Churchill's Shadow

Starred review from August 23, 2021
Journalist Wheatcroft (The Strange Death of Tory England) delivers a fresh take on Winston Churchill’s life and legacy in this invigorating biography. Claiming that Churchill was both “the saviour of his country” and “far too often in the wrong,” Wheatcroft succeeds in separating the myth (much of it created by Churchill himself in his histories and memoirs of WWII) from the reality. The most damaging and durable myths, according to Wheatcroft, include a misreading of prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement with Nazi Germany that has been used to justify disastrous wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and a misleading British national pride that “sustain the country with beguiling illusions of greatness, of standing unique and alone, while preventing the British from coming to terms with their true place in the world.” Wheatcroft doesn’t shy away from Churchill’s racism and imperialism, which “were already retrograde by the standards of his age,” or his support for the merciless bombing offensive against German cities and civilians that culminated in the destruction of Dresden, while expressing sincere admiration for his eloquence and ability to inspire strength and action. The result is an exhilarating reassessment that will appeal to Churchill buffs and newcomers alike.

August 13, 2021

British journalist and author Wheatcroft (The Controversy of Zion) focuses on certain issues and events in the trajectory of the admired, sometimes-misunderstood Winston Churchill (1874-1965), sketching his lasting influence in politics and culture in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Wheatcroft maintains that Churchill, thinking stereotypically and strategically, wrongly backed Edward VIII during the abdication crisis and poorly judged men, such as his press lord associates. From the beginning of his career, Churchill was unpredictable; a gambler (on the stock market as well as in war); stunningly flamboyant (appealing to many, distasteful to a few); and an author of his own myth. Wheatcroft provides some analysis of his own, namely that Lend-Lease much favored the Americans over the British and that the 1945 election loss happily helped Churchill avoid the challenges of postwar reconstruction. Largely relying on the works of historians such as Martin Gilbert, Roy Jenkins, and Andrew Roberts (whose 2018 book he regarded as too laudatory), Wheatcroft reconsiders Churchill's extensive writings and additionally seeks to correct popular cultural portrayals of Churchill on television and film. VERDICT Fans of history will find much value in this readable work; historians may be challenged by some of its interpretations.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

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Starred review from September 15, 2021
An authoritative examination of how Winston Churchill's ongoing geopolitical impact refracts and supersedes his actual biography. Former Spectator literary editor Wheatcroft brings superior scholarship, controlled, intermittently witty prose, and warts-and-all admiration to the acknowledged surfeit of writing about Churchill. With an evenhanded perspective, he explores how textuality and reputation simultaneously distort and amplify Churchill's impact. "I've tried to write as what Keynes called 'the historian of Opinion', seeing Churchill through the eyes of his contemporaries," he writes, providing a sinewy account of Churchill's strange, singular life, with its political fluctuations, admirable and shameful qualities, and repeated seasons of rise and fall. "Churchill's life until the age of sixty-five," the author writes about his "apotheosis" in 1940, "had certainly been a dramatic roller-coaster ride of highs and lows...until that ultimate and complete triumph." Wheatcroft adds materially to this well-known narrative by exploring "the darker side of his character and career, too often brushed over, and the long shadow which he has cast since his death." The author vividly depicts every dramatic stage of Churchill's experience, from a privileged upbringing propelling him from colonial adventurism to journalism and politics, through the disaster of Gallipoli during World War I, to his "wilderness years" of lucrative book deals and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, to his "walking with destiny" as Britain's savior against Hitler. The author achieves a strong balance between crisp, dramatic historical storytelling and the words and views of both Churchill's many contemporaries--not least the scoundrels comprising his inner circle--and the scholars and writers who have addressed his enigma ever since. His posthumous legend became ever more diffuse--e.g., after 9/11, when George W. Bush and Tony Blair adopted the Churchillian mantle in inaccurate and grotesque ways: "the Iraq War had gone horribly, and predictably, wrong but Blair was impenitent." A lively and rigorous deep dive into the ambiguous, still-relevant geopolitical odyssey that Churchill represents.

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Starred review from October 1, 2021
In the way both Tony Blair and George Bush invoked him to justify their 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wheatcroft discerns evidence of the enduring influence of Winston Churchill. But in the views of Britons and Americans who regard that influence as entirely beneficial, Wheatcroft discerns dangerous political blindness. Challenging the widespread adulation of Churchill as a figure destined for greatness, Wheatcroft chronicles the blunders (Gallipoli, 1915; Ireland, 1920) that relegated the British Bulldog to irrelevance--until his stunning emergence in 1940 as Britain's savior. Wheatcroft admires Churchill for his courage and strength of will in facing down Hitler, but honest analysis does not convert those virtues into excuses for the brutal callousness Churchill manifested during the war in the Dresden firebombing and the Bengal Famine. Nor can a candid assessment leave unexamined the dark realities hidden behind the masterful rhetoric Churchill deployed to resurrect his reputation after his repudiation at the polls in 1945--realities such as Churchill's abandonment of Eastern Europeans exposed to Stalin's tyranny or his racist denigration of the nonwhite peoples populating the British Empire. Those who refuse to acknowledge Churchill's real defects, Wheatcroft warns, will draw from him perilously misleading lessons for shaping the twenty-first century. A provocative reevaluation of an iconic figure.

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