Review of Churchill, Walking with Destiny. Andrew Roberts. Published by Allen Lane.
Reviewed By Barry Gough
I WAS ASTONISHED recently in discussion with persons of my own advanced age to find that they had forgotten, if ever they had known, the name of Sir Winston Churchill. I should not be surprised. We move through time and space with reckless abandon. We are all obsessed with the present now, and the first half of the 20th century is a distant memory. All the same, remarkable figures resonate still: Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Mackenzie King, and de Gaulle come to mind. But none is more significant than Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965). Over one thousand biographies have been written about him. Yet he remains an enigmatic figure. As with Shakespeare, play him how we will, we shall never reach the bottom. He was of his times but not typical of them. “We are all worms,” he told Violet Asquith early in the century, “but I do believe that I am a glow worm.” As a subject for biographical and historical study he bestrides his age like a colossus, and will forever be the subject of inquiry and of fascination by those who care about supreme direction in war and peace and the future of freedom and democracy.
Andrew Roberts gives evidence that in recent times one in five British teenagers thought Churchill to be a fictional character. In the survey, taken in 2008, about half of them thought Sherlock Holmes and Eleanor Rigby were real people. “Of course this is an indictment of the virtual excising of Churchill from the school curriculum,” writes our biographer, who adds, with wisdom, “but in a sense it is also a tribute that people think of him, insofar as they know about him at all, as someone whose life story could not possibly be true, someone who has achieved the status of myth.” And, yes, says Roberts, it all seems so improbable that a single person could have lived such an extraordinary life.
We are reminded also of Churchill’s background as a British statesman. His mother was a New York heiress (though it turned out not quite wealthy enough), the beautiful and promiscuous Jennie Jerome. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough, was briefly a powerful figure in in the Conservative party but with self-destructing tendencies was dead at forty-five. After Royal Military College Sandhurst, Winston served in various Imperial campaigns as a subaltern and as an “embedded” journalist. Gaining fame by escaping from the Boers during the South African War, he was elected to Parliament in 1900. After holding various offices he became First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15). From 1929 until the outbreak of the Second World War he was out of office, though he remained the MP for Epping. When that war began, he was again appointed to the Admiralty. In 1940 he replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, becoming head of an all-party coalition government. In the election of July 1945 he was turned out of office but came back to the premiership in the election of 1951 (there until 1955). He remained a Member of Parliament until 1964. When he died, age 90, he was the greatest national figure since the Duke of Wellington, on whose funeral his was based. He was past all evaluation. He was laid to rest in a parish graveyard close to his birthplace of Blenheim Palace. His “finest hour” was 1940 when his remarkable powers of oratory and outstanding qualities as a leader made him the personification of British resistance to tyranny and the symbol of the free world’s opposition to Nazi German brutality. The radical British historian A.J.P. Taylor, writing on the weekend of Churchill’s funeral, called him “the saviour of his country.” Many others, even if they agreed, regarded him with suspicion for his overbearing ways, meddling in other departments, variable judgment, and political unreliability as he twice shifted parties.
All these matters, and more, are covered in Andrew Roberts’s biography. Churchill, he points out, was capable of doing himself great harm in the House of Commons. Well known is the case of March 8, 1916 when he inexplicably called for the return of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher as First Sea Lord after Fisher had been indirectly responsible for taking Churchill out of the Admiralty by refusing to serve under him. “I can’t out-argue you,” was Jacky Fisher’s famous line to his late political master. It was a classic fight between professional and political Service heads. Roberts makes another strong point of Churchill’s plea in the House on Dec. 7, 1936 to give Edward VIII more time over his intended Abdication. MPs shouted him down and Churchill left in anger, shouting to prime minister Stanley Baldwin, “You won’t be satisfied until you’ve broken him, will you?” In a flash, Churchill’s patient work at self-restoration on rearmament and foreign policy after the humiliation of defeat in his campaign against Indian self-government was undone. Churchill, says Roberts, misread his relationship to the King, whom he did not really know; and his staunch defence of the monarch seemed more an attempt to bring down Baldwin. Churchill often exhibited sentimental loyalty — to the King in this last case, and to Fisher in the former. When the Duke of Windsor, as Edward VIII became, said goodbye to Churchill on December 11, the day of Abdication, “there were tears in his eyes. I can still see him standing at the door; his hand in one hand, stick in the other ... tapping out the solemn measure with his walking stick [and reciting to himself] “He nothing common did or mean/Upon that memorable scene,” Andrew Marvell’s lines on the beheading of King Charles I. Churchill suffered damage in such events, but they also reinforced his individualistic position in life.
ROBERTS'S MASSIVE work is based on a thorough mastery of the historical literature on Churchill. As a guide, he has, like everyone else, the formidable eight-volume official biography and companion volumes (not yet complete) of the late Sir Martin Gilbert. There are collections of speeches, notably Sir Robert Rhodes James’s eight volumes, also Churchill’s essays. Churchill himself and his son Randolph published several such volumes during his lifetime. Roberts’s bibliography is strong but necessarily selective. Richard Langworth produced the best book on Churchill’s books, A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Works of Sir Winston Churchill (1998), a useful ready reference for many of the materials. Roberts adds forty new sources but these, though welcome, do not change the general understanding of the interplay of Churchill’s character and circumstance. But they do demonstrate Roberts’s vast capacity as a biographer. His earlier studies, of Salisbury, Halifax, Wellington, Napoleon, and Hitler, mark him out as a leading British writer in the modern field. Those of us who have followed Churchill as a subject of biography retain our favourite works. Most approve of Gilbert, though deplore his lack of analysis and commentary; others approve of Roy Jenkins because he understands the working of Parliament and cabinet government; still others approve or eviscerate John Charmley who often inverted what were then conventional arguments. Still others prefer sweeping surveys such as A.L. Rowse on all the Churchills or particular themes such as Sir John Colville’s The Churchillians. I myself have yet to find a rival to William Manchester’s first two volumes of The Last Lion. We all have our preferences.
Roberts tells his story with wit and grace. His pages are crowded with detail but even so compression is his wont and need since he has so much to cover. Deciding what to exclude in a one-volume work, however big, must have been a major concern in the years it took to complete this magnificent and compelling account. But he has been well served by an excellent editor, by those who compiled the many maps (which well help the reader and the text) and the admirable index, an item that is seldom mentioned. The book is handsomely illustrated, including colour reproductions of some of Churchill’s paintings (his highly pleasurable pastime). The Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, was of immeasurable help and also the National Churchill Center Library and Museum at George Washington University, D.C. Churchillians worldwide will celebrate the achievements of Roberts, because, as I have often said, “When you are among Churchillians you are among friends.” Roberts is our universal friend and guide. But he stands on the shoulders of giants.
Like many other historians, Roberts regards Churchill as an outsider and a misfit who found the right place at the right time. History was Churchill’s guide, and his experience as a soldier, journalist and politician strengthened his purpose. From the days of his youthful novel Savrola (1900) he believed that fate was on his side. Late in the night after becoming prime minister he went to bed with “a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions 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.” There was another time Churchill was glad to be alone, and his thoughts were far less happy. This was Dec. 10, 1941, after the sinking of the capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse that he had sent to defend Singapore; lacking air cover they were the victims of Japanese naval aircraft. Roberts is open to question in saying that modern scholarship has largely absolved Churchill of blame for the disaster. Captain Stephen Roskill made it quite clear in his official history The War at Sea and even more in his Churchill and the Admirals that Churchill misunderstood the situation and exhibited self-defence mechanisms of the highest order in trying in vain to change Roskill’s official account. I have told the story in Historical Dreadnoughts. Churchill was always good at deflecting criticism. Quick to claim praise, he seldom accepted blame. Canadians are particularly well aware that no one in command, including Churchill as supreme war leader, wanted to take responsibility for the August 1942 Dieppe catastrophe. Roberts does not pay any attention to it; nor does he mention the embarrassment of the abortive Free French-British attempt in September 1940 attempt to seize Dakar, the important base for Atlantic shipping on the far coast of West Africa, from the Vichy government.
Churchill may have been good at many things, above all inspiration, but supreme war direction was not always among them. It was good that he had professional military advisers such as General Sir Alan Brooke (later Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke) and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound to keep him in harness. After Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he also had to contend with Roosevelt and American service professionals and the demands of Stalin for more supplies, a second front in northern Europe to relieve the pressure on Soviet forces and an assurance of control of Eastern Europe. Churchill dreamed of schemes that were impossible to implement, to bring into being; but he had plenty of imagination, constantly challenged the views of others and always had an eye to the future. Above all he was present at the right time.
CHURCHILL MAY HAVE been “walking with destiny” but the times, as if by magic, favoured him. He was born in the era of Victoria, the Queen-Empress, lived through five other reigns, dying in that of Elizabeth II. With two world wars, the cold war and much else, these were eventful years. Early on, in the high noon of empire, he asked the Liberal statesman Sir William Harcourt what to expect of the future and Harcourt replied that nothing really seemed to happen. Recalling the encounter Churchill wrote that ever since there had been no end of momentous events. It was Churchill’s lot and keen desire to take part in many of them and record their significance from his perspective. As Roberts makes clear, Churchill in his memoirs and accounts of the two world wars, The World Crisis and The Second World War, was bringing forth his case and unfolding history as he saw it. As seen in the case of Roskill, he distrusted official historians, their detached perspective from decision-making, and their at least implicit criticism. His histories were his own the first line of defence. Churchill paved the way to eternal fame by writing brilliant, inside accounts of his own times. Historians choose their subjects and necessarily have to select evidence. Churchill brought this to a high art, but as Robin Prior and David Reynolds have carefully dissected, Churchill had a rare capacity for selective thinking and the choosing and omitting of events and documents to support his case. Roberts dismisses Churchill’s depression, “the black dog” as he like Samuel Johnson called it. But the relationship between leadership under stress and even literary creativity to mental qualities, however unlikely they seem, is an important subject for investigation.
Roberts ends his massive account of Churchill’s volatile life and eternal reputation with a brilliant discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of his subject. This alone is worth the patient reading of so many situations and imaginings in Churchill’s life. Roberts’s perceptions demonstrate the high qualities and insights of an outstanding biographer. There will never be an end to biographies of the irresistible subject of Churchill but this will be hard to supplant.
This article originally appeared in The Dorchester Review Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring-Summer 2019, pp. 3-8. Barry Gough is the author of Churchill and Fisher: Titans at the Admiralty (2017) and Britannia’s Navy on the West Coast of North America 1812-1914 (2016). He taught at Wilfrid Laurier University for 32 years and lives in Victoria.