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Articles
Great Writing: Churchill as Biographer, Novelist, Explorer, Memoirist
- By JOHN BUCHAN, LORD TWEEDSMUIR
- | January 11, 2024
- Category: Explore The Literary Churchill
John Buchan, First Baron Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH KStJ PC DL (1875-1940) was an author, historian and novelist. He best-known writing was The Thirty-Nine Steps, later a Hitchcock film production. He was private secretary to Lord Milner in South Africa (1901-03) and a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Great War. Although he ran for Parliament as early as 1911, he did not win a seat until 1927. A Conservative, he supported Churchill’s Liberals on votes for women, national insurance and reforming the House of Lords. Nonetheless he opposed Liberal welfare reforms, believing they stirred up class hatred.
A member of Churchill’s The Other Club, Buchan was elevated to the peerage in 1935. He served as Governor-General of Canada from 1937 until his death. Beloved in Ottawa, he even contributed a verse to O Canada. His brother Alastair served with Churchill’s Royal Scots Fusiliers on the western front, and John himself wrote a history of the Regiment.
Buchan’s writing of this 1908 essay is not certain, but in 1940 it appeared in his posthumously published collection, Comments and Characters (1940). Editor Forbes Gray wrote: “While definite proof is now lacking that Buchan wrote this unsigned article, I have a strong impression that it came from his pen.” To comments from 1908, we have added what he said about The Aftermath two decades later. Buchan himself had written a history of the First World War. Yet he considered The Aftermath the best writing anyone had done on the subject. Buchan’s appreciation of four very different Churchill works may cause readers to seek them out. (Links are provided.) We thank Judge Douglas Russell for bringing this essay to our attention. —Editors
Lord Randolph Churchill, 1908
By far the writing which Mr. Winston Churchill has yet done is his biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. The efficiency of the work is attested by the unanimity of approval which its publication drew forth. That it arouses and sustains the interest of those not primarily devoted to a study of politics is the best possible proof of the skill with which the writer has managed his material.
Moreover, when that material consists for the most part of “documents, letters, odd memoranda, and reminiscences of all sorts.” A readable biographer must turn his attention to two things. He must exercise the utmost discrimination in arrangement. And he must set himself to discover a style which shall not offend by descending to flippancies or be overladen with technicalities.
Mr. Churchill has succeeded in both these ways. He has avoided dwelling upon the trivial, with a style in accordance with the character of his subject. His writing is bright and crisp. Always optimistic and good-humoured, he is ready to look at everything frankly in the face. He neither hesitates to record praise in its due place, nor to register blame when blame has to be bestowed.
Chivalrous honesty
Churchill’s devotion to his father is everywhere observable. But there is no attempt to gloss over times when Lord Randolph was the subject of severe criticism, even obloquy. A good instance of this is afforded by his description of Lord Randolph’s 1886 Election manifesto:
That surprising document was made public on June 20, and as a specimen of savage political invective it is not likely soon to be excelled. It will no doubt be severely judged now that nothing remains except the ashes of the great blaze of 1886…. Even Joseph Chamberlain was startled. “Your manifesto,” he wrote, “was rather strong; but I suppose the Tories like it.”
But if the Tory candidates blushed when they read it in the morning paper, they did not forget to quote it at the evening meeting. Its jingles and its arguments…ran like wildfire…. One phrase about Gladstone—“An old man in a hurry”—has become historic. If the address was vulgar, it was also popular. If it was reprobated, it was also used. The anger of that time has cooled, and its expression is worth preserving, though it may now provoke nothing worse than a smile.
His writing expresses the frankness of a son. Yet it is a frankness that certainly would have commended itself to Lord Randolph. In the mind there arises a picture of the elder Churchill turning over the pages written by the younger…. Coming at last to 1886, he pauses, reads, frowns, then loses the frown in a roar of laughter as he delightedly repeats the paragraph over to himself with all the energy of satisfaction.
“A boy till his death”
The character of Lord Randolph rises ghost-like from the pages no less than the virile personality of the youthful biographer. The main narrative is not suffered to run a wholly uninterrupted course. It is broken every now and then by a good story. One of these relates how once, when Bimetallism was being discussed, Lord Randolph, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, turned to Sir Arthur Godley and observed blandly: I forget. Was I a Bimetallist when I was at the India Office?” On another occasion he greatly perturbed a solemn deputation of sugar refiners, protesting against the Sugar Bounty. Lord Randolph asked gravely: “Are the consumers represented upon this deputation?”
“Randy” was at heart a boy till his death. The amazing aplomb which marked him as a schoolboy at Eton characterized him all his life. In his schooldays he once, in company with others, set out to raid a neighbouring strawberry garden. Pursued by one of the college masters, all except Lord Randolph got away. He and his captor fell together into a ditch:
Lord Randolph, seeing that any further attempt at escape would be useless, crawled out, much scratched and bruised, into the middle of the road, where, incensed at his own discomfiture, he deliberately sat down, crossed his legs, glared at Mr. Leigh, and with all the vehemence of enraged fourteen, exclaimed, “You beast!”
A touching, sudden end
But if Mr. Churchill knows how to tell an anecdote racily, he can also make a display of greater powers. He can touch the imagination; he can create an atmosphere. One of his best writings of this kind is his picture of Mr. Gladstone in 1886. Baffled by the failure in Parliament of his Home Rule Bill, the intrepid Prime Minister turned to take the verdict of the country:
Few were left to him of all that able band who in such good heart had joined his Government of 1880…. His friends estranged, his enemies united…. The rank, the intellect of England embattled and arrayed against him; the Bill on which he had set his heart cast out by the House of Commons. What wonder, then, that this proud old man… should reach out for the sledgehammer of democracy, and fiercely welcome the appeal to the people.
This is a striking and a moving picture. A close observance of the words, however, will show that its vividness is built up entirely by the use of simple words simply arrayed. It owes nothing to elaboration, nothing to stilted conception. Its effectiveness is the direct result of clarity.
Yet, again, in touching upon the almost tragic suddenness with which Lord Randolph threw up his office as Chancellor, Mr. Churchill shows his power. The prelude to the catastrophe is thus expressed:
If he were thus armed and equipped at thirty-seven, what would he be at fifty? Who could have guessed that ruin, utter and irretrievable, was marching swiftly upon this triumphant figure… that the Parliament which had assembled to find him so powerful and to accept his guidance, would watch him creep away in sadness and alone?
Savrola, 1900
As a piece of writing, Savrola, Mr. Churchill’s one excursion into fiction is not to be compared with his other work. The story is boldly conceived and vigorously told, but it shows marks of an amateur’s hand. The scenes are not neatly cemented together; its effect is rather that of a kaleidoscope jerking picture after picture before the eye.
Mr. Churchill is a man of action rather than a delineator of character. The chief persons in the drama have well-defined traits, but they lack nuance—almost humanity. They do things, but their motives are less successfully handled. The effect is rather that of a story from another language, rendered into good, forcible English. It lacks that indefinable atmosphere that makes a cohesive whole out of disjointed fragments.
Almost any extract picked out at random will serve to illustrate the contention:
Meanwhile the President and his secretary had reached the private office. Miguel shut the door. Both looked at each other.
“It has come,” said Molara, with a long breath.
“In an evil hour,” replied the secretary.
“I shall win, Miguel. Trust to my star, my luck. I will see this thing through. We shall crush, them; but much is to be done. Now write this telegram to our agent at Port Said; send it in cypher and clear the line….”
Miguel sat down and began to put the message into code. The President paced the room excitedly; then he rang the bell; a servant entered. “Has Colonel Sorrento come yet?”
“No, your Excellency.”
“Send and tell him to come at once.”
“He has been sent for, your Excellency.”
“Send again.” The man disappeared.
My African Journey, 1908
Mr. Churchill’s new book is a brilliantly written record of travel from the East African port Mombasa across the continent to Alexandria. The major portion of the matter appeared originally in the Strand Magazine. The volume, however, does not display any of that disjointed effect that so often characterizes serial work in its republished form. The writing runs on simply; the language is graphic and straightforward.
Travel undoubtedly gives Mr. Churchill the topic best calculated to draw out his powers as a writer. The energy which always distinguishes him finds vent in a record of things done. The plain, unadorned style which he adopts is best suited for work of this kind. He is certainly not a novelist; he cannot discriminate the niceties of character sufficiently to be proficient in this art. But when he is dealing with exploration, he is very different. He has all the traits that mark out the born traveller—a keen eye for observing Nature, an intrepid courage, and a simple outlook upon what are the essentials of life.
His book on Africa will certainly leave in the mind of the reader an impression of Mr. Churchill’s personality. It will also leave a vivid picture of life in the great deserts of Africa.
“Zoological garden”
Fifty books prosily describing, from the point of mere looker-on, the flora and fauna of the country would not convey the atmosphere of wildlife so vividly as Mr. Churchill does in a description of one of his shooting expeditions in the districts bordering on the Uganda Railway:
Here is presented the wonderful and unique spectacle which the Uganda Railway offers to the European. The plains are crowded with wild animals. From the windows of the carriage the whole zoological garden can be seen disporting itself…. [T]here is no reason why the reader should not see one, or even half a dozen lions stalking across the plain, respectfully observed by lesser beasts….
One of the best ways of shooting game in this part of the world, and certainly the easiest, is to get a trolley and run up and down the line. The animals are so used to the passage of trains and natives along the one great highway, that they do not, as a rule, take much notice, unless the train or trolley stops, when their suspicions are at once aroused.
Mr. Churchill is quick to observe contrasts. He sees the rhinoceros standing in the middle of the plain, “a jet-black silhouette; not a twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the Stone Age.” The end of the fight, too, in which the rhinoceros is vanquished, provokes the reflection: “In war there is a cause, there is duty, there is the hope of glory; for who can tell what may not be won before night? But here at the end is only a hide, a horn, and a carcass over which the vultures have already begun to wheel.”
Churchills abroad
Again, the Uganda Railway makes him exclaim: “Here is a railway like the British Fleet, in being—not a paper plan or an airy dream, but an iron fact grinding along through the jungle and the plain, waking with its whistles the silences of the Nyanza, and startling the tribes with “Americani” piece-goods made in Lancashire.”
In 1887 Lord Randolph Churchill, who was then at Naples, wrote a letter home, which ended: “Give Winston the enclosed Mexican stamp.” It is perhaps a far cry from the schoolboy eager for a Mexican stamp to the present Cabinet Minister. But one thing in common remains: a love of anything connected with foreign lands. To Mr. Winston Churchill, travel is one of the good things in the game of life. This is no doubt one of the reasons why his pictures of far-off countries make such vivid, agreeable reading.
The Aftermath, 1929
My dear Churchill,
I have just finished your last volume, and I cannot resist writing to tell you the admiration with which it fills one who has himself tried the same kind of work. I think that your subject is the most difficult conceivable. There is not the unity which you find in a war, even in a war of many scattered campaigns. The field is terribly encumbered with prejudice, and it looks at first sight as if the most one could hope for would be a book of annals with comments.
But out of this welter you have made a real, artistic whole. The architectural power of the book leaves me gasping. I always put architecture first among the qualities of the historian, and your proportions are perfect.
Almost more remarkable is your superhuman detachment. Few writers could attain this and at the same time provide brilliant and exciting narrative. More than in any of the other volumes I feel the justice and sagacity of your outlook, and this is not attained by any flattening out of salient features, or monotonous charitableness. Your character drawing is as acute as it is just, and all your people live fiercely.
“The writing is a pure delight”
I am very grateful for the book, for it has given me a point of view which I had never had before. For one thing, it has made me realise the remarkable act of courage involved in the Irish settlement. That is a subject on which my mind has become cumbered with violent prejudices—the eternal dislike of the Lowland Scot for the Celtic Irish. That people who share all my prejudice could sink them in the public interest, makes me think better of human nature. It is another illustration of Minto’s saying that no man is so strong as he who does not mind being called weak.
The writing is pure delight. The book is much the best of the [World Crisis] volumes, and, indeed, the best thing anyone has done in contemporary history since Clarendon. I cannot imagine how, after a heavy session, you had the vitality to produce such a book in a short autumn holiday. I offer you my most admiring congratulations. —The Churchill Documents, Vol. 11, The Exchequer Years, 1925-1929, 1449.
Related articles
“The Writing of Lord Randolph Churchill,” by John Plumpton, 2016.
“Churchill’s Novel Savrola: Polestar of a Statesman’s Philosophy,” by Patrick J.C. Powers, in three parts, 2021.
“Savrola: Churchill’s Novel in its Most Beautiful Appearance,” by Antoine Capet, 2019.
“Churchill’s Animal Analogies: Enemy Crocodiles, 1907-1945,” by Richard Langworth, 2022.
“Exploring The World Crisis: Churchill’s Masterwork,” with Larry P. Arnn and Hugh Hewitt, 2023.