Books

“The Churchill Myths” is not about Churchill. It is about how politicians the authors don’t like wrap themselves in Churchill mythology.

Despite inadequate sourcework, Wynn takes a human view of Churchill, and so writes a book examining the “flawed decisions” of the “Greatest Briton.”

Churchill and the media is a larger story than author Toye tells, and the omissions are as disappointing as the assertions are disconcerting.

Smith is clear that Churchill was a believer in a faith. And that faith was at the heart of his appeal to the British people in the Second World War.

The main concern for Pilecki at Auschwitz was the fate of Poles, but in describing that of the Jews he asked a stark question: “Were we all people”?

During the war Churchill told a general: “Improvise and dare…He improvise and dore.” Leebaert sees America’s walk to global leadership in much the same way.

On the Raj, Tharoor offers a half-truth, which, “like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.”

The Biography “is true, insofar as diligence and research can establish truth…. All an author can offer is a fragment of reality—that, and the hope that it will endure.” —William Manchester

Never Flinch, Never Weary chronicles a time when mankind stood “uncertainly poised between world catastrophe and a golden age.”

Clews paints a loyal but frustrated Churchill who later defined the rule of the Phoney War: “Don’t be unkind to the enemy; you will only make him angry.”

The Splendid and the Vile is the story of the London Blitz, from the moment that Winston Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940, until the Luftwaffe raid that destroyed the parts of the House of Commons exactly one year later, coincidentally on the same night that Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland.

For non-Russian-reading researchers, this book is indispensable. For aficionados of the history of the Second World War, it is a thought-provoking delight.