September 9, 2015

Finest Hour 168, Spring 2015

Page 47

Review by Michael McMenamin

James MacManus, Sleep in Peace Tonight. St. Martin’s Press, 2014 $27.00, Book Club: $21.60

Portrayal of Churchill **½
Worth Reading ***

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

Sleep in Peace TonightDid you enjoy Lynne Olsen’s excellent book, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour, about Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman and US Ambassador John Winant during the Blitz? If you did and you like historical fiction, then Sleep in Peace Tonight is a book you will want to read. The novel largely takes place from January through December 1941 and is an evocative portrayal of life in wartime London before America entered the war. The main character is FDR’s close aide Harry Hopkins. The two were so close that Hopkins actually lived in the White House and was sent by FDR to London to assess England’s ability and willingness to fight.

Hopkins is charmed by Churchill and, in due course, comes to be strongly pro-English, assisted no doubt by an affair with his beautiful young driver thoughtfully supplied by MI-5. Other historical characters with major roles include Edward R. Murrow, Eleanor Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Brendan Bracken. I think MacManus does them as well as he does Hopkins, and that is pretty good. So, why does his portrayal of Churchill receive only 2 ½ stars?

All novelists, but historical novelists in particular, have to maintain verisimilitude throughout their novels lest they destroy their readers’ willing suspension of disbelief. To Churchillians, getting details right about the great man matters. If nits do not bother you, skip the rest of the review and buy the book. If they do, read on.

Small nits include Churchill drinking Bollinger in his bathtub rather than Pol Roger (91). Another says Churchill was taken as a young boy with “his toy boats…that had begun his fascination with the Navy,” rather than toy soldiers and a fascination with the army (103). A third is that Churchill’s usual breakfast included “a schooner of dry sherry” with his eggs, bacon, and kidneys, a myth that Cita Seltzer debunks in Dinner with Churchill. Also, the US had a Department of War, not Defense, in 1941 (122); and the Augusta in which FDR travelled to Placentia Bay in 1941 was a heavy cruiser, not a battleship.

Okay, these are small nits, to be sure, but here is a howler that destroyed verisimilitude for me when it came to Churchill. MacManus writes about FDR’s impression of Churchill “after they had first met at a dinner in London in 1917. A real stinker, Roosevelt had called him and with good reason. Within minutes of being introduced, the two men had clashed at the dinner table, Churchill as the first sea lord, pulling rank on Roosevelt, an undersecretary for the navy, as he then was. Churchill had been at his bombastic worst” (144).

1920caWhere to begin? Apart from the “stinker” comment, for which the sole historical source is the diary of the notorious Anglophobe Joseph Kennedy, nothing else is accurate. The dinner was in the summer of 1918, not 1917. FDR was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the second highest civilian in the Navy Department, not a mere undersecretary. Churchill was Minister of Munitions in 1917 and 1918, not First Lord of the Admiralty, from which he had been sacked in 1915. Of course, he never had been First Sea Lord, a military position. Finally, the Minister of Munitions, according to Roy Jenkins, was not “a great post,” as it was not in the War Cabinet. Combined with the disgrace of his sacking in 1915, Churchill had little or no rank to pull with FDR in 1918.

Novels are rated one to three stars on two questions: Is the portrayal of Churchill accurate and is the book worth reading?


Michael McMenamin writes Finest Hour feature “Action This Day” and is a member of its editorial board. He and his son Patrick are co-authors of the award-winning Winston Churchill thriller series The DeValera Deception, The Parsifal Pursuit, and The Gemini Agenda, set during Churchill’s Wilderness Years, 1929–1939.

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.