The Life and Times of the Greatest Briton (Churchill - Roy Jenkins)

Member Name: Vixstar

Product:	Churchill - Roy Jenkins
Date:	26/08/09 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Style of writing; Illustrations

Disadvantages: Time to read - though totally wort it

I'm going through a phase at the moment of reading books on subjects I feel I know nothing about which means I've got a fairly varied pile of non fiction books to get through. One of the things felt somewhat uninformed about was Winston Churchill, I mean I obviously knew he was Prime Minister during World War 2 and one or two other bits and pieces but I gathered there was more to him. So I decided the way to improve my knowledge of Churchill was to read a biography.

I'd heard good things about this biography by Roy Jenkins (a now deceased former Labour MP) and when I saw it had been voted biography of the year 2003 I decided it would be worth a closer look. On finding this book in a shop I was greeted by a paperback tome two inches thick with 912 pages of actual biography and three picture sections. The size of the book did not put me off as I'm an avid reader and enjoy the challenge. On a quick glance inside found that the text was not tiny or too densely packed, this is something which would have put me off as I find it very hard to read. Also the couple of paragraphs I scanned seemed to be written in an easy to understand readable style. With a RRP of £9.99, cheaper on Amazon etc, I decided this would be worth a go. I duly bought the book and started reading...

And I have to say this was a very enjoyable, edifying read. The book is broken into six sections focussing on his youth, his early years in Parliament, the First World War, the inter war years, World War 2 and from 1945 to his death. Understandably the section on World War 2 is slightly larger than the other sections but Jenkins does not scrimp on the other sections and you get a thorough appreciation of the whole of Churchill's life. There are 46 chapters within the book of about 20 pages each which I find is an ideal length for a bit of pre bed reading or for those times when you're "just going to finish the chapter". In the final section as well as relying on secondary sources we get the author's memories of occasions and incidents within the House of Commons as Roy Jenkins joined Parliament just after the war. At the end of the chapter dealing with Churchill's final decline and death (which is dealt with lightly) we do not get pages of the author's assessment or opinion of Churchill as with some biographies but just a brief paragraph explaining how his opinion of Churchill has changed during the writing of the book.

The book is very clear and logical, obviously with a fairly heavy focus on Churchill's Parliamentary life but also with information about his family, friends, houses etc. Roy Jenkins has very helpfully included a chapter at the beginning to try and explain some of the nuances of the British Parliamentary system, I read this but some of the details of the system still escaped me but did not affect my enjoyment in any way. There are excerpts from Churchill's letters, speeches and from diaries of his colleagues throughout the book but these are kept mostly short and are always relevant.
One of the outstanding bits of this book is the three picture sections containing a total of 92 illustrations. Sections one and three are photos from throughout Churchill's life, section two is pictures of some of Churchill's paintings, all illustrations have useful explanatory captions and I found myself flicking through them several times, they definitely added to the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book even though, as may be expected it did take me a little while to complete it. Having a fairly limited knowledge of Churchill before reading this book I can definitely say that I now know a lot more, but whether this book has included any previously unknown facts I don't know. Roy Jenkins has written several other books, there is a list of them at the front of this biography, which appear to be mostly politically based and several biographies. I don't know anything about their subjects but if I came across one of them I would definitely read it as I enjoy Jenkins' style of writing and find it easy to understand.

Summary: There's more to Churchill than the war and the cigar