Reviews (1)

Hilarious, incisive portraits
Even though I don't share Critchley's political leanings (until his retirement from politics, he was one of the most prominent "wet" Tory critics of Thatcherism), his portraits of Mrs Thatcher's men (and one woman -- Edwina Currie) are so well- etched (in acid ink) that one can't help chuckling or even at times bursting into laughter. For instance, he points out that in any group photo of Thatcherites, you would have immediately recognised Nick Ridley -- he was the one with the cigarette. Some of the humour may not be apparent to those who haven't closely followed British politics, though. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Gladstone was a puffed up bore
Churchill wrote in 'The History of the English Speaking People' that Gladstone's contemporaries thought that he had no judgement, and that the Conservative Disreali government achieved more in five years than the Liberals (of whom Gladstone was prominant) did in nearly fifty. Churchill was being polite - Gladstone was a pious, pretentious windbag and a collosal hipercrite. He doesn't deserve to have two volumes in this detail writen about him - he never did anything to justify this amount of effort. Even Gladstone's wife said that he was a bore.

Gladstone comes across much like a Kennedy - a mediocrity carried aloft by the wealth of a ratbag father, convinced of his own importance, full of the teachings of the Lord and none of His spirit, only attractive when seen from a distance. His father made a fortune from slave plantations in the West Indies, and Gladstone did little to improve on daddy's efforts. He defended slavery in Parliament while writing pompous sermons about the responsibilities of the church. A mean, miserable specimen who never earnt a penny through his own efforts, he inherited and spent a fortune but went into a lather of shock and horror when discovering that his butler had been pilfering and selling partly used candles from his household. Gladstone never improved on these efforts, but then, considering his papal like view of his own infallibility, he never felt the need to.

Gladstone's younger sister took to dosing herself with opium and wiping her backside with religous tracts. Both behaviours are perfectly understandable for anybody who had to live with a specimen like Gladstone. I think the sister is far more deserving of a biography than the brother. ... Read more

Book Description

John Lambert's life and career have long deserved this revealing study. The man who made Cromwell Lord Protector in 1653 also stopped him becoming king in 1657; and Lambert was the originator of the Instrument of Government, on which Cromwell's Protectorate was based. Committed to his deeply held, radical beliefs, Lambert first rose to prominence as a dashing cavalry commander in the civil wars of 1642 - 51, and he was a prominent upholder of the power of the New Model Army, particularly in his creation of the Major Generals, who ruled England in 1655. Lambert's refusal to countenance Cromwell as king saw his temporary fall from power, but he emerged after the Protector's death as a possible successor. His radical ideas seemed to threaten even 'his own side', and led to his imprisonment in the Tower in 1660, but he escaped and staged a last desperate republican stand against the return of Charles II. Although Lambert was subsequently convicted of treason, Charles did not have him executed - sure recognition that his character, private actions and beliefs were those of a man who was much more than a military revolutionary. DAVID FARR is head of history at Norwich School. ... Read more

Book Description

These reflective, philosophical letters between British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower provide insights into the relationship between the two statesmen and their countries as well as their hopes and fears about the postwar world. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The man behind the monument
Rather than throwing another heavy scholarly tome at the public, Piers Brendon opted for a short portrait of Churchill, the man. In fact, the cover of the British paperback edition (which, unfortunately, you can not see here) tells the whole story: on the top half is a photograph of a youthful Churchill flaunting an urchin's grin under a flamboyant top hat; on the bottom half is a photograph of Churchill in his sixties squinting against the sun while he inspected a battlefield during WW II.

Churchill was a complex personality, "yet the essence of Churchill, which this book has attempted to explore and to celebrate, was his heightened vitality, the terrific immediacy of his existence. Life as it was ordinarily lived was too tame for him: he needed the stimulus of constant adventure." He was grandiose, yet had self-deprecating charm; he could remark that although we are all worms he really believed himself to be a glow-worm.

Graced with a benign character and a sunny disposition, he nevertheless displayed an authoritarian bent ("All I wanted was compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion") and was driven by an unabashed, egotistical ambition. His disregard for hierarchies and naval tradition was legendary: "Don't talk to me about naval tradition," was his famous reply, "it is nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash."

Churchill's greatest gift was his "alchemical power with words: by means of fiery eloquence he could transmute the dross of disaster into the gold of triumph." Rhetoric was "the most powerful weapon in his armoury and he took immense trouble with it, constantly practicing: 'Winston leads general conversation on the hearth rug addressing himself in the looking glass - a sympathetic and admiring audience.'" His demagogic skills and self-advertising flair served Britain well at a time when the Nazi tanks seemed unstoppable: "Churchill's well nigh miraculous achievement during the dire summer months of 1940 was to convert the nation to a mystical faith in its own providential destiny. ... Courage is as contagious as cowardice and Churchill infected everyone with his heedless fortitude."

Churchill was a sanguine choleric, if ever there was one. His "scowling sulks made his moods of sunny cheerfulness all the brighter. His charm compensated for his rudeness; his loyalty redeemed his cruelty. His fundamental kindness of heart and generosity of spirit were never altogether obscured by perennial egotism and fleeting rages." Nobody could say of his intellectual arrogance that his brains went to his head: "When the mood took him he bubbled with good humour. He never stood on his dignity. He had once amazed guests by getting down on all fours under the Chartwell dining-room table and shaking swimming-pool water out of his ears like a dog."

Churchill could be charming and demanding, as it suited him. After he had the US safely in his camp, he rejected the advice to approach America cautiously with the comment "Oh! That is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her; now that she is in the harem, we talk to her quite differently." And, a rarity among politicians, he spoke a foreign language: "'Je sweeze oun frair ehnay de la Trinnity'" Churchill, the Elder Brother of Trinity House, was said to have told the French ambassador who supposedly congratulated him on having such distinguished relations.

Piers Brendon's intention was to write a "vivid, balanced, complete but miniature portrait" set against the background of Churchill's career, because "the vast accumulation of knowledge about Churchill is in some ways an obstacle to understanding him. Comprehensiveness impedes comprehension [and] incidental vignettes can often reveal more than reams of pedantry - Churchill's telling Stalin that he was very fond of goldfish, for example, and the dictator hospitably suggesting that he should have some for breakfast."

I understand that some critics may get the impression that this biography is a light-weight when they read a tongue-in-cheek summary like "Winston's fate was determined by his toy soldiers." But that's a question of style, not substance. Don't be deceived. This is a fine portrait of Churchill - a bit brief on the historical background, I admit - but you will have a good time reading it.

unscientific character sketch reveals undisciplined 'genius'
This easy to read book is one of the shortest life descriptions of Churchill there is. It's foreword already tells us that the focus will be on Winstons character, with his career only as background.

If you keep that in mind, and don't expect details on his campaigns, government and financial policy, this is an interesting biography, that depicts Chutchill as a larger than life, somewhat unbalanced and egocentric bully, with some ideologies that on a closer look are a dubious mixture of conservatism and fascism. A man that fortunatly lived in the right time, when there was active need for such a man, to combat Hitler.

The reason I only gave 3 stars for this book, is that I firmly believe that any biography should have footnotes and references to liturature, so that you can check some of the wrirters assumptions, esspecially if the focus is not on facts but on character, as is the case here and that this is completely missing here. ... Read more

Book Description

Volumes XII and XIII, the final volumes of W.E. Gladstone's diaries, depict the extraordinary energy of a remarkable octogenarian. They focus on his pursuit of "justice for Ireland" through the successful passage of a Home Rule Bill. There is also a wealth of material on imperial, foreign, domestic, and religious politics contained in the daily diary entries, the minutes of the Cabinets of the 1892-4 government, and the five hundred letters which accompany the entries for the governmental period. With Volume XIV, Indexes, the publication of this magisterial work of scholarship is complete. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

CONSENSUS BY DIKTAT AND THE POLITICS OF PERVERSION
These are the author's own phrases characterising Blair's premiership, so first a word about who he is. Leo Abse, now in his late 80's, is a retired Labour member of parliament from the mining community of South Wales. He is the author of a similar study of Margaret Thatcher, but what I had mainly remembered about him was the story of a meeting he addressed in his own locality at which the chairman referred to him as 'Mr Abs'. His surname has two syllables, so he murmured in the man's ear 'Call me Abs-ey', to which the chairman replied 'That's very nice of you, call me Jonesy'.

He has a fine sense of humour himself, and some of the cattier sideswipes at various figures in this book are very entertaining. This is a study from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, and it takes in not just The People's Tony himself but his wife, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, the fearsome former Downing Street media supremo Alistair Campbell, Blair's political Svengali Peter Mandelson and certain others. The book originally appeared in 1996 before Blair came to power under the title Tony Blair: the Man Behind the Smile, with updated editions in 2001 and 2003. The problem for me with a psychoanalytic account is that I do not have enough knowledge of the technique to form an independent judgment of my own. Abse's approach is distinctly partisan and hostile, as his phrases that I have used in my caption to this review make very clear. It is all easy enough to understand, it is coherent, systematic and seemingly well-researched (sources are listed at the back) but there is no question that this is a full-scale frontal attack on Blair as a politician. An analysis using this technique belittles its subject, as this book is manifestly intended to do, and ordinary detachment and fairness suggests that there must be at least some temptation, for someone fluent in the terminology, to use it to promote a point of view rather than carry out a genuinely objective enquiry.

Abse is 'old Labour' as he says himself, and he draws his inspiration from the post-war Labour government whose socialising approach he believed Blair could have emulated. Among more recent Labour figures he singles out the late leader John Smith. I had the honour of knowing John personally long before Abse did, and all I can say is that if he really was the conflict-unaverse full-blooded socialist that Abse depicts he must have changed a good deal since I used to know him. Whether Abse is precisely 'left-wing' is questionable, and he is manifestly unimpressed by certain recidivist trade union leaders of the kind who made the trade union movement as deeply disliked as it became in the 1960's and 1970's. He is basically a fair-minded and decent-minded socialist who believes that Blair and his motley outfit of modernisers have, in his own words, stolen the soul of his party. He recognises explicitly that the kind of social legislation he aspires to is not going to be achieved without conflict. However as he sees fit to characterise Gordon Brown as being willing to face up to anyone except himself (Brown, that is), I suppose I can legitimately question whether Abse in his turn is really facing up to the sort of obstacles his own preferred policies confront in this day and age. This is a book review, not any kind of political statement of my own. What I would have wanted from Abse is his own honest answer to the question 'Given that Britain is a member of the European Union, and given even more the extent to which governments are in the hands of international capital, do you think you will achieve anything except disaster by taking on hopeless odds?' If the political will is there, anything might indeed be possible. Can he honestly claim to detect it at this stage of the world's history?

There are real touches of brilliance in this book and it is in the main well-written, so much so that I shall ask - can there really be such a word as 'aggressivity'? There wouldn't be if I had anything to do with it. There is categorically no such word as 'wreaked', the word is 'wrought'; it is a solecism to use 'proportions' to mean dimensions; and does he mean 'atactic' or 'ataxic'? I enjoyed the book thoroughly. The sincere sense of disappointment that comes through it is shared from various political standpoints, not least from the prevalent view that we have no visible alternative government. ... Read more

Book Description

A memoir - takes the reader back to Brooklyn, N. Y. during the years before, during and after the second world war. It tells the story of one family's journey from the old world to the new - from immigrant status to the American main stream. The youngest daughter, surrounded by love and tradition, is confused by the ramifications of her father's career as a bookmaker and professional gambler. It is a delightfully told "rags to riches" story replete with childish pranks and the richness of old fashioned cooking seasoned with Yiddishkeit. ... Read more