April 20, 2013

Finest Hour 153, Winter 2011-12

Page 48

Students, Mind the Sources

Churchill 1920-45, by Mike Wells. OCR A-Level History. Heinemann, softbound, 192 pages, £13.99.

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By Robin Brodhurst

Mr. Brodhurst, a former army officer, has been Head of History at Pangbourne College for twenty years, examining A Levels for the past 15. His Churchill’s Anchor, a biography of Dudley Pound, was reviewed in FH 114.

This new textbook for British A-Level students has interesting points that may appeal to teachers in other countries. It is specifically for students of OCR (one of three UK exam boards) and for one of modules in their History A Level-Enquiries. This module requires students to engage with secondary and primary sources, and tests their interpretations. The paper is not focused on historiography, or the different interpretations of historians, although it does introduce students to issues in which evidence may conflict.

As an example, contemporary sources differ on Churchill’s handling of the 1926 General Strike. To some he aimed at conciliation; to others he exacerbated matters. Views depend on the nature, origin and date of the source.

Following an opening biography are four chapters on aspects of WSC’s political career: 1920 to 1929; foreign policy in the 1930s; Imperial policy in the same period; and World War II. The book ends with exam tips and suggestions, including specimen answers to a number of questions, and examiners’ comments on them, which as a student I would have found extremely useful.

The chapter on Imperial foreign policy is instructive. It starts with Churchill’s clash with Tory views on India, examines his views on rearmament and appeasement, and considers his political position in 1933-38, asking whether his views were justified. In other words, it encourages students to move from the specific to the general.

Interspersed with the commentary are short biographies of key individuals such as Gandhi, and data boxes on, for example, the 1935 Government of India Act. Each section usually ends with three sets of sources and questions about them: the first set herein has an extract from Wavell’s and Leo Amery’s diaries from October/November 1943, compared to a quotation from Arthur Herman’s Gandhi and Churchill (2008). Each chapter ends with advice by examiners and a rather unsatisfactory bibliography. Remarkably it makes no reference to the Gilbert biography, which one would have thought was basic, or even to the Gilbert’s one-volume version. Some books are cited for just two or three pages, while others appear to be recommended passim.

While it is important for students to consider differing views on Churchill, I am not sure that I would recommend Ponting’s 1994 biography, other than to show how wrong a historian can be. One might as well recommend Irving’s Churchill’s War, just to show that there is a different view. John Charmley gets a rather too extensive series of quotations, particularly in the chapter on international diplomacy in World War II. If I were to recommend a single-volume biography aside from Gilbert’s, it would probably be that by Roy Jenkins, which also gets no mention. Similarly omitted is Churchill: A Major New Assessment, the 1993 collection of essays edited by Robert Blake and Roger Louis, amongst the best places for a student to start. Given that one of the aims of the book is to encourage students to look more widely, more thought could have been given to the bibliographies.

It’s not possible in a short review to look at each chapter’s chosen documents and sources. Every historian will have favourites, and reasons for supporting them. For example, I was disappointed to find little about the Battle of the Atlantic and the allocation of VLR aircraft to Coastal Command compared with the numbers going to Bomber Command. Of course it is not possible to include everything, and the book does succeed in what it sets out to do. It informs A-Level students about important aspects of Churchill in his most important twenty-five years. It shows how documentary sources can illustrate both sides of an argument and encourages students to consider differing views about Churchill. Above all, it allows VI-Form students to venture into the canon, introducing them to his writings, and helping them see how he dominated the 20th century, both nationally and internationally.