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jvanwagoner's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.0
His son writes this biography of Churchill which covers several volumes. This first volume covers Churchill's youth.
The style is where the author takes excerpts from letters written to or from or about Churchill and fills in explanatory material between. As a result, you get a good feel of what his contemporaries wrote about Churchill and what he personally felt. Of course, it is a style only some will like, but it gives us a good sense of the source material that historians generally work with. This style is why so many volumes were needed to write his life history.
I was struck by how ordinary of a boy he was. He showed little potential after his father died. He also had what was probably a typical childhood of an upper-class Briton, where he was sent away to school at a young age and raised by a Nanny. He did not have much interaction with his parents. It was heart-rending to see so many letters addressed to his parents, begging them to visit him or even attend significant events in his school life.
After his father's death, he changed radically in that his ambitions and talents grew exponentially. He wanted to be a great parliamentarian and thought the path was to obtain glory in war. He effectively used his mother's connections to receive dangerous assignments and used his writing skills to become a war correspondent when he could not get the military commissions he wanted.
This volume was fascinating, and I will continue with the subsequent books in this series.
I originally wrote this review on 9/2/2015.
The style is where the author takes excerpts from letters written to or from or about Churchill and fills in explanatory material between. As a result, you get a good feel of what his contemporaries wrote about Churchill and what he personally felt. Of course, it is a style only some will like, but it gives us a good sense of the source material that historians generally work with. This style is why so many volumes were needed to write his life history.
I was struck by how ordinary of a boy he was. He showed little potential after his father died. He also had what was probably a typical childhood of an upper-class Briton, where he was sent away to school at a young age and raised by a Nanny. He did not have much interaction with his parents. It was heart-rending to see so many letters addressed to his parents, begging them to visit him or even attend significant events in his school life.
After his father's death, he changed radically in that his ambitions and talents grew exponentially. He wanted to be a great parliamentarian and thought the path was to obtain glory in war. He effectively used his mother's connections to receive dangerous assignments and used his writing skills to become a war correspondent when he could not get the military commissions he wanted.
This volume was fascinating, and I will continue with the subsequent books in this series.
I originally wrote this review on 9/2/2015.
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