June 24, 2015

Finest Hour 120, Autumn 2003

Page 32

By CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING

Clementine Churchill, by Mary Soames. Updated and revised edition. Mariner books, softbound, 752 pp., illus. $18. Member price $14.

We Shall Not Fail: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill, by Celia Sandys and Jonathan Littman. Portfolio/Penguin, 270 pp., $24.95. Member price $20

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Churchill, by Sebastian Haffner, translated by John Brownjohn. David & Charles, 182 pp., softbound, $15.95. Member price $13.


Lady Soames’s first book, published in 1979, a loving yet measured biography of her mother, is now brought up to date and expanded. The new version is a mite easier on the eyes (slightly larger print size) and the main text runs about fifty pages longer than in the original. Even the photographs have been extended— there are now 131 of them.

As before, this is a warmly readable account of the “other half” ofWinston Churchill’s long life; the strong marriage that stretched from 1908 to his death in 1965. Clementine lived for another dozen years, through the centennial celebrations of his birth and beyond. Re-reading this account years after the original is a delightful re-introduction to a formidable lady, without whom it is hard to imagine WSC accomplishing as much as he did.

The most startling “new” fact herein is that Henry Hozier was almost certainly not Clementine’s father. Honors most likely go to the dashing but short-lived equestrian William George “Bay” Middleton, one of several lovers taken on by the headstrong and passionate Blanche Hozier, who had a very unhappy marriage. Lady Soames makes clear that while Clementine suspected toward the end of her life that Henry Hozier was not her father, she never knew who was.

A strength of this book is its dependence not only on the author’s personal experience (and she was certainly the closest of all the Churchill offspring to both of them), but on the massive correspondence the family carried out. Many letters between her parents are quoted here, as are others between Clementine and her children and other notables. The strength of the relationship between Winston and Clementine comes winningly through in their own words to each other over the years, through thick and thin. These letters also help the reader get behind the sometimes cool demeanor of the public Clementine.

For all her life she had somewhat fragile physical and psychological defenses with which to face the winds of a fascinating life filled with pressures, occasional tragedies (such as the early death of daughter Marigold in 1921— surprisingly not listed in the index), and the constant need to be supportive of the whirlwind named Winston.

There is constant reference to Clementine’s need to “get away” for breaks of a few days up to (on occasion) a month or more. Yet the strong bond between them continued when they were apart, and with one exception, Clementine never feared to raise a subject with her husband. The exception came at the end, when Churchill understandably had a very difficult time agreeing finally to retire from Parliament in 1964 so his constituency could run an active Conservative candidate. Even here, Clementine worked with others behind the scene to ease the way to the end of the spectacular career. And Lady Soames knows how best to paint a scene—her description of her father’s funeral is very moving, as are the pages relating her mother’s final years and her own passing.

Their daughter tells us much about Clementine’s reactions to Winston’s many friends. She feared the harm his more free-wheeling comrades might cause him, even unwittingly. For example, she long held a jaundiced view of Max Beaverbrook, only coming around to admire the newspaper magnate fairly late in life. On the other hand, she was most fond of “The Prof” (Frederick Lindemann), the sometimes bumptious Field Marshal Montgomery (who took her call-downs with good grace), and the often difficult Charles de Gaulle.

Do you need this new edition if you have the original? I would argue yes for at least two reasons—it is physically easier to read, thanks to the larger type; and it contains Mary Soames’s most considered and complete view of her mother’s life a generation after her passing.

Day-to-Day Guidance

As readers of Finest Hour are well aware, Celia Sandys has now penned five volumes on her grandfather. The first two, The Young Churchill (From Winston with Love and Kisses in USA) published in 1995, and Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive, issued five years later, explored specific aspects of Churchill’s early life, making use of period photos and a good deal of personal, on-scene research. . Here she has taken on a very different kind of book, along with a co-author, California journalist Jonathan Littman. Rather than biography, this is intended as day-to-day guidance for leaders and would-be leaders, drawn from events and speeches in Churchill’s long life.

The chapter titles give one a pretty good idea of the themes to be found herein—Be Courageous, Challenge Convention, Be Magnanimous, Resist Bullies, Turn Details into Action, Never Surrender, Experiment, Build Hope and Confidence, Forge Alliances, and Follow Your Canvas. A chapter titled “Find Your Clementine” argues how important a partner can be, both in the critical and supporting sense. Each chapter begins with a quotation from one of his books or speeches, includes boxed features focusing on some relevant aspect of his life (often including facsimile reprints of memos or speeches), and concludes with a series of “Churchillian principles” in a bulleted listing. The main text of each chapter relates a series of thematic episodes that are used to underline the leadership point being made.

The trouble with any such book is that it attempts to do two very different things: relate leadership episodes from Churchill’s life and from them draw out a management guide to important leadership principles. But specifics of the former do not always lend themselves to generalizing the latter. Here, the authors do a good job with the narrative but provide at best a light guide to leadership principles. It is in any case extremely hard to do both jobs well. Most of us will already know the aspects of Churchill’s life narrated here, while there are legions of on-point management guides—shelves of them, in fact. So one has to approach this work as a kind of handbook, both of what Churchill accomplished and said, and how these help to highlight useful advice for being a leader today.

Advanced Churchillians will find little new or startling here: difficult, given the volume of Churchill books already published. Some of the boxed features provide interesting facsimile reproductions of Churchill letters or speeches. The leadership advice proffered is straightforward and predictable, laudable though such ideas as “resist bullies” or “be loyal to your subordinates” may be. The management lessons can be skimmed simply by reviewing the bulleted Churchillian principles that end each chapter.

This book captures lay interest in Churchill just as he has enjoyed a kind of rebirth in the mainstream media following the war on terrorism, being widely quoted by modern politicians of varied stripes. Churchill’s rhetorical bandwagon is certainly one way to approach leadership development. For ambitious young managers unacquainted with Churchill’s life and writing, this may have the effect of keeping the memory green.

Better Than We Thought

This slim volume has three immediate strong points to recommend it: a brief, vivid and opinionated telling of Churchill’s life story; a useful comparative chronology that places Winston Churchill’s life events against both “history” and “culture” events; and a valuable bibliographic discussion (by Patrick Higgins) of what to read next from the huge and growing canon. Add three more benefits—good illustrations, useful backgrounders on key people and events (set off in red type), and low price. So without reading this review any further (and contrary to the Editor’s first impression in FH 118:9) you can spend your money and know you will gain something. What you will gain, of course, will depend on your reactions to Haffner’s viewpoints. He surely has a number of them. Some are a stretch.

Haffner’s book benefits from the fact that he moved from Berlin to London in the 1930s, and thus was on site to observe Churchill’s most important years first hand. After the war he became a leading German political commentator and authored several books, including well-received political analyses and studies of Hitler. He first published this brief survey of Churchill’s life in 1986 and it has only now become available in a good English translation, part of the Haus “Life and Times” series of similar books.

Haffner certainly knows how to pack information into a sentence, and a paragraph. While this may be a brief book, there is a lot here, for he tells not merely the basic story, but assesses and questions, and seeks patterns and causes. And he tells it well-the text (and its translation) read very smoothly. We are guided through the familiar corridors of a life already well recorded, as seen through the eyes of an insightful though sometimes strongminded guide.

For example, to conclude of his reaction to the rising Labour Party that “It is no exaggeration or unjust imputation to say that the Churchill of the 1920s was really a fascist; only his nationality precluded him from becoming one in name as well” (69) seems to move beyond evidence to the vastly overblown. To suggest, as Haffner later does, that Churchill wanted to crush the General Strike by means of civil war (105) is simply not supported by the facts.

Haffner argues that Churchill did not understand and was thus outflanked by Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin: boxed in as Chancellor given his lack of knowledge about or interest in economic questions, on the outs over India in the early 1930s, and disastrously wrong (though surely loyal to his king) in the abdication crisis of 1936—about which Haffner says “There is no doubt that Baldwin was right and Churchill wrong” (83). That certainly seems fair.

There is constant reference to Churchill’s writing and books, most of the commentary flattering. Indeed, one gets the strong impression that Haffner likes and admires Churchill, despite the occasional criticism. He often demonstrates good insight—understanding how Churchill’s political wilderness years of the 1930s were productive in books and journalism, while hugely frustrating (because of his lack of power to do anything politically: “Nothing he said or wrote made the slightest difference” (78).

Haffner raises sympathetic arguments for why Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler—and why Churchill was largely ignored in his warnings about the German dictator. And the author draws useful parallels between Churchill’s role in Gallipoli of 1915 and Norway of 1940—and their very different political outcomes.

Doing critic John Charmley (or Robert Rhodes James) one better, Haffner suggests that “to delete the figure of Churchill” (105) from history before 1940—or after 1942, for that matter—would not make much difference. It was of course the destiny years of 1940 (especially) and 1941 where his bulldog approach made all the difference. One might argue however with Haffner’s suggestion that Sir Stafford Cripps was even briefly a serious contender to take over the leadership in 1942 (124-25). One also wonders who wrote the picture captions—a photo on page 90 would have us believe Churchill returned to Parliament in September 1939, rather than to the government front bench; another on page 138 tells us Yalta took place in July 1945, three months after President Roosevelt (who was there) had died.

Despite these occasional nits, I recommend Haffner’s volume as an ideal way to introduce new readers to Churchill’s fascinating life. While Lord Jenkins’ book is the best recent comprehensive one-volume survey, its very mass and detail will turn-off rising generations not used to serious reading. So for them Haffner offers a good brief survey. It is engagingly written with a smooth style incorporating (and effectively covering) a lot of research effort. Not a bad combination.

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