The greatest British person ever, apparently (Churchill: A Life - Martin Gilbert)

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Product:	Churchill: A Life - Martin Gilbert
Date:	25.11.02 (332 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I get paid this week

Disadvantages: I lost my wallet

(Wrong category again, I'm afraid. This is actually an opinion about 'Churchill A Life' by Martin Gilbert, Pimlico; ISBN: 0712667253. I'll get it moved when the right category becomes available.)

So Churchill was just voted the greatest Briton of all time by viewers of the BBC, beating the likes of Darwin, Shakespeare and Elizabeth I. Not an entirely bad result, all things considered. Apparently there was evidence of vote rigging by fans of Brunel, John Lennon and Princess Diana, so there will always be a question mark over how genuine this result is (and obviously it's not terribly important anyway. Apart from a few rather surprising choices - Aleister Crowley, Boy George and, er, Enoch Powell - the list was very predictable).

If there's one leader of our nation who's achieved true iconic significance it has to be dear old Winnie. There were only four other prime ministers on the BBC's list (Lloyd George, Thatcher, Wellington and Blair). Prime ministers tend to be forgotten by history pretty quickly. How many of them before, say, Neville Chamberlain can you name? Be honest. Churchill is probably the supreme example of a prime minister who will be remembered forever, when all the Blairs and Majors have gone the way of the Douglas-Homes and Bonar Laws.

So I decided I should read a biography of the great man. I went for Martin Gilbert's, as I'd found his book about the Second World War very good. Gilbert had been an assistant to Churchill's son, Randolph, when he was writing Churchill's official biography (which eventually ran to eight volumes). When Randolph died in the late 1960s, Gilbert took over as chief biographer. After the completion of the huge biography, Gilbert produced this slim one-volume condensed version (it's a mere 1000 pages).

Gilbert writes in a simple and unpretentious way. He generally doesn't present his own thoughts on Churchill's life, but allows the
facts to speak for themselves. There's very little analysis here, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I wanted to know what Churchill did, rather than what an historian thinks about what he did, and that's what I got (although Gilbert is clearly pro-Churchill he never pauses to give us dewy-eyed paragraphs about how great he was.). As official biographer Gilbert had unlimited access to Churchill's private papers, and uses extensive quotes from correspondence and official memos, along with recollections of people who knew him, to build up a reasonably thorough picture of the man and his work. In fact I can't really comprehend what the eight-volume version must be like, as this one seems to be about as comprehensive as you could ever want.

Mind you, it does gloss over certain topics. Churchill's famous alcoholism is hardly mentioned, and his life-long struggle with depression (his 'black dog') crops up a lot less than you might expect. Maybe the job of an official biography is to emphasise the public life of the subject rather than the private, but there's plenty of material about other aspects of Churchill's private life, so it does seem a bit odd that some important elements are missing. Maybe there's more of that kind of thing in the longer version. But if you want to know what Churchill did during his long life then this is as good a place as any to find out.

Churchill entered politics after a stint in the army and daring exploits as a journalist in the Boer War. He had an astounding political career, crossing the House twice and serving as a minister under five prime ministers before he became one himself. He was Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty, among other things. He was in war cabinets in two world wars, served in the trenches in the Great War (albeit not for long), oversaw the twilight years of the British Empire, the partition of Ireland and the st
art of the Cold War. He also found time to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and make a modest name for himself as an artist. He lived for 91 years. As a young man he attended Gilbert and Sullivan premieres. By the time he died The Beatles had had their first number one.

He obviously had enormous self-belief. As a young man he comes across as extremely arrogant. He was always a controversial minister, and clashed with many of his colleagues. But he had astonishing political foresight. He foresaw the hideous problems that the partition of Ireland would cause, predicted the creation of Israel, never trusted Stalin and, most famously, immediately realised the danger presented by Hitler and the Nazis. On the other hand, he fiercely opposed granting Indian independence and voted against giving women the vote. Nobody's perfect. His self-confidence was most visible when he became prime minister, and the sections of the book dealing with the Second World War are the best, as the events they describe are the most interesting. He obviously had a genius for finding the right things to say, and the truculence necessary to oppose Germany when the odds were firmly against him. He held Britain together until his health started to fail (by which time the Americans had come to the rescue anyway).

He was definitely a great man. Without Churchill Britain would have found itself with a less resolute prime minister in 1940, and would probably have made peace with Hitler. In that event it's unlikely that America would have entered the war and, more importantly, that they'd have supplied the Soviets with the weapons they needed. And the consequences of that would be all too apparent today. Whether he was the greatest Briton of all time is irrelevant (and impossible to judge anyway). He did what he had to do at the time, and did it admirably.

So, a very useful, well-written book if you want to find out what Winston Churchill did (quite a lot of pictu
res, too). It takes a while to get through, but I thought it was very much worth it. Churchill had quite a life, and Martin Gilbert describes it well.

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