Winston Churchill: A Life
John Keegan (Penguin, 2002)

196 pp. First reading.
Posted 13 January 2007.


I've been meaning to read a biography of Churchill for some time. Last year I bought a one-volume distillation of Martin Gilbert's enormous eight-volume biography, but even that one volume is enormous in its own right, and I've hesitated to begin. When I came across this short work by historian John Keegan, I jumped at it.

Churchill was a legend in his own time, perhaps the greatest political leader of the twentieth-century, a man who carried his nation on his shoulders through its darkest hours. As an advocate for liberty and a foe of tyranny he has been rivalled in our times only by John Paul II. He remains in the public imagination a heroic figure, his stature only augmented by the villainy of the foe he defeated.

Beyond the public image, I knew little of Churchill's life before beginning the book, and many aspects surprised me. His life-long ambition to be a soldier was nearly cut short when he twice failed to pass the military entrance exams. He was, apparently, a very unpromising student, excelling only in the study of history. It is odd to think that one of the English language's great orators struggled through English composition classes. This probably says something not very flattering about the British educational system.

He did finally succeed at entering the army and saw action in India, Sudan, Cuba, and South Africa before returning to England to seek election to Parliament. Though not a physically strong person, he was possessed of great physical courage, and on several occasions narrowly escaped death. He was a great student of war and military strategy. He was an unsentimental person, practical and stubborn, not given to introspection, and solitary. In other words, he was just the person whom Britain would need at the helm when the Nazis threatened to overpower her.

Churchill was remarkably clear-sighted about the Nazi threat. Starting in 1933 he began to warn the British government of the need for action to avert a clash with Hitler's Reich. He was ignored. Domestic matters occupied the attention of the politicians, who seem to have been unwilling to countenance the possibility, even as Hitler defied the treaties that had been established at the close of the First World War, that Germany might threaten again. They preferred negotiation and appeasement to outright confrontation. It is easy to regard this political nearsightedness with contempt, and Keegan suggests that the contempt is deserved; at any rate, civil servants from many government departments began secretly passing Churchill intelligence that bore on the threat of war. Clearly, the permanent political class saw reason for concern even when party politics did not.

When the Germans did break across their borders, into Czechoslovakia and Poland in the south and Denmark and Norway in the north, matters changed. British efforts to confront the Germans in Norway faltered, and Prime Minister Chamberlain suffered a non-confidence vote. He resigned, and recommended Churchill as his replacement. As France buckled under the Nazi advance, some British politicians called for Britain to negotiate a settlement with Hitler. Churchill roundly rejected any such compromise with tyranny, arguing that "nations which went down fighting rose again, but those who surrendered tamely were finished." Instead, he delivered a series of stirring public addresses on the themes of liberty, endurance, and the greatness of the British people:

 
As his words galvanized the nation for war, he acted decisively. Churchill offered support to the French people if they would resist German rule -- advocating, in effect, guerilla warfare. The French, as they are wont to do, surrendered more or less peacefully, which was a sore disappointment to Churchill. Though he despised communism and all it stood for, he sought an alliance with Stalin against Hitler. I am no military strategist, but I am told that this alliance was crucial to the ultimate defeat of Germany.

When the war did end Churchill continued to serve as Prime Minister, but his days of political glory had gone. Domestic politics does not make heroes. It was during these years that he wrote his enormous six-volume history of the Second World War. When, in 1965, he died at the age of ninety, he was hailed as a national hero and honoured with a state burial. Even the Queen, who by tradition attends only the funerals of the royal family, was in attendance.

Perhaps today Churchill is honoured chiefly for his dogged courage and his fortitude which sustained his countrymen when they were in peril. He is remembered for his great words in defence of the ideals of our civilization, and for his confidence in the greatness of the common man. He became a great man precisely because he believed in these principles and devoted his life to defending them.

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