Scan barcode
notwellread's review against another edition
2.0
The book has its best content discussing the relationships between Churchill and the other key figures of his time: he provides reasoned explanation for Churchill’s attitudes towards Stalin, though honestly I don’t know enough on the subject to verify. At least it makes sense and he explains himself. However, the author consistently espouses American anglophilia, particularly in the final chapter (more on that later), and praises Roosevelt as much as Churchill, going a bit off topic at times. Eisenhower and Truman also get some praise, but they’re not the main subjects of the periods the book covers. When the book is factual, I think the contents are useful, but my qualm is that they are probably better and more objectively presented elsewhere, with less baggage in other material.
Since Churchill is generally criticised for being too lenient with Stalin, practising his own sort of ‘appeasement’, and Lucacs defends him with an interesting question raised of Russian nationalism (more immediately apparent) versus international communism (in the long term). Since he wants to talk about Churchill both as ‘Historian’ and ‘Visionary’ (i.e. making accurate predictions of the future), I think this was a good demonstration of both traits. (Further on this subject, he hopes for a book on “Churchill the Historian” but there’s already a book called “Churchill as Historian” – is there a big difference?) On the other hand, it was interesting to see how oracular he could be: Churchill predicted greater scale wars in 1901, and warned about Hitler’s rise as a threat while the Nazi Party was still small.
The implied idolatry just in the title is a little much – we’ve had enough of this already, and biographies should aim to be balanced and not hagiographic. Lucacs tends to acknowledge but downplay Churchill’s flaws, which is better than not mentioning them at all but still reveals his bias where he elevates Churchill’s virtues, he can be antagonistic and dismissive of his detractors, and his examples of detractors (David Irving and John Charmley, both holocaust deniers and easy targets) are reductive and deliberately neglectful of the more valid criticisms of Churchill’s character, especially on the subjects of colonialism, globalism, and race relations.
More time could have been devoted to discussing and defending Churchill’s opinions on the end of empire: as noted in the book, Churchill said withdrawal from India would “lose us our moral sanctions”. Surely we didn’t have them in the first place?
On other topics, I think he’s almost there on the Confederacy ‘winning’ the war of values: more elaboration on this would have been good. (Also, he literally says God allowed Churchill to be the defender of civilisation – taking it a bit far, even as a figure of speech.) The chapter on his failures and critics is useful, since it is still rare (almost taboo here in the UK) to see Churchill criticised, even if Lucacs chooses to underplay them. It makes it the more unfortunate that the critics he chooses (Irving and Charmley) are not reasoned or relevant choices at all, and, given their work, are best ignored. If he really wanted to devote a chapter to refuting Churchill’s critics, he let himself down by choosing such easy targets, which seems deliberate. He acknowledges the duality of Churchill but sees ‘both sides’ of him as ultimately ‘good’ – I think this is the problem.
Some parts of the book are just bizarre:
The author is critical of ignoring ‘Great Man’ or at the very least ‘person-focused’ view of history. Maybe we sometimes swing too far the other way, but I still think surely patterns matter to historians? (Strangely, he also says that history doesn’t repeat itself, without explaining what he means, but surely patterns and running themes do matter to historians?) Modern and/or ‘democratic’ historians aren’t saying that the key figures don’t matter by studying economic or social history, but are acknowledging that leaders aren’t the be all and end all – traditionally we often elevate or condemn leaders according to how they perform regardless of how easy or difficult their circumstances are (a bit off topic, but King John is a good example of this – he wasn’t a good king, but even the most capable monarch would struggle with the problems he faced).
The book is weirdly blasé on the war effort for someone so gung-ho about Churchill: there’s a note on p.29 (my edition) on potential Evelyn Waugh depictions of British troops stationed (hypothetically) in Ukraine.
The last chapter, on Churchill’s funeral, is frankly atrocious, and not relevant to the rest of the book at all – I had thought at the beginning, when Lucacs covers Churchill’s relationships with Stalin and Roosevelt with some helpful insight, that this might be a 3-star book, but I would rate the last chapter independently as one star. I was unsure about another reviewer’s calling it ‘hagiography’ until all became clear in this part. It’s filled with uncontrolled, rather embarrassing nostalgia and romanticism of what to me sounds like normal Londoner observations (though to be fair, as a native maybe I don’t realise how odd it seems to an outsider). He seems to see the English, particularly the middle class, as almost like a ‘special’ race unto themselves – I have actually been rereading The Lord of the Rings and I couldn’t help but see parallels between how Tolkien depicts elves and how Lucacs describes us: as ethereal aliens, but with an added coat of awkwardness and repression.
The fact that he died and that the funeral happened, and was a time to reflect on Churchill’s values, is fair enough but is only relevant to his impact, not relevant to the purported themes of the book. It makes the book incoherent and makes the whole exercise less serious once he begins to focus on sentiment over historical accuracy. The reactionary rambling about his over-romanticised view of the English takes the whole book down a notch once you realise there isn’t much value or interest in reading it, and reflects poorly on the rest of the book, making it seem like the author is more concerned with imposing these values and stereotypes on us through Churchill than actual analysis of character. At least he is semi-apologetic in advance, but it makes it unfortunately clear what the real motivation behind the book is: idealism, not historicity.
Since Churchill is generally criticised for being too lenient with Stalin, practising his own sort of ‘appeasement’, and Lucacs defends him with an interesting question raised of Russian nationalism (more immediately apparent) versus international communism (in the long term). Since he wants to talk about Churchill both as ‘Historian’ and ‘Visionary’ (i.e. making accurate predictions of the future), I think this was a good demonstration of both traits. (Further on this subject, he hopes for a book on “Churchill the Historian” but there’s already a book called “Churchill as Historian” – is there a big difference?) On the other hand, it was interesting to see how oracular he could be: Churchill predicted greater scale wars in 1901, and warned about Hitler’s rise as a threat while the Nazi Party was still small.
The implied idolatry just in the title is a little much – we’ve had enough of this already, and biographies should aim to be balanced and not hagiographic. Lucacs tends to acknowledge but downplay Churchill’s flaws, which is better than not mentioning them at all but still reveals his bias where he elevates Churchill’s virtues, he can be antagonistic and dismissive of his detractors, and his examples of detractors (David Irving and John Charmley, both holocaust deniers and easy targets) are reductive and deliberately neglectful of the more valid criticisms of Churchill’s character, especially on the subjects of colonialism, globalism, and race relations.
More time could have been devoted to discussing and defending Churchill’s opinions on the end of empire: as noted in the book, Churchill said withdrawal from India would “lose us our moral sanctions”. Surely we didn’t have them in the first place?
On other topics, I think he’s almost there on the Confederacy ‘winning’ the war of values: more elaboration on this would have been good. (Also, he literally says God allowed Churchill to be the defender of civilisation – taking it a bit far, even as a figure of speech.) The chapter on his failures and critics is useful, since it is still rare (almost taboo here in the UK) to see Churchill criticised, even if Lucacs chooses to underplay them. It makes it the more unfortunate that the critics he chooses (Irving and Charmley) are not reasoned or relevant choices at all, and, given their work, are best ignored. If he really wanted to devote a chapter to refuting Churchill’s critics, he let himself down by choosing such easy targets, which seems deliberate. He acknowledges the duality of Churchill but sees ‘both sides’ of him as ultimately ‘good’ – I think this is the problem.
Some parts of the book are just bizarre:
The author is critical of ignoring ‘Great Man’ or at the very least ‘person-focused’ view of history. Maybe we sometimes swing too far the other way, but I still think surely patterns matter to historians? (Strangely, he also says that history doesn’t repeat itself, without explaining what he means, but surely patterns and running themes do matter to historians?) Modern and/or ‘democratic’ historians aren’t saying that the key figures don’t matter by studying economic or social history, but are acknowledging that leaders aren’t the be all and end all – traditionally we often elevate or condemn leaders according to how they perform regardless of how easy or difficult their circumstances are (a bit off topic, but King John is a good example of this – he wasn’t a good king, but even the most capable monarch would struggle with the problems he faced).
The book is weirdly blasé on the war effort for someone so gung-ho about Churchill: there’s a note on p.29 (my edition) on potential Evelyn Waugh depictions of British troops stationed (hypothetically) in Ukraine.
The last chapter, on Churchill’s funeral, is frankly atrocious, and not relevant to the rest of the book at all – I had thought at the beginning, when Lucacs covers Churchill’s relationships with Stalin and Roosevelt with some helpful insight, that this might be a 3-star book, but I would rate the last chapter independently as one star. I was unsure about another reviewer’s calling it ‘hagiography’ until all became clear in this part. It’s filled with uncontrolled, rather embarrassing nostalgia and romanticism of what to me sounds like normal Londoner observations (though to be fair, as a native maybe I don’t realise how odd it seems to an outsider). He seems to see the English, particularly the middle class, as almost like a ‘special’ race unto themselves – I have actually been rereading The Lord of the Rings and I couldn’t help but see parallels between how Tolkien depicts elves and how Lucacs describes us: as ethereal aliens, but with an added coat of awkwardness and repression.
The fact that he died and that the funeral happened, and was a time to reflect on Churchill’s values, is fair enough but is only relevant to his impact, not relevant to the purported themes of the book. It makes the book incoherent and makes the whole exercise less serious once he begins to focus on sentiment over historical accuracy. The reactionary rambling about his over-romanticised view of the English takes the whole book down a notch once you realise there isn’t much value or interest in reading it, and reflects poorly on the rest of the book, making it seem like the author is more concerned with imposing these values and stereotypes on us through Churchill than actual analysis of character. At least he is semi-apologetic in advance, but it makes it unfortunately clear what the real motivation behind the book is: idealism, not historicity.
More...