No comments about Lloyd George: The Young Lloyd George.

No comments about The Fate Of Major Andre: A Letter From Alexander Hamilton To John Laurens (1916).

No comments about Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-57.

No comments about Lloyd George (Profiles in Power).

2 comments about Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait (Leaders of our time).

1. Lady Violet Bonham Carter, the daughter of British Prime Minister Asquith, was a close personal friend of Winston Churchill for nearly 60 years. The value of this account is rooted in that fact for I dare say Winston had many admirers and critics but few personal, intimate friends with whom he would truly confide. Winston talked a lot about himself in letters and at dinner conversations. However, there aren't many glimpses of the ruminations behind that facade, save for those provided by Churchill himself, which then must be considered in the context that he was on stage from his earliest teen years and always playing to the crowd and history. In proof, let us borrow Lady Carter's quote of A. G. Gardiner who allegedly wrote that "in the theatre of his mind it is always the hour of fate and the crack of doom."
   
   This is a splendid little account from Lady Carter where she focuses on the period from 1906-1916, however, there are a few contextual items the reader should bear in mind. She was a confidante of the circles of power and British elite society. She led a privileged life in a particular period of English history following the heady days of Queen Victoria's Empire. She adored her father and Churchill.
   
   That being said, I found her portrait of Winston interesting and illuminating. She provides snippets of his emotions, self-doubts, ruminations, anxieties, comments, goals, ambitions, character and personality that are valuable because they are firsthand and connected to specific historical events. That adds to the mosaic of any tepid or serious study of Churchill. She is not critical but offers some analytical insight. For instance in discussing Winston's relationships with his servant and administrative staffs, she admits that "Winston might be-and indeed he was-exacting, arbitrary, often unreasonable and always inexhaustible. Yet he was also always human, and he was their friend." So, while she is clearly an adoring fan, it cannot be said that she is only fawning in this book.
   
   As you would expect, there is a graceful style to the prose and there are over 20 illustrations. It is not an exhaustive autobiography but her firsthand account offers these things to the student of Churchill - a woman's view; a social and political peer's view and a confidante's view. In the preface, Lady Carter quotes Gray's remark to Horace Walpole that "any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity." That is the value of Lady Carter's witness. You won't be disappointed.



2. and she was a personal friend of Winston Churchill, booster of his career, constant well-wisher, messenger, whisperer of secrets, conduit, facilitator, socialite, grande dame, and political operator in her own right. But these reminiscences add little to Churchill's legend, beyond shared moments when events in the background carried her along. She needed heros like Winston & her father (also a prime minister). She seems not to have noticed that, when Winston was most down, she wasn't there for him. The book IS "an intimate portrait," and it illuminates political and social life for British aristocrats in the early Twentieth Century; but I learned more from Lord Moran's biography and Churchill's own writings.

No comments about Churchill: Retreat from Empire.

No comments about W. E. Gladstone III: Autobiographical Memoranda, 1845-1866 (Prime Ministers' Papers).

No comments about Winston Churchill As I Knew Him.

1 comments about Winston Churchill in the Twenty First Century.

1. Ten historians contribute essays on different aspects of Churchill's long career, and in doing so they provide not only a summary of his life's work, but also a well-balanced and carefully argued review of his achievements.
   
   Hindsight played a big part in establishing Churchill's near-deification, which is understandable when you realise by what a "narrow margin" defeat was avoided in the summer and autumn of 1940. Quite properly, we all should realise what a comprehensive disaster defeat would have been.
   
   In the course of that recollection, much opprobrium has been heaped on "the appeasers" - Baldwin, Chamberlain and Halifax - who, at the time, were held in a very different light.
   
   Churchill's name has rightly become synonymous with the realisation that Hitler was not an ordinary nationalistic politician whose aim was to "right the wrongs" of the Treaty of Versailles, but something much more sinister.
   
   In his essay on "The Gathering Storm", David Reynolds not only delivers a much more nuanced view of the realities the country faced, he also makes riveting reading on Churchill`s method of writing his histories. For the most important fact which any historian faces in writing about Churchill is the very fact that Churchill got there first!
   
   He not only made history, he wrote it, and in some cases he adjusted it. As David Reynolds puts it:
   
   " ... it is a tribute both to his vision and his craftsmanship that many of his turning points (in The Gathering Storm) are the ones that scholars still ponder. ... Churchill was eminently successful in shaping the agenda."
   
   It was only after 1970, with the opening of archives, that Churchill's agenda came under closer scrutiny.
   
   Churchill's `lone' voice crusading against appeasement becomes "a complex bureaucratic battle to shift the government from its early ignorance and complacency about the growth of the Nazi airforce".
   
   Historian David Overy is cited as arguing that Churchill exaggerated German potential, but, as David Reynolds notes, Churchill almost admitted this when he wrote: " ... no doubt I painted the picture even darker than it was." Something he had done for what he believed to be the right reasons.
   
   The problem with the Churchill-as-tribal-deity approach is that it fails to look back on the long-term consequences of some of his decisions, and the reasons behind them.
   
   Take, for example, Churchill's relationship with America. In the nineteen months between becoming Prime Minister and Hitler's declaration of war on America, Churchill's sole aim was to bring the US into the war. There was in his view no other option.
   
   He played a dangerous game. What if Hitler had not declared war on America? Fortunately for all us, Hitler might as well have shot himself that day.
   
   However, the received wisdom that America's entry into the war was somehow the climax of Churchill's policy is simply untrue.
   
   Churchill's links with America, as is well known, were through his mother. And they must have been stronger than we thought. Because, as is revealed in this book, Churchill's dream was quite simply the re-uniting of Britain and America. (Page 155) This, for me, was new information.
   
   But it does explain a lot.
   
   It is not revisionism to argue, as John Charmley does, that Roosevelt (like Stalin) had his own agenda, and that agenda did not include the survival of the British Empire.
   
   However, as Eden complained, Churchill, apparently, had no post-war agenda, no war aims other than victory.
   
   This became a problem when, forced to choose between Roosevelt and de Gaulle, Churchill had no problem snubbing de Gaulle. But for the long-term future of Britain, it was a fateful decision.
   
   Visiting France for the Armistice Day ceremony in 1944, de Gaulle offered Churchill an Anglo-French treaty which would be the start of a western European alliance. The British Foreign Office were in favour. Eden was in favour. Churchill was not. De Gaulle did not forget, as Harold Macmillan found out when he was Premier.
   
   So there you have an alternative slant on Churchill's long-term gift to his country: the illusion of continuing great power status, the "special relationship" - which has been largely one-way traffic - and a marginal place in the European Union.
   
   Decisions taken during the Second World War continue to cast a long shadow over Britain.

2 comments about Dizzy: The Life and Nature of Benjamin Disraeli: Earl of Beaconsfield.

1. One of the most remarkable biographers in the XX century , H.K treats about the most fascinating , unique and dramatic personality of the Victorian Age .
   Pearson goes far beyond the dazzling parliamentarian threshold to show us the man such he is .
   Through a zealous research to get thoughts , statements , epigrammatic notes and discourses to infuse the reader the real impression of being listening the authentic conversations .
   Disraeli was a very clever politician in the widest sense of the word . He belongs to the reduced list of statesman in that convulsive middle ages of the XIX century . He knew how to deal with the changing times of nationalisms and Industrial Revolution consenting to England to the historic pinnacle .
   Specially recommended for all reader interested in knowing this crucial period in the England story.



2. This is an excellent biography of Benjamin D'Israeli. Pearson has nicely captured D'Israeli's life. He allows you to get to know D'Israeli during his many pursuits and love of travel. However, D'Israeli's written and political accomplishments are more so mentioned than that of his personal or private life. As a biography of a politician one may expect it to be very dry, but this is one biography that is not. If anyone is interested in D'Israeli and wants to be bombarded with dates and figures of his life than this is not the book to get, but if one is looking for a good read with a feeling of satisfaction at the end this is it.

   Happy Reading