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The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz Hardcover – February 25, 2020
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“One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
- Print length608 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateFebruary 25, 2020
- Dimensions6.41 x 1.47 x 9.52 inches
- ISBN-100385348711
- ISBN-13978-0385348713
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Published in the midst of one of the greatest international crises since World War II, Larson’s new book tells the story of London facing the Blitz during that war through the characters of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, members of his family and his various advisers. Readers are left with an indelible portrait of a nation coming together to face a brutal assault from German bombs under leadership that is wise, empathetic and strategic—not to mention highly witty and charming.”—Time
“Erik Larson, in his suspenseful new book, The Splendid and the Vile, captures the foreboding that settled on London leading up to the bombardment, as well as Churchill’s determination not to give in. . . . Plus, there is Larson’s reliable, cinematic writing and his intimate portrayal of Churchill.”—The New Yorker
“An enthralling page-turner.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“A damn good story. There are narrative arcs, heroes, villains, and suspense aplenty to craft the kind of rich, immersive histories that have become Larson’s trademark.”—Rolling Stone
“This is Erik Larson’s moment. His affecting and affectionate chronicle of the Churchill family during the Blitz, the Nazi World War II bombing campaign against Great Britain, has found a hungry audience in the United States.”—The Boston Globe
“Through the remarkably skillful use of intimate diaries as well as public documents, some newly released, Larson has transformed the well-known record of 12 turbulent months, stretching from May of 1940 through May of 1941, into a book that is fresh, fast and deeply moving.”—Candice Millard, The New York Times Book Review
“Larson’s book offers a delicious slice of life of the world’s last great statesman.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Fascinating . . . The entire book comes at the reader with breakneck speed. So much happened so quickly in those 12 months, yet Larson deftly weaves all the strands of his tale into a coherent and compelling whole.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“I have an early copy of this book on my desk and idly began reading the first pages—and suddenly time disappeared.”—The Seattle Times
“Still, it is a time of sadness, fear, grief and uncertainty for so many, and I find myself comforted by reading about other supremely challenging times in human history, and about resilience, and hope. For this, there is no better book right now than The Splendid and the Vile.”—Mackenzie Dawson, New York Post
“Nonfiction king Erik Larson is back.”—PopSugar
“Spectacular . . . Larson, as America’s most compelling popular historian, is at his best in this fast-moving, immensely readable, and even warmhearted account of the battle to save Britain.”—The Christian Science Monitor
"What sets [Larson's] work apart is his signature way of using painstaking research through personal journals and historical records to spin a gripping nonfiction tale through the ordinary lives of the men and women who succeeded, failed, and perished as a result.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“The Splendid and the Vile delivers the great saga with a novelist’s touch. It’s like you’re watching and hearing the days and nights of 1940 as a passenger on a double-decker London bus.”—Chris Matthews, Churchill Bulletin
“The popular historian Erik Larson has done it again. As I read this book, I kept wondering what the swelling of powerful emotion was that I felt, sometimes in an almost physical sense.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, in Air Mail
“A propulsive, character-driven account of Winston Churchill’s first year as British prime minister . . . Readers will rejoice.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The day was warm and still, the sky blue above a rising haze. Temperatures by afternoon were in the nineties, odd for London. People thronged Hyde Park and lounged on chairs set out beside the Serpentine. Shoppers jammed the stores of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. The giant barrage balloons overhead cast lumbering shadows on the streets below. After the August air raid when bombs first fell on London proper, the city had retreated back into a dream of invulnerability, punctuated now and then by false alerts whose once-terrifying novelty was muted by the failure of bombers to appear. The late-summer heat imparted an air of languid complacency. In the city’s West End, theaters hosted twenty-four productions, among them the play Rebecca, adapted for the stage by Daphne du Maurier from her novel of the same name. Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was also playing in London, as were the films The Thin Man and the long-running Gaslight.
It was a fine day to spend in the cool green of the countryside.
Churchill was at Chequers. Lord Beaverbrook departed for his country home, Cherkley Court, just after lunch, though he would later try to deny it. John Colville had left London the preceding Thursday, to begin a ten-day vacation at his aunt’s Yorkshire estate with his mother and brother, shooting partridges, playing tennis, and sampling bottles from his uncle’s collection of ancient port, in vintages dating to 1863. Mary Churchill was still at Breccles Hall with her friend and cousin Judy, continuing her reluctant role as country mouse and honoring their commitment to memorize one Shakespeare sonnet every day. That Saturday she chose Sonnet 116—in which love is the “ever-fixed mark”—and recited it to her diary. Then she went swimming. “It was so lovely—joie de vivre overcame vanity.”
Throwing caution to the winds, she bathed without a cap.
---
In Berlin that Saturday morning, Joseph Goebbels prepared his lieutenants for what would occur by day’s end. The coming destruction of London, he said, “would probably represent the greatest human catastrophe in history.” He hoped to blunt the inevitable world outcry by casting the assault as a deserved response to Britain’s bombing of German civilians, but thus far British raids over Germany, including those of the night before, had not produced the levels of death and destruction that would justify such a massive reprisal.
He understood, however, that the Luftwaffe’s impending attack on London was necessary and would likely hasten the end of the war. That the English raids had been so puny was an unfortunate thing, but he would manage. He hoped Churchill would produce a worthy raid “as soon as possible.”
Every day offered a new challenge, tempered now and then by more pleasant distractions. At one meeting that week, Goebbels heard a report from Hans Hinkel, head of the ministry’s Department for Special Cultural Tasks, who’d provided a further update on the status of Jews in Germany and Austria. “In Vienna there are 47,000 Jews left out of 180,000, two-thirds of them women and about 300 men between 20 and 35,” Hinkel reported, according to minutes of the meeting. “In spite of the war it has been possible to transport a total of 17,000 Jews to the south-east. Berlin still numbers 71,800 Jews; in future about 500 Jews are to be sent to the south-east each month.” Plans were in place, Hinkel reported, to remove 60,000 Jews from Berlin in the first four months after the end of the war, when transportation would again become available. “The remaining 12,000 will likewise have disappeared within a further four weeks.”
This pleased Goebbels, though he recognized that Germany’s overt anti-Semitism, long evident to the world, itself posed a significant propaganda problem. As to this, he was philosophical. “Since we are being opposed and calumniated throughout the world as enemies of the Jews,” he said, “why should we derive only the disadvantages and not also the advantages, i.e. the elimination of the Jews from the theater, the cinema, public life and administration. If we are then still attacked as enemies of the Jews we shall at least be able to say with a clear conscience: It was worth it, we have benefited from it.”
---
The Luftwaffe came at teatime . . .
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; First Edition (February 25, 2020)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 608 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385348711
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385348713
- Item Weight : 2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.41 x 1.47 x 9.52 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #7,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in U.K. Prime Minister Biographies
- #10 in WWII Biographies
- #44 in World War II History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Erik Larson is the author of six previous national bestsellers—The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than twelve million copies. His books have been published in nearly forty countries.
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The Splendid and the Vile is the story of the London Blitz, the Churchill family, and London’s defiance of Nazi Germany. The book delves into not only the politics of the times and the brutality of the war, but it also delves into the personal lives of Churchill’s family and friends. It was an interesting entire picture of the one pivotal year in history.
Erik Larson is a fantastic non-fiction author. I have previously read and enjoyed The Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck. I like how his books are immensely readable. They read like fiction but are non-fiction. I learned so many interesting things in this book. But by also writing about the person lives of Churchill, family, and friends, I found myself laughing at times, and struck with horror at other times. I felt for them and their trials and tribulations. The chapters were short which I prefer and also included German perspectives at the time.
I didn’t realize the Germans defeated the French line and invaded France almost immediately after Churchill became the prime minister. The book had you feeling dread as you realized that the Germans were making their way through France at a much faster rate than anyone had anticipated. How would they get their soldiers back to England? How will they save themselves from invasion? How would they arm themselves and make aircraft to stave off the impending invasion? I loved how Churchill found the best person for the job in one of his friends to get aircraft manufactured . . . and hidden around the country.
One thing I realized over and over again when I read this book was how Churchill was the perfect leader for his time. He was able to gather the best people around him to get the work done and he was able to keep the hope up in the people of England that they could be victorious. He traveled to bombed out areas and met personally with those impacted. He had empathy and felt their pain. He also worked slowly, but surely on Franklin Roosevelt to get him vested in England’s cause as he realized they couldn’t win in the long run without help from the United States. He definitely had eccentric behavior that was humorous, but he was a great leader during very trying times. I wish we could have such a leader.
Churchill’s wife Clementine was the perfect partner who helped him to host events and wasn’t afraid to tell him how she felt about things. She also made a personal tour of bomb shelters and noted what they needed for updates, with specific care for sanitation. As an environmental engineer, I thought this section was fascinating, but I also loved as a wife, that the had such a great partnership that Clementine could do these things on her own, report back to Winston, and he could get improvements through.
There were certain episodes in the book that I just can’t get out of my mind. Like a singer that was running late and got to his night club right on time to be bombed and killed. Or the love affairs that sprang up between assorted people living through harrowing times.
I somehow had no idea that Rudolph Hess flew from Germany and crash landed in Scotland to try to make a peace treaty. I had heard of him but had no idea about this episode and what ultimately happened to him. This would make a great story on its own or even better, an alternative fictional story where he succeeds.
Favorite Quotes:
“No one had any doubt that the bombers would come.”
“Whatever Winston’s shortcomings, he seems to be the man for the occasion. His spirit is indomitable and even if France and England should be lost, I feel like he would carry on the crusade himself with a band of privateers.”
“Here, as in other speeches, Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and above all, more courageous.”
“Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
“Afterward, as Churchill, Clementine, and the others emerged on the steps of the university, a large crowd surged forward, cheering. And at that instant, in a singular moment of meteorological synchronicity, the sun broke through the clouds.”
Overall, The Splendid and the Vile is non-fiction at it’s finest and most thrilling. It’s a story of humanity also at it’s greatest with strong leadership and a people willing to face long odds to keep their country free. I loved it.
Book Source: Purchased from Amazon.com
Although the book is well-documented non-fiction, it reads like a novel. The impressions that present in form of dialogue documented in published papers and books in addition to quotations from the diaries and journals of Churchill's family and subordinates as well as the recorded wartime impressions from more both famous literary figures and more ordinary Englishpeople.
Larson does an excellent job detailing the nuances of numerous relationships in the book without making the book overly complicated or confusing. The way he chronicles Churchill's courtship of Roosevelt is fascinating; as are the relationships of Pamela Digby Churchill (Harriman), his daughter cinemas, who carried out an affair with W. Averell Harriman, Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and subsequently, Station. (In a fascinating turn of events, Pamela and Harriman end up marrying each other much later in life). Detailed portrayals of the people surrounding Churchill are fascinating, and Larson explores Churchill's relationships with the people surrounding him, rather like planets orbiting the sun. Winston Churchill, who carried the weight of Great Britain (and some would say the free world) during WWIi, was an interesting, complex, and brilliant man, though certainly flawed. As a leader, he rose
to a challenge that seemed insurmountable. Churchill had the ability to inspire people that few could match. Extraordinarily, this ability was perhaps matched by one of his contemporaries, F.D.R. Without these two men as leaders during WWII, it is questionable whether democracy would have prevailed at the conclusion of the war. Erik Larson's The Splendid and Vile captures his subject, Winston Churchill, in a brilliant and interesting way. I highly recommend this book.
I loved this book and was sad when I came to its end. I was familiar of course of Winston Churchill and his place in history in rote history books, his oratory skills and his many quips, but after reading this book I have a much better sense of the man. There have been things he had done that I thought were awful but having read this book I became familiar with the human not just the statesman. Like all humans he was flawed and having seen his human side it allowed me to cut him some slack and appreciate deeply the man he was.
Top reviews from other countries
This is a story that has been told many times, of the events to knock Great Britain out of WW II using air power - The Blitz as it has been described. I've read a good number of books on this topic as well as most of the major sources around Winston Churchill. I was pleased to see a new view of the historic events described from a different perspective with several story arcs tying the facts to what people were experiencing.
The story mostly focuses on those close to Churchill with some additional material from diarists and minor embellishment to the facts around some of the many lives lost - much more interesting to get some minor feel for a person than to learn of their death as another number.
I enjoyed finding that the title comes from paraphrasing a diarist's entry and it was fun to find it and remember reading their memoirs many years ago.
It builds on works previously published, using first source material and keeping the major events in place while adding a new look at some of the more mundane aspects of life to deliver a story that shows the ordinary and extraordinary coexisting against the backdrop of war. The sources, bibliography and index were excellent.
Despite the many story arcs presented, I had no problem keeping it straight over the intermittent reading of the story.
A very satisfying read.