Sydney M. Williams
April 24, 2019
Burrowing into Books
“Churchill: Walking with Destiny,” by Andrew Roberts
“Words spoken with fleeting breath, the
passing expressions of the unstable fancies of the mind,
endure not as echoes of the past, nor as
mere archeological curiosities or venerable relics, but
with a force and life as new and strong,
and sometimes far stronger, than when they were first
spoken, and leaping across the gulf of
three thousand years, they light the world for us today.”
Winston
Churchill (1874-1964)
February
1908, Author’s Club, London
Churchill was much more than
the man who saved England (and western civilization), though that was his
greatest gift. Over the course of his long life, he wrote thirty-seven books.
He produced 400 paintings. By the time he was 25, as Mr. Roberts tells us, Churchill
had written five books and fought in four wars on three continents. He was
brilliant and well-read. He could quote Roman generals, Scottish poets and
Anthony Trollope. He was the conscience of England during his years in the
wilderness, as Fascism, Nazism and Communism emerged as a consequence of the
Great War. He was a Victorian aristocrat who reflected the virtues of his age.
He believed in the Empire and bore a sense of noblesse oblige. But he was not a
snob.
In 1891, at age sixteen, Winston Churchill wrote “…it will fall to me to save the capital and save the Empire.” Almost
fifty years later, on becoming Prime Minister, he wrote in his diary: “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 this trial.”
Andrew Roberts clearly likes and respects his subject, but his love is not
blind. He recognizes his flaws. The reader is exposed to the naked man, not the
one clothed by adoring fans, nor the one dressed by those who found him vain,
mercurial, brilliant but without judgment. That Churchill’s could be strikingly
wrong can be seen in Robert’s description of Gallipoli, India’s bid for
independence, Mussolini, Spanish Nationalists and the abdication of Edward
VIII. But, as regards the greatest risk to face the free world in the first
half of the Twentieth Century, it was Churchill’s clairvoyance and
determination that saved European democracy and, in fact, the world.
Churchill loved the English language and became its master. At the
Author’s Club in 1908, Churchill spoke: “Someone
– I forget who – has said: ‘Words are the only thing which last forever.’ That
is, to my mind, always a wonderful thought.” During the Battle of Britain,
in October 1940, to the dismay of his wife Clementine and to those paid to keep
him safe, Churchill would ascend to the Annexe roof, wearing a great coat,
steel helmet and smoking a cigar: “When
my time is due, it will come. I take refuge beneath the impenetrable arch of
probability.” Early on, Churchill
recognized the importance of wooing President Roosevelt for Britain’s salvation
and for the cause of freedom: “No lover
ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.”
After FDR’s death, a teary-eyed Churchill said simply, “I loved that man.” In 1942, when Germany appeared invincible and
England was at its most vulnerable, Parliament voted on a motion of no
confidence, Churchill, viewing the scene, quipped that everyone “was as excited as a virgin being led to her
seducer’s bed.” As we all know, he survived the vote.
In 1914, the day before Antwerp surrendered, Churchill, then First Lord
of the Admiralty, asked Prime Minister Herbert Asquith for a military command.
Asquith granted his wish and described the 39-year-old Churchill to the British
socialite Venetia Stanley: “…He is a
wonderful creature, with a curious dash of schoolboy simplicity…and what
someone said of genius – ‘a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.’” He
foresaw Prussian militarism in 1914, Nazism in the 1930s and Soviet Communism
in the aftermath of World War II. Churchill led Britain while it fought Hitler
alone in 1940-1. He rejoiced when Hitler turned on the Soviet Union and when Germany
declared war on the U.S. He rallied his people during the dark days of 1941-42.
By the end of his life, Churchill had published 6.1 million words – more words
“than Shakespeare and Dickens combined,”
Roberts writes. He wrote another five million words that he used in speeches,
letters and memos. If that weren’t enough, Churchill read deeply in history and
literature, became an accomplished artist, constructed brick walls at Chartwell
Manor, and collected butterflies.
We are witness to his complicated relations with his father, a man he
always tried to please, but always felt he fell short. Lord Randolph appeared
in a dream in 1947, as his son was painting in his studio. He tells his father
that he makes his living as a writer but doesn’t tell him of his wartime
premiership. His father is unimpressed. Yet Winston Churchill achieved a
greatness surpassing not only his father, but also that of his two great
heroes, Napoleon and John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, the
recipient of Blenheim and his illustrious ancestor.
Andrew Roberts has given us a fascinating,
comprehensive and readable biography of Winston Churchill, perhaps the greatest
man of the Twentieth Century. We are taken from his cello-playing youth when
Victoria reigned over the Empire, through his speeches and travels during the
Second World War to honorary citizen of the United States in April 1963, less
than two years before his death. Don’t let the book’s size intimidate you. It is
worth its weight in reading pleasure.
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