Reddit mentions of Churchill : A Biography

Edit: Rambled more than I thought. TL;DR Roy Jenkins' Churchill was pretty balanced overall. Scroll down to the last lot of quoted text to see a few paragraphs from the book.

Roy Jenkins Churchill is pretty good. He is a retired (now dead) Labour MP so was from the other party to Churchill, but was on the centre of the Labour party so doesn't hate Churchill like some left wingers do.

It isn't perfect but it is pretty balanced.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0330488058/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0

That Amazon reviews on it are pretty good. Nearly all the one star reviews are complaining about puncutation and sentence structure but I remember it being well written and pretty easy to read.

One one star reviewer writes:

>This book is hard going, the use of public school latin/french expressions make it impossible to follow for other than the classically educated. There is far too much focus during the 1940 - 1945 period on the political factors at the time. This might sound stupid, but given WSC encounters and meetings with senior generals, naval officers as well of heads of other states etc etc too much space is used for the mundane, during a very non mundane period of British History.

Which based off my memory of the book should be translated to "I like simple sentences and skipping all the boring bits". It definitely is not particually difficult to read although it isn't really simple either.

Also I think that Jenkins mentioning the political context, etc is a useful reminder (or introduction) when reading the biography.

I'd see it leans to the pro-Churchill point of view but isn't syscophantic. He gets some high praise but also some harsh critcism from Jenkins. However, like with any person, if you want a full view it is best to read lots of views and do some of your own fact checking to. I definitely give Jenkins' biography my vote for a place to start though. I didn't agree with all Jenkins' analysis, and I can't remember if there were any small ommissions, but overall it was very thorough.

It has a good index and some nice photos to (a grumpy looking Churchill while a PoW, a happy Churchill after getting back to the British, a pictre of Stalin and Churchill laughing about something and some of Churchill's paintings). Lots of references although I can't remember just how thorough it was, definitely better than some biographies. It's around 900 pages long.

Seeing as we were talking about the Dardanelles, and that was one of Churchill's most criticised actions, here is a bit to give you an idea of the tone of the book:

>How much was Churchill to blame for the Dardanlles? Whether he over-estimated the impact a decisive victory in the Near East would have on the twomain fronts is almost impossibleto answer given the actual outcome. The Dardanelles strategy was bold and imaginative, and its central premise, summed up in Churchill's famous phrase of seeking an alternative to 'chew[ing] barbed wire in Flanders', was undoubtedbly legitimate - as half a million British grave in that flat and sombre countryside bear eloquent testasment.

>The critical weakness was the failure to plan for an integrated naval and military operation from the outset. Much of the blame for this lies with Churchill. The planning in late december 1914 and early January 1915 assumed it would in fact be a joint operation. It was Churchill who argued for solely naval attack at the War Councils of 13 and 28 January, despite Fisher's obvious misgivings. Fisher had to be restrained by Kitchener from walking out of a Defence Committee on 28 January, and did so only to maintain 'an obstinate and ominous silence', as Asquith noted aftewards. Only in mid-February, six days before the commencment of the naval bombardment, was a decision taken to send troops. the deatchment was too little and too late, and one of the First World War's human catastrophes resulted.

>Hankey, writing in his diary on 19 March, speculated that Churchill planned a solely naval operation in order to recoup the prestige he had lost at Antwerp. Yet Chuirchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, not Secretary of State for War, let alone Prime Minister. Kitchener and Asquith ought ot have had continual regard to the wider military implications. Asquith in particular failed to elicit either Kitchener's full commitment or the nature of Fisher's misgivings.

>Churchill's later summing up was that the concept was overwhelmingly right, that it was only a singularly unfortunateunfortunate accumulation of narrowly missed chances which prevented it from working, but that iwas nonetheless a 'bridge too far' for him to attempt without supreme power. Had he been Prime Minister, with the impication that he would have run a very much more taut decision-making line of command (as indeed he did a quater of acentur later), he would have won a great victory, substantially shortend the war and saved many hundreds of thousands of lives. But it is difficult to find a serious miltiary historian who agrees.

There are references for the quotes but I skipped them obviously. And he does talk about the subject further but I'm not typing out more than a page! haha

He does use some long sentences and a bit of 'public school' language as that reviewer puts it, but that is a matter of taste and doesn't really take away from the overall quality of the book in telling you about Churchill. And it definitely isn't improper sentence structure as some reviewers said. I actualyl quite enjoyed his writing style for a biography.

Also you can see he tries to be pretty balanced.

Jenkins biography of Gladstone was good to.