Reviews for Winston Churchill : a Penguin life
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
During his youth, Keegan observes, his cohorts in Britain's postwar generation did not adulate Churchill. He appeared to them as a reactionary opponent of the welfare state, an imperialist, and a doddering old man, impressions that were reinforced in Churchill's second premiership of 1951-55. So when this renowned military historian, in the course of this compact biography, discusses Churchill's record as a reforming politician, he productively establishes a plotline parallel to Churchill's better-known career as a warrior, war leader, and historian. Still, it was Churchill's romantic conceptions of British history that grounded his great speeches of the 1930s and 1940s, conceptions of tenacity, pugnacity, and magnanimity in defense of democratic precepts. To the moral force of these orations, Keegan assigns the label "greatest achievements," while of Churchill's actual conduct of World War II, he, like many historians, is less laudatory. Thus, those familiar with Churchill will discover that Keegan offers new interpretations while expertly narrating to newcomers (the book's core audience) the high points of Churchill's extraordinary life, from Omdurman and beyond. --Gilbert Taylor
Library Journal
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Lukacs (The Hitler of History; Five Days in London, May 1940) and Keegan (The First World War; Fields of Battle) are eminent historians whose appreciation for the character and deeds of Winston Churchill is quite evident in both of these works. While neither author shies away from discussing Churchill's flaws, it is the indomitable spirit of the prime minister that prevails in both books. According to Lukacs, it was Churchill's vision as a statesman-historian that places him at the top of the pantheon of 20th-century leaders. Unlike contemporaries Stalin, Roosevelt, or Eisenhower, Churchill fully understood the historical forces that were propelling the world toward cataclysmic changes. Thus he was an early opponent of the Hitler phenomenon and also foresaw the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Empire. Despite the overall panegyric tone of Lukacs's treatise, each chapter in this book is a tightly constructed essay based on a thorough familiarity with works by and about Churchill. Lukacs closes with his own firsthand account of attending the great man's funeral in 1965. It is a good choice for academic and larger public libraries. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus
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A capable, brief study of Great Britain's renowned wartime leader and the troubled course of his passionate-if hardly compassionate-conservatism. Winston Churchill defined himself as both a military and literary man, and thus it makes perfect sense for the eminently literate military history Keegan (War and Our World, 2001, etc.) to add this volume to the rapidly growing Penguin Lives series. Keegan gives us a Churchill who, for most of his life, was essentially alone-"Churchill's life," the author remarks, "is remarkable for its paucity of friendships: few in youth, eventually none at all." Friendless he may have been, but Churchill set out early on to accomplish great things as both an ardent student of the world (an indifferent scholar, he inhaled whole libraries of world literature and history) and a shaper of events. Often he succeeded, Keegan writes, but often he failed; he rose to eminence at the opening years of WWII after having been demoted and shuffled from one prewar government post to another, and his achievements leading the fight against Hitler took many of his contemporaries by surprise. Keegan gives us a Churchill who was at once aristocratic and populist, idealistic, and resolutely practical, strongly ideological yet capable of compromise (especially in the matter of accepting Stalin as a wartime ally, inasmuch as Churchill detested "Bolshevism" perhaps more than he ever did Nazism). Keegan faults much of Churchill's wartime strategy, driven by his view that "the defeated peoples of Europe could be brought to wear down Germany's control from within," which Keegan rebuts with the observation that partisan resistance was largely ineffectual, and that somehow diversionary offensives on the flank of the enemy were preferable to full-on assault, such as that at Normandy. But Keegan also defends Churchill from the well-worn charge of alcoholism, and gives him in most other ways a respectful, if certainly not warm, treatment. Sturdy and illuminating: of interest to students of modern British history and the conduct of WWII.
Publishers Weekly
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The Old Testament and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire were the most important influences on one of the 20th century's great wartime leaders. These books essentially created the man, argues renowned military historian Keegan (The First World War), and Churchill's own words would, in turn, be the key to his greatness: "In the end the personality of Churchill and the prose that inspired his being so interpenetrated each other as to be indistinguishable and mutually inextricable." This is somewhat ironic, Keegan shows in his concise, elegant biography, as Churchill (1874-1965) was a middling student who barely passed the entrance exam for military college. But his one love was history from his voracious, lifelong reading he gained a profound belief in Britain's glorious destiny. Keegan traces the familiar formative events in the future prime minister's life. During the Boer War, he was taken prisoner and his daring escape made him a national hero. After winning election to Parliament (as a Conservative) in 1900, Churchill began his political career championing social reforms that would help the working class. Indeed, his views were so pro-worker that he temporarily switched to the Labour Party. As Hitler rose to power, Churchill began a long, frustrating campaign calling for military preparedness in order to meet the growing fascist threat. Churchill's genius, Keegan stresses, was in his ability to communicate his vision of Britain as a glorious nation with a great civilizing mission, and the book does an excellent job describing his subject's rhetorical power. This is a pithy, highly accessible biography that can be enjoyed over a couple of sittings. (On sale Oct. 14) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
