March 24, 2013

Finest Hour 155, Summer 2012

Page 39

Victory Was Not for Power, But for Liberty

Mr. Churchill’s Profession, by Peter Clarke. Bloomsbury Press, hardbound, illus., 352 pages, $30. Member price $24.

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By Manfred Weidhorn

Professor Weidhorn is Guterman Professor of English Literature at Yeshiva University and the author of four books on Churchill.

The major world political leaders have tended to be aristocrats, generals, politicians, lawyers—but not writers. So Churchill got there the hard way. Yes, he was a politician, but he made his living as a writer, and never more so than in the 1930s.

His writing career has received increasing attention. A landmark in Churchill studies is David Reynolds’ 2004 book In Command of History, an exhaustive analysis of the complex political, financial, historical, and literary circumstances involved in the composition, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, of Churchill’s most famous work, The Second World War. Now comes Peter Clarke, who does for the best-selling A History of the English Speaking Peoples (mainly written in the 1930s) something like what Reynolds did for The Second World War.

The book is scholarly, well written and definitive. Clarke analyzes the contents and merits of the History, as well as its references to events at the time of writing. The original motive may have been making money but, like the great men in his version of British history, Churchill was unconsciously preparing himself for his rendezvous with destiny in his other vocation of politics.

In the famous war speeches of 1939- 42, he availed himself of historical details discovered or rediscovered in his recent bookish labors. His writing thus provided him with the sense of history in the making, of a prophetic vision, of seeing Hitler as but the latest in the series of European tyrants who periodically (but vainly) threatened British survival. He retained hope and confidence during the darkest days, when few others did. Above all, the major theme of the History—that the Mother of Parliaments, through its ex-colonies, had (with the help of the Royal Navy) spread democracy across the globe—was given special meaning during the war: “Victory at all costs” was not about power over others, but liberty for all.

While a sense of humor can enliven most subjects, books on the political side of Churchill’s life involve “tragedy and triumph” (to reverse Churchill’s phrase) and of necessity are serious, sometimes grim. But the other major Churchillian career, that of author, sometimes comes close to comedy, and Clarke’s subtle and consistent sense of humor, sly witticisms and occasional word play make his book perfect for the subject at hand and a delight to read.

The 1930s was a dark decade in world history. Being out of government (though still an MP), as well as refashioning Chartwell according to his whims, required Churchill to turn extra attention to writing for remuneration. The comedy results from his trying to juggle four balls in the air: a private life devoted to the best of everything; the sheer physical limitations to what he could achieve as a serious historian in the available time; the pressures of politics; and the interest of His Majesty’s Government in his tax returns.

Thus we see a side of Churchill not normally on view: Instead of dealing, as a high government official, with admirals, generals, diplomats, and politicians, he now is a businessman constantly negotiating—haggling?—with publishers and editors of all sorts, while also consulting lawyers and accountants on maneuvers to keep his taxes to a minimum. He drove his publishers to distraction with his delays and occasional disingenuousness. In 1932 he also indulged in some currency speculation.

Churchill simply underestimated the expenses of his indulgences, even as he overestimated what he could accomplish with his pen. He “signed contracts for books that he promised to write several years in the future.” One of them, the Marlborough, kept on exceeding the length he had projected. He repeatedly postponed deadlines for the submission of manuscripts. He also made multiple commitments. So we see him concurrently finishing The World Crisis, writing his delightful My Early Life, embarking on his massive Marlborough, and planning the History, not to speak of a steady stream of articles for newspapers and magazines. Meanwhile, he published collections of essays, Thoughts and Adventures (aka Amid These Storms) and Great Contemporaries, and he even dabbled in plans to make film documentaries. He had become a one-man writing factory.

Complaining of the “pressure” of “laborious” projects, Clarke writes, Churchill “was never more stretched than in these years.” The sight of someone in over his head because of his own misjudgments and because God or Nature has allotted only twenty-four hours to each day is, at least in this telling, amusing.

Nor did it help that Churchill retained his day job (literally) of participating assiduously in politics, lost staggering sums in the Great Crash of 1929, and was hit by a car in New York in 1931, curtailing his lecture tour. After the dramatic events of 1938-39, he carried on some of the writing, even after he returned to government in the perilous September of 1939, and continued to do so—unbelievably—at least until the spring of 1941.

The History differs from all his other works in its curious development. Once ejected from the premiership in 1945, Churchill inevitably decided to write his war memoirs. Just as concluding the History in the 1930s had to be postponed with the advent of war, so the massive memoir of that war caused a second postponement of the History. Only after he retired from high office for good in 1955 could the History finally be finished. And indeed it reminded him, old and exhausted as he was, that he always needed to be doing something big—with a challenge to live for. Upon his withdrawal from a half century of politics, the professional writer at last had the leisure to revise and publish his final major work, free of the pressures of “sterner days.”