• Paul Johnson, Churchill, New York: Viking, 2009, 181 pages, $24.95.
On Jan. 2, 1900, newspapers reported the escape of Lt. Winston Churchill from a military prison in the Second Boer War. It was the first of many footprints Churchill would stamp on the new century.
The man who would be Britain’s first lord of the admiralty in World War I and prime minister in World War II held an officer’s commission in both conflicts and commanded troops in the trenches personally. He modernized the Royal Navy, invented the tank, championed the Royal Air Force when others would not, and warned England of the threat of Nazism for years while all others declared both him and Hitler crackpots. The same year he slipped away from the Afrikaners he was elected to Parliament, at the age of 26, where he served for five and a half decades. As a journalist, author, and statesman, he may have put as many as 10 million words in print.
So the reader may be forgiven for approaching Paul Johnson’s thin, 181-page biography (compactly titled, Churchill) with skepticism. How can a biographer do justice to such a towering historical figure in such a short compass?
Surprisingly, Johnson succeeds. The book unfolds Churchill’s life with the affection — and frankness — of a long friendship. Johnson inserts himself into the book on several occasions, including his brief encounter with the elderly Churchill and his personal impressions of some Churchill associates the author met. While the book reads like the popular history it is (no footnotes, for example), it often flows like an epic story told after dinner.
The book opens without introduction, and I was snared by the first paragraph:
Of all the towering figures of the 20th century, both good and evil, Winston Churchill was the most valuable to humanity, and also the most likeable. It is a joy to write his life, and to read about it. None holds more lessons, especially for youth: How to use a difficult childhood. How to seize eagerly on all opportunities, physical, moral, and intellectual. How to dare greatly, to reinforce success, and to put the inevitable failures behind you. And how, while pursuing vaulting ambition with energy and relish, to cultivate also friendship, generosity, compassion, and decency.
Like Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill’s life was so active and multifaceted it staggers the imagination. Johnson records, by the way, that the two future statesmen met during the war in Cuba; Roosevelt took a dislike to the young Englishman, complaining, “That young man Churchill is not a gentleman. He does not rise to his feet when a lady enters the room.” Like the older Roosevelt, though, Churchill was an enthusiastic self-promoter, with his eyes always on the next opportunity to establish himself in the eye of the public and the next level of influence. Cuba was a stepping stone to future glories.
Much of Churchill’s life was conducted with an eye toward vindicating the memory of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a rising member of Parliament whose career flamed out in erratic behavior that developed into insanity and an early death. Johnson discreetly omits the reason — Randolph Churchill’s mind failed due to advanced syphilis, which he contracted as the result of a cruel prank by his friends in early adulthood. In fact, Johnson steers clear of any mention of impropriety in the Churchills, though other biographers record that there were lapses of fidelity on both sides of their otherwise solid marriage.
Johnson doesn’t hesitate to point out Winston’s many other faults, though. “He was accused” — with good reason — “of abusing his position as a British officer and his civilian status as a journalist, and of breaking his word of honor as a war prisoner,” Johnson writes. As a young man he had a reputation as “brash, arrogant, presumptuous, disobedient, boastful, and a bounder.” His political allegiances were often quixotic and rooted in a romantic vision of the Empire; he nearly scuttled his career over self-rule for India (which he opposed) and support for the abdicating Edward VII (whom he tried to prop up).
Amidst the narrative Johnson drops in some sharp analysis. When Churchill was handed the premiership over a demoralized Britain in 1940, for example, Johnson delineates 10 distinct strengths Churchill brought to the position. As Johnson describes it, Churchill was as much a dictator as Hitler and Stalin, but on the side of the angels. The epilogue draws five examples from the completed life of Churchill, including the value of hard work, resilience in the face of defeat, and refusal to waste energy on pettiness.
Johnson also throws sudden lights on our current situation. Most of the world’s problems in the 20th and 21st centuries can be traced back to the First World War, he says. Britain, in Churchill’s time at the Colonial Office, redrew the map of the Middle East to empower moderate Hashemite princes, but American petroleum interests secured the Saudi Wahhabist factions who give us such trouble today. Johnson notes that Britain had been fighting Muslim fundamentalists since the early 1800s, and hints that we might have done better to follow their lead in that region. It’s food for thought.
There are many books about Churchill, not the least those he wrote about himself. There are larger single-volume biographies of the man. However, it will be hard to find a more concise and enjoyable Churchill than Paul Johnson’s. As he promised, it is a joy to read. CJ