Brendan Bracken

There is much new materiel here, especially about the interwar period. Certain facts become much clearer. Mr. Phillips portrays these famous cronies as gangsters without a gang. They had separate relationships with Churchill and few with each other. However, they also had one trait in common. All provided WSC with valuable services—very different in type, time and place.

Josh Ireland begins with potted inaccuracies, but the quickly picks up with a deft, thoughtful account of a short, bittersweet saga.

Despite his encomiums to Joan, Churchill rated Napoleon higher, with Georges Clemenceau a close third—and, a bit farther down, de Gaulle.

In the best biography since 1991, Roberts's witty, fluent, flowing prose captures the adventure, energy, and incessant movement that Churchill produced.

Churchill’s impulse to be “on the scene” where battles took place was not uniformly applauded. During World War II, his frequent excursions to various fronts worried his supporters, and caused critics to complain that he was taking unnecessary risk. Criticism mounted when Churchill hied to France only six days after D-Day.  He revisited the front several times through March 1945.

There was no more enigmatic figure in Churchill’s life than Brendan Bracken, who cloaked his birth and upbringing with mystery while hinting broadly that he was the great man’s illegitimate son. It is well-authenticated that close friendship, not errant fatherhood, encompassed their relationship. But Churchill, with characteristic impishness, apparently never gave the direct lie to Bracken’s implied claim. This annoyed Churchill’s wife and peeved his son, Randolph, who spoke satirically of  “my brother, the bastard.” To quell the noisome rumor Churchill quipped: “I have looked the matter up, but the dates don’t coincide.”

He combined two qualities: generous loyalty to those he loved, and an acid tongue and pen for those he didn’t. Most of the latter, I tend to think, richly deserved what they got. Randolph Churchill’s public persona was based on the latter quality. In the mid-1950s, surgery revealed that a tumor on his lung was benign. His friend Evelyn Waugh burst into the bar at White’s Club: “They’ve cut out the only part of Randolph that isn’t malignant!”

In 1911, a time of great political division, Churchill and F.E. Smith founded The Other Club, a collegial dining group for members of both parties. It's still going strong.