- Roberts, Andrew.
Churchill: Walking with Destiny.
New York: Viking, 2018.
ISBN 978-1-101-98099-6.
-
At the point that Andrew Roberts sat down to write a new biography
of Winston Churchill, there were a total of 1009 biographies of the
man in print, examining every aspect of his life from a multitude of
viewpoints. Works include the encyclopedic three-volume
The Last Lion (January 2013) by
William Manchester and Paul Reid, and Roy Jenkins' single-volume
Churchill: A Biography (February 2004),
which concentrates on Churchill's political career. Such books may
seem to many readers to say just about everything about Churchill
there is to be said from the abundant documentation available
for his life. What could a new biography possibly add to the story?
As the author demonstrates in this magnificent and weighty book
(1152 pages, 982 of main text), a great deal. Earlier Churchill
biographers laboured under the constraint that many of Churchill's
papers from World War II and the postwar era remained under the seal
of official secrecy. These included the extensive notes taken by
King George VI during his weekly meetings with the Prime Minister
during the war and recorded in his personal diary. The classified
documents were made public only fifty years after the end of the
war, and the King's wartime diaries were made available to the author
by special permission granted by the King's daughter, Queen Elizabeth
II.
The royal diaries are an invaluable source on Churchill's candid
thinking as the war progressed. As a firm believer in
constitutional monarchy, Churchill withheld nothing in his
discussions with the King. Even the deepest secrets, such as
the breaking of the German codes, the information obtained from
decrypted messages, and atomic secrets, which were shared with
only a few of the most senior and trusted government officials,
were discussed in detail with the King. Further, while
Churchill was constantly on stage trying to hold the Grand
Alliance together, encourage Britons to stay in the fight, and
advance his geopolitical goals which were often at variance with
even the Americans, with the King he was brutally honest about
Britain's situation and what he was trying to accomplish.
Oddly, perhaps the best insight into Churchill's mind as the war
progressed comes not from his own
six-volume history of the war, but rather the
pen of the King, writing only to himself. In addition, sources
such as verbatim notes of the war cabinet, diaries of the
Soviet ambassador to the U.K. during the 1930s through the war, and
other recently-disclosed sources resulted in, as the author
describes it, there being something new on almost every page.
The biography is written in an entirely conventional manner: the
author eschews fancy stylistic tricks in favour of an almost
purely chronological recounting of Churchill's life, flipping
back and forth from personal life, British politics, the world
stage and Churchill's part in the events of both the Great War
and World War II, and his career as an author and shaper of
opinion.
Winston Churchill was an English aristocrat, but not a member of
the nobility. A direct descendant of John Churchill, the
1st
Duke of Marlborough, his father,
Lord
Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th Duke
of Marlborough. As only the first son inherits the title,
although Randolph bore the honorific “Lord”, he
was a commoner and his children, including first-born Winston,
received no title. Lord Randolph was elected to the House
of Commons in 1874, the year of Winston's birth, and would
serve until his death in 1895, having been Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Leader of the House of Commons, and Secretary of
State for India. His death, aged just forty-five (rumoured
at the time to be from syphilis, but now attributed to a brain
tumour, as his other symptoms were inconsistent with syphilis),
along with the premature deaths of three aunts and uncles at
early ages, convinced the young Winston his own life might be
short and that if he wanted to accomplish great things, he
had no time to waste.
In terms of his subsequent career, his father's early death might
have been an unappreciated turning point in Winston Churchill's
life. Had his father retired from the House of Commons prior to
his death, he would almost certainly have been granted a peerage
in return for his long service. When he subsequently died,
Winston, as eldest son, would have inherited the title and
hence not been entitled to serve in the House of Commons. It
is thus likely that had his father not died while still an MP,
the son would never have had the political career he did nor
have become prime minister in 1940.
Young, from a distinguished family, wealthy (by the standards
of the average Briton, but not compared to the landed aristocracy
or titans of industry and finance), ambitious, and seeking
novelty and adventures to the point of recklessness, the
young Churchill believed he was meant to accomplish great things
in however many years Providence might grant him on Earth. In 1891,
at the age of just 16, he confided to a friend,
I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful
world, great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such
as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be
in danger — London will be attacked and I shall
be very prominent in the defence of London. …
This country will be subjected, somehow, to a tremendous
invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you
I shall be in command of the defences of London and I
shall save London and England from disaster. …
I repeat — London will be in danger and in the high
position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the
capital and save the Empire.
He was, thus, from an early age, not one likely to be daunted
by the challenges he assumed when, almost five decades later at
an age (66) when many of his contemporaries retired, he faced
a situation uncannily similar to that he imagined in boyhood.
Churchill's formal education ended at age 20 with his graduation
from the military academy at Sandhurst and
commissioning as a second lieutenant in the cavalry. A
voracious reader, he educated himself in history, science,
politics, philosophy, literature, and the classics, while
ever expanding his mastery of the English language, both
written and spoken. Seeking action, and finding no war
in which he could participate as a British officer, he
managed to persuade a London newspaper to hire him as a
war correspondent and set off to cover an insurrection
in Cuba against its Spanish rulers. His dispatches were
well received, earning five guineas per article, and he
continued to file dispatches as a war correspondent
even while on active duty with British forces. By 1901,
he was the highest-paid war correspondent in the world,
having earned the equivalent of £1 million today
from his columns, books, and lectures.
He subsequently saw action in India and the Sudan, participating
in the last great cavalry charge of the British army in the
Battle of Omdurman, which he described along with the rest of
the Mahdist War in his book, The River War. In
October 1899, funded by the Morning Post, he set
out for South Africa to cover the Second Boer War. Covering
the conflict, he was taken prisoner and held in a camp until,
in December 1899, he escaped and crossed 300 miles of enemy
territory to reach Portuguese East Africa. He later returned
to South Africa as a cavalry lieutenant, participating in the
Siege of Ladysmith and capture of Pretoria, continuing to
file dispatches with the Morning Post which
were later collected into a book.
Upon his return to Britain, Churchill found that his wartime
exploits and writing had made him a celebrity. Eleven
Conservative associations approached him to run for Parliament,
and he chose to run in Oldham, narrowly winning. His
victory was part of a massive landslide by the Unionist
coalition, which won 402 seats versus 268 for the opposition.
As the author notes,
Before the new MP had even taken his seat, he had fought
in four wars, published five books,… written
215 newspaper and magazine articles, participated in the
greatest cavalry charge in half a century and made a
spectacular escape from prison.
This was not a man likely to disappear into the mass of
back-benchers and not rock the boat.
Churchill's views on specific issues over his long career defy
those who seek to put him in one ideological box or another,
either to cite him in favour of their views or vilify him as
an enemy of all that is (now considered) right and proper. For
example, Churchill was often denounced as a bloodthirsty
warmonger, but in 1901, in just his second speech in the
House of Commons, he rose to oppose a bill proposed by the
Secretary of War, a member of his own party, which would
have expanded the army by 50%. He argued,
A European war cannot be anything but a cruel, heart-rending
struggle which, if we are ever to enjoy the bitter fruits
of victory, must demand, perhaps for several years, the whole
manhood of the nation, the entire suspension of peaceful
industries, and the concentrating to one end of every vital
energy in the community. … A European war can only
end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less
fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the
conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The
wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.
Bear in mind, this was a full thirteen years before the outbreak
of the Great War, which many politicians and military men expected
to be short, decisive, and affordable in blood and treasure.
Churchill, the resolute opponent of Bolshevism, who coined the term
“Cold War”, was the same person who said, after Stalin's
annexation of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in 1939, “In
essence, the Soviet's Government's latest actions in the Baltic
correspond to British interests, for they diminish Hitler's
potential Lebensraum. If the
Baltic countries have to lose their independence, it is better
for them to be brought into the Soviet state system than the
German one.”
Churchill, the champion of free trade and free markets, was also
the one who said, in March 1943,
You must rank me and my colleagues as strong partisans of
national compulsory insurance for all classes for all
purposes from the cradle to the grave. … [Everyone must
work] whether they come from the ancient aristocracy,
or the ordinary type of pub-crawler. … We
must establish on broad and solid foundations a National
Health Service.
And yet, just two years later, contesting the first parliamentary
elections after victory in Europe, he argued,
No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and
industry of the country could afford to allow free,
sharp, or violently worded expressions of public
discontent. They would have to fall back on some form
of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the
first instance. And this would nip opinion in the
bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and
it would gather all the power to the supreme party and
the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above
their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer
servants and no longer civil.
Among all of the apparent contradictions and twists and turns
of policy and politics there were three great invariant
principles guiding Churchill's every action. He believed that
the British Empire was the greatest force for civilisation,
peace, and prosperity in the world. He opposed tyranny in
all of its manifestations and believed it must not be allowed to
consolidate its power. And he believed in the wisdom of the
people expressed through the democratic institutions of
parliamentary government within a constitutional monarchy, even
when the people rejected him and the policies he advocated.
Today, there is an almost reflexive cringe among
bien pensants at any intimation
that colonialism might have been a good thing, both for
the colonial power and its colonies. In a paragraph
drafted with such dry irony it might go right past some
readers, and reminiscent of the “What have the Romans
done for us?” scene in
Life
of Brian, the author notes,
Today, of course, we know imperialism and colonialism
to be evil and exploitative concepts, but Churchill's first-hand
experience of the British Raj did not strike him that way. He
admired the way the British had brought internal peace for the
first time in Indian history, as well as railways, vast irrigation
projects, mass education, newspapers, the possibilities for
extensive international trade, standardized units of exchange,
bridges, roads, aqueducts, docks, universities, an uncorrupt
legal system, medical advances, anti-famine coordination, the
English language as the first national lingua franca, telegraphic
communication and military protection from the Russian, French,
Afghan, Afridi and other outside threats, while also abolishing
suttee (the practice of
burning widows on funeral pyres),
thugee (the ritualized murder
of travellers) and other abuses. For Churchill this was not the
sinister and paternalist oppression we now know it to have been.
This is a splendid in-depth treatment of the life, times, and
contemporaries of Winston Churchill, drawing upon a
multitude of sources, some never before available to any
biographer. The author does not attempt to persuade you
of any particular view of Churchill's career. Here you see
his many blunders (some tragic and costly) as well as the
triumphs and prescient insights which made him a voice in the
wilderness when so many others were stumbling blindly toward
calamity. The very magnitude of Churchill's work and
accomplishments would intimidate many would-be biographers:
as a writer and orator he published thirty-seven books
totalling 6.1 million words (more than Shakespeare and Dickens
put together) and won the Nobel Prize in Literature
for 1953, plus another five million words of public speeches.
Even professional historians might balk at taking on a
figure who, as a historian alone, had, at the time of his death,
sold more history books than any historian who ever lived.
Andrew Roberts steps up to this challenge and delivers a
work which makes a major contribution to understanding
Churchill and will almost certainly become the starting
point for those wishing to explore the life of this
complicated figure whose life and works are deeply
intertwined with the history of the twentieth century
and whose legacy shaped the world in which we live today.
This is far from a dry historical narrative: Churchill was
a master of verbal repartee and story-telling, and there are
a multitude of examples, many of which will have you laughing
out loud at his wit and wisdom.
Here is an
Uncommon
Knowledge interview with the author about Churchill and
this biography.
This is a lecture by Andrew Roberts on
“The
Importance of Churchill for Today” at Hillsdale
College in March, 2019.
May 2019 