A review of a 2001 biography of Winston Churchill by Roy Jenkins
In a public poll organised by the BBC in 2002, which generated more than one and a half million votes, Sir Winston Chuchill (1874-1965) was voted the greatest Briton ever. Certainly he was a remarkable man with some outstanding accomplishments, but he was a complex and controversial character.
The son of a British Lord and an American socialite, Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace and educated at Harrow School and always thought that he was destined for great things. Although he was often – but unfairly in Jenkins’ view – called a warmongerer, if there was a conflict in progress, he wanted to be part of it, starting with action in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War and the Second Boer War.
In 1900, he was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliamant and, in 1904 he defected to the Liberals. He held three ministerial positions in the Asquith Government: President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty. As Home Secretary, he was overly harsh in his response to industrial unrest in South Wales (although Jenkins lets him off lightly) and, as First Lord, he was forced to resign after the failure of the Dardenelles Campaign.
After some time in France serving in the Great War, he was back in government under Lloyd George, serving as Minister of Munitions, Secretary for War, Secretary for Air, and Secretary for the Colonies. After two years outside Parliament, he was back now as Conservative MP and served in Baldwin’s Government as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924-1929 when he returned Britain to the Gold Standard which Jenkins describes as “the greatest mistake” of that government..
After no less than eight ministerial positions, Churchill endured what he saw as the wilderness years of the decade 1929 to 1939. In that time, he was on the wrong side of history in opposing vehemently the notion of independence for India, but he was prescient (and well informed by key figures) in warning of the rising military threat from Hitler’s Germany and in resisting the appeasement policy of the Chamberlain Government.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was back in office as First Lord of the Admiralty again and then, following the disaster of the Norwegian Campaign, he became Prime Minister in 1940, providing strong leadership – and inspirational speeches – when Britain (and the Empire) stood alone in the Battle of Britain and until the Soviet Union’s switching of sides in mid 1941 and America’s entry into the war in late 1941.
As wartime Prime Minister, Churchill was the strategic military leader who concentrated on the conflict and relations with Roosevelt and Stalin but, as Jenkins makes clear, he was constatntly trying to interfere in operational matters and overly anxious about Operation Overlord. In government, he was wonderfully supported in terms of domestic policy by the Labour Ministers Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison.
Churchill – and many others – were stunned by the massive Labour victory in the 1945 General Election, but Jenkins points out that the polls had been suggesting such an outcome for years. Arguably he should have resigned the Conservative leadership then, but he stayed on until the Conservatives were back in power in 1951 when, in Jenkins’ words, he was “gloriously unfit for office”. He struggled on with the premiership until 1955, by which time he was 80, increasingly afflcted by strokes and unable to perform effectively.
Even then he could not give up political life and remained an MP for a further 10 years although he never spoke in the House of Commons again. The end came in 1965, just months after finally leaving the Commons and now a venerable 90 years old. He had been a Minister for over 28 years and an MP for 64 years fighting a total of 19 elections.
Although Churchill is primarily remembered as a politician and statesman, he was a prolific writer of letters, articles and books and produced no less than 32 volumes, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He was a talented painter and even an able bricklayer.
This biography by Roy Jenkins was published in 2001 but, such is its length (some 900 pages of main text), that I did not mange to find the time to read it until the coronavirus lockdown. In many ways, Jenkins is a suitable author for a work on Churchill since he himself had military experience, served in senior ministerial positions, and wrote around 20 political works. However, I did not savour the book as much as I hoped. Jenkins has a flamboyant writing style with excessively long sentences and ostentatious use of French and Latin words and he repeatedly goes into meandering details. Also I felt that he relied too heavily on correspondence from, to and about his subject.
Finally, although throughout the work Jenkins expresses judgements – by no means always supportive – on Churchill’s positions and actions, the biography lacks a concluding overarching assessment of the man. Instead we simply have one, final sentence in which, comparing Churchill to Gladstone, Jenkins opines: “I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street”.