April 1, 2013

Finest Hour 155, Summer 2012

Page 51

Cheap, Cheerful, Cheerless

Winston Churchill, by Rodney Legg. PiXZ Books, hardbound, illus., 64 pages, £4.99, Amazon $7.35.

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By Michael Richards

Latest in a long line of souvenir books, likely to be found in gift shops at Chartwell, Blenheim or the Churchill Museum, Rodney Legg’s effort is as good as most in tracing Churchill career in a book you can digest in half an hour.

Legg has done good research, which helps him avoid the traditional pitfalls (Lord Randolph’s alleged syphilis, WSC’s supposed love of war and intransigence over India, and so on.) He also writes accurate captions, which you don’t always get in souvenir books, except for one mistaking Gertrude Bell for Clementine in the 1921 camels-and-pyramids photo. He picks out immortal or humorous Churchill quotes in sidebars, and gets most of them right. (Exception: “Bodyguard of lies” becomes “escort of lies”—the latter was Alanbrooke’s comment to Stalin, when he attempted to quote what Churchill had said. No biggie.) Nevertheless, Legg does say that the Dardanelles concept was Kitchener’s (it wasn’t); and that the infamous Sutherland portrait was destroyed because Clementine hated it (WSC did). I wish he would not resort to calling the man “Winston,” a device some Churchill writers use to assure the reader how chummy they are with their subject. But, all in all, there are worse ways to spend a fiver.