the defeat of the Conservative party, when he was out of office, from 1929 until the start of WWII. It was a reminder that you never know what you’re being prepared for and how that preparation may look.
Two things I’ve thought about since wrapping up the book: 1. I didn’t realize he and Clementine (wife) had lost a little daughter (2 yo) in 1921. I wonder about the everyday grief he must have lived with in the midst of his life and career. 2. Churchill had his “wilderness years” after the defeat of the Conservative party, when he was out of office, from 1929 until the start of WWII. It was a reminder that you never know what you’re being prepared for and how that preparation may look.
October 13, 2018
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Andrew Roberts' five essays on Churchill that tie in with his new book about the man (which is called Churchill: Walking With Destiny).
During his lifetime he experienced 'very many brushes with death, even in peacetime' - and this shaped his thinking and instincts, and his belief that he would one day save the country from disaster...
Producer Duncan Minshull
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/m000...
Andrew Roberts' five essays on Churchill that tie in with his new book about the man (which is called Churchill: Walking With Destiny).
During his lifetime he experienced 'very many brushes with death, even in peacetime' - and this shaped his thinking and instincts, and his belief that he would one day save the country from disaster...
Producer Duncan Minshull
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/m000...
May 30, 2020
I spent 18 months reading this in fits and starts. It’s a big book, and not so deeply engrossing that it keeps pulling you back in. But it’s an excellent biography, evocative, detailed in the best ways, well written, and it served the purpose of taking me away to another time where overwhelming challenges were met relatively well with courage, leadership, and occasional touches of grace.
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