Lukacs J. Churchill Visionary. Statesman. Historian
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[154] His failures. His critics.
sions.” The difference between John Charmley and David Ir-
ving may be a difference of degree; it may not be quite enough
for a difference in kind.
Churchill had his faults. He had his sycophants, and oppor-
tunists rallied to his side when that seemed timely. His greatest
virtue was his magnanimity. “Bygones are bygones,” he said,
again and again. He forgave many, much, and easily. He was
often moved to tears, of which he was not ashamed. His daugh-
ter wrote to him in 1951: “It is hardly in the nature of things that
your descendants should inherit your genius—but I earnestly
hope that they may share in some way the qualities of your
heart.”*
* Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Boston, 1988, 8:
1365.
8
Two recent biographies
In the first year of the twenty-first century two significant bi-
ographies of Churchill appeared. They are different; their au-
thors’ inspirations to write them were different. But perhaps
it is therefore that they are significant. Why this continued
interest in Churchill? What is it that appeals to a Liberal Dem-
ocrat (formerly Labour) politician; or to a professional histo-
rian whose previous books were devoted to British history in
other, earlier centuries?
Roy Jenkins’s Churchill is essentially a political biography.*
Geoffrey Best’s Churchill: A Study in Greatness is a study of
character.† Jenkins had written a massive biography of Glad-
stone. When he started his Churchill, he writes at the end,
I thought that Gladstone was, by a narrow margin, the
greater man, certainly the more remarkable specimen of hu-
manity. In the course of writing it I have changed my mind.
* Roy Jenkins, Churchill, London, 2001.
† Geoffrey Best, Churchill: A Study in Greatness, London, 2001.
[155]
[156] Two recent biographies
I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indul-
gences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his
tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful
or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human
being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street. (912)
A Study in Greatness is the subtitle of Best’s excellent book.
Still: what is “greatness”? What kind of greatness?
At the very beginning of his book Jenkins estimates the
number of those who have written on and around Churchill
as “somewhere between 50 and 100” (ix). In 2001 a research
librarian informed me that “in a broad sense—that is, not just
biographies but also works of history, fiction, juvenile litera-
ture, and works that may be about them but also about other
individuals”—books about Churchill in the United States
amounted to 283, in Canada 206, in Britain 652, in the Library
of Congress 736. In every one of these statistics (including Brit-
ain) books about Hitler outnumber those about Churchill, of-
ten two to one; so do books about Roosevelt (except for Canada
and Britain); except for the Library of Congress, Stalin runs
fourth, behind Churchill. There is an odd whiff of reality in
these computerized and otherwise meaningless statistics. Had
it not been for Hitler, in the history of Britain (not to speak of
the world) Churchill would have been a perhaps interesting
but surely secondary figure: and we may presume that Roy
Jenkins would have not chosen him for the subject of a monu-
mental biography, as he had done for Gladstone and Asquith.
Had it not been for Hitler . . . For a long time most people
were inclined to think that, of course, Churchill was brave and
resolute in 1940, but, after all, Hitler was bound to lose the
Two recent biographies [157]
war. That he was not bound to lose it, that in 1940 and 1941
he had come very near to winning it, has become gradually
apparent to more people than a few specialist military histori-
ans. Churchill knew that in the marrow of his bones—which
explains much of his strategy, including his constant and fear-
ful appreciation of the fighting abilities of the Germans.
There has been a recent tendency to describe Churchill as
complicated and elusive. Complicated he may have been, but
elusive? Not at all. Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin were much more
secretive than was Churchill, who spurted out many of his in-
nermost thoughts and speculations to his staff, indeed to
whomever was listening. As Jenkins puts it, “Churchill’s life
was singularly lacking in inhibition or concealment” (xi). That
was, is, and certainly remains an asset for his biographers.
In his preface Jenkins writes: “I can at least claim to be the
only octogenarian who has ventured to write about Churchill.”
His book is too long, but there is not much that is aged and
creaky in his writing. Jenkins’s ear shows none of the aural
deficiencies of old age; he knows well who to listen to and then
cite and when. (Churchill circa 1907: “I refuse to be shut up
in a soup kitchen with Mrs. Sidney Webb” [108].) Jenkins has
a few memorable phrases of his own (example: Churchill’s de-
cision to sink the French warships at Oran: “Nearly anyone
else would have let sleeping ships lie, and hoped vaguely for
the best” [624]).
To the above-cited prefatory sentence Jenkins adds: “I sup-
pose I can also claim to have had the widest parliamentary and
ministerial experience of his biographers.” Yes, but there is
some trouble with that. Early in his career Churchill, ac-
[158] Two recent biographies
cording to Jenkins, “showed slight signs of parliamentary in-
continence” (74). There are marks of literary incontinence in
this book. Jenkins displays too much of his knowledge of par-
liamentary history; too many quotes from Gladstone and As-
quith; too many comparisons of electoral arithmetic; there are
long pages that deal not with Churchill but with the Conserva-
tive Party; there is too much about the Churchills’ relationship
with his literary agent, Reves (and Mrs. Reves). There is also
a surprising intrusion of recent Americanisms (“networking,”
“upwardly mobile,” “window of opportunity”), and an often
unnecessary sprinkling of French phrases, sometimes mis-
spelled.
They do not much matter. The book could have been cut,
but its main merit is a comprehension of Churchill’s complex-
ity—no, not elusiveness! (About his parents: “It is remarkable
that the offspring of two such old libertines should have made
one of the most famously long-lasting and faithful marriages
in history” [136].) There is a duality in every human being, but
a balanced judgment of that is perhaps the best evidence of a
biographer’s talent. Jenkins understands this. Here is a prime
example of his treatment of what is perhaps the duality in
Churchill’s character: the hedonist and the warrior. In De-
cember 1944 Churchill, weary and worn, chose to forgo the
pleasure of a quiet Christmas with his family and flew off to
a cold and dark scene in Greece. That was, to Jenkins,
the triumph of duty over pleasure, and that, in spite of his
self-indulgent tastes, was part of the pattern of his life.
Whenever the two came into head-on conflict, if the issue
was big enough, he always came down on the dutiful side.
Two recent biographies [159]
And this, like a lot of obvious explanations, contains a large
part of the truth, although not all of it. Duty always had a
most powerful ally in the shape of his desire to be at the
centre of events, his preference of danger over boredom, for
risk over inertia. (771)
This is very good. Jenkins also knows the limitations of some
of Churchill’s contemporary critics. On that most dramatic of
days, 18 June 1940, a day, too, of one of Churchill’s greatest
speeches, Jenkins quotes the acerbic Alec Cadogan: “Winston
not there—writing his speech.” “He might as well have com-
plained that Lincoln did not apply himself to some minor
piece of White House business on the morning of the Gettys-
burg Address” (621). He is also right about the Alanbrooke dia-
ries: “Brooke’s exasperation with Churchill, although com-
bined with underlying respect, sometimes conjoined with his
natural asperity to make his comments on the Prime Minister
unduly harsh” (734–735).
Jenkins knew Churchill; he was involved in British political
life for decades. Best, now a retired professor in Oxford, had
never met Churchill—except mentally, but that made all the
difference in the world. He had admired Churchill when he
was very young, and then chose to write a life of his revered
hero almost a half-century later. Yet his book is not a hagi-
ography but a starry accomplishment. He read and pon-
dered. “And all through those years I could not help becoming
aware that [Churchill was] a more complicated and, in some
respects, a more contradictory character than, way back in the
first place, I would have thought possible” (x). Churchill once
said: “I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes.”
[160] Two recent biographies
Appropriately, this is the motto of Best’s book: perhaps the
best one-volume—and not unduly long—biography of Chur-
chill.
It is very well written; it is comprehensive; and it is marked
by the modesty and the sureness of its author—an attractive
and unusual combination of qualities. “I have been pleased to
adopt other writers’ judgements when they have said things
better than I could have done or have at any rate said them
first. . . . Regarding the many aspects of Churchill’s life which
have become matters of persisting controversy, however, I
have enjoyed making my own mind up” (xi). One of his empha-
ses is that Churchill was a democratic war leader, who re-
spected the War Cabinet and the House of Commons.
There are at least two unusual assets in Best’s Churchill. One
of them is his interest in and his extensive treatment of the
private Churchill and of his family life. Here, for example, is
a fine description of Churchill as he had become in the late
1920s:
In personal terms, he was now well into his fifties and had
acquired a more impressive presence than when he was
younger. The body was a bit bulkier, the rather large balding
head on top of it less disproportionate than it once had
been; his face was fatter, readily delivering the chubby,
saucy looks which encouraged the impression that he was
always good-humoured and nice to everybody. In fact, he
was not always nice to everybody. (142)
Best puts a valuable, and important, emphasis on the person
of Clementine Churchill, and what she meant to her husband.
Two recent biographies [161]
She was a steadying influence often through his life. It was an
extraordinary marriage. There were passing problems, at times
magisterially summed up by Best: “Churchill enormously en-
joyed his time at the Admiralty. (How much Clementine en-
joyed it is another matter)” (43). But Churchill’s love for his
wife endured and endured, while it “was deep and disinter-
ested from the start . . . demonstrated to the material-minded,
commonplace members of Edwardian Society by his marrying
a relatively indigent young woman.” (Best cites, among others,
Beatrice Webb, who, mirabile dictu, wrote in her diary in 1908
of lunch “with Winston C. and his bride—a charming lady,
well bred and pretty, and earnest withal—but not rich, by no
means a good match, which is to Winston’s credit”) (29).
The other, perhaps unusual, quality of Best’s character
study derives from this erudite professor’s knowledge of litera-
ture (as already evident in Best’s excellent Mid-Victorian Brit-
ain, 1971). He understands how a novelist’s—or a poet’s—
words and phrases may enrich a historical narrative; as Alfred
Duff Cooper once wrote, “the penetrating eye of genius can
discern much that remains elusive to the patient researches of
a historian.” Geoffrey Best’s researches and reading were
surely patient, but he also had the eye—and the ear—to find
and respond to the penetrating words of genius. Thus his
evocative narrative of Churchill’s funeral, which he ends with
a reminiscence that I had missed in my memories with which
this book will end. “For the millions whose link with the fu-
neral had to be television, the most unforgettable moment was
probably (as it certainly was for me) the great cranes along the
south side of the stretch of the river between Tower Bridge
[162] Two recent biographies
and London Bridge, dipping their masts in tribute as the
launch went by ‘like giants bowed in anxious thought’ ” (327).
“Like giants bowed in anxious thought”! Those were
Churchill’s words describing the somber movement of the
great ships of the First Fleet through the English Channel on
28 July 1914. They must have lit a spark in Best’s eye on that
dark January afternoon in 1965; they must have rung in Best’s
ear as he was laying down his pen, ending his book. He knew
an immortal passage when he read one.
9
Churchill’s funeral
Churchill died on 24 January 1965 (sixty years to the day that
his father had died in 1895). I was a visiting professor in the
University of Toulouse, in France. I was suddenly impelled to
fly to London for Churchill’s funeral. My wife was not allowed
to fly; but I brought my son, then eight years old, to have his
memory of a great historic event. Here is my very personal,
and perhaps unduly sentimental, account of our three days in
London.
January Twenty-Ninth
Friday
It is a very quiet London, a humdrum day. No sense of crowds,
no excitement, no feeling of something big and ceremonial.
Even at the airport there are not many people; it is a winter
arrival day; the kings and the prime ministers are chauffered
away quickly, silently; there is little of that raincoated and
gumsoled rushing around them of slovenly photographers
with their hanging ogling equipment. The English are, of
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