- Manchester, William and Paul Reid.
The Last Lion. Vol. 3.
New York: Little, Brown, 2012.
ISBN 978-0-316-54770-3.
-
William Manchester's monumental three volume biography of
Winston Churchill, The Last Lion, began with
the 1984 publication of the first volume,
Visions of Glory, 1874–1932
and continued with second in 1989,
Alone, 1932–1940.
I devoured these books when they came out, and eagerly
awaited the concluding volume which would cover Churchill's
World War II years and subsequent career and life. This was to
be a wait of more than two decades. By 1988, William Manchester
had concluded his research for the present volume, subtitled
Defender of the Realm, 1940–1965 and began
to write a draft of the work. Failing health caused him to set
the project aside after about a hundred pages covering events
up to the start of the Battle of Britain. In 2003, Manchester,
no longer able to write, invited Paul Reid to audition to complete
the work by writing a chapter on the London Blitz. The result
being satisfactory to Manchester, his agent, and the publisher,
Reid began work in earnest on the final volume, with the intent
that Manchester would edit the manuscript as it was produced.
Alas, Manchester died in 2004, and Reid was forced to interpret
Manchester's research notes, intended for his own use and not
to guide another author, without the assistance of the person
who compiled them. This required much additional research and
collecting original source documents which Manchester had
examined. The result of this is that this book took almost
another decade of work by Reid before its publication. It has
been a protracted wait, especially for those who admired the
first two volumes, but ultimately worth it. This is a thoroughly
satisfying conclusion to what will likely remain the definitive
biography of Churchill for the foreseeable future.
When Winston Churchill became prime minister in the dark days of
May 1940, he was already sixty-five years old: retirement
age for most of his generation, and faced a Nazi Germany
which was consolidating its hold on Western Europe with
only Britain to oppose its hegemony. Had Churchill retired
from public life in 1940, he would still be remembered as
one of the most consequential British public figures of
the twentieth century; what he did in the years to come
elevated him to the stature of one of the preeminent
statesmen of modern times. These events are chronicled
in this book, dominated by World War II, which occupies
three quarters of the text. In fact, although the focus
is on Churchill, the book serves also as a reasonably
comprehensive history of the war in the theatres in which
British forces were engaged, and of the complex relations
among the Allies.
It is often forgotten at this remove that at the time
Churchill came to power he was viewed by many, including
those of his own party and military commanders, as a
dangerous and erratic figure given to enthusiasm for
harebrained schemes and with a propensity for disaster
(for example, his resignation in disgrace after the
Gallipoli catastrophe in World War I). Although admired
for his steadfastness and ability to rally the nation
to the daunting tasks before it, Churchill's erratic
nature continued to exasperate his subordinates, as is
extensively documented here from their own contemporary
diaries.
Churchill's complex relationships with the other leaders
of the Grand Alliance: Roosevelt and Stalin, are explored
in depth. Although Churchill had great admiration for
Roosevelt and desperately needed the assistance the U.S.
could provide to prosecute the war, Roosevelt comes across
as a lightweight, ill-informed and not particularly
engaged in military affairs and blind to the geopolitical
consequences of the Red Army's occupying eastern and
central Europe at war's end. (This was not just Churchill's
view, but widely shared among senior British political and
military circles.) While despising Bolshevism, Churchill
developed a grudging respect for Stalin, considering his
grasp of strategy to be excellent and, while infuriating to
deal with, reliable in keeping his commitments to the
other allies.
As the war drew to a close, Churchill was one of the first to
warn of the great tragedy about to befall those countries
behind what he dubbed the “iron curtain” and
the peril Soviet power posed to the West. By July 1950, the
Soviets fielded 175 divisions, of which 25 were armoured,
against a Western force of 12 divisions (2 armoured). Given
the correlation of forces, only Soviet postwar
exhaustion and unwillingness to roll the dice given the threat
of U.S. nuclear retaliation kept the Red Army from
marching west to the Atlantic.
After the war, in opposition once again as the disastrous
Attlee Labour government set Britain on an irreversible
trajectory of decline, he thundered against the dying of
the light and retreat from Empire not, as in the 1930s,
a back-bencher, but rather leader of the opposition. In
1951 he led the Tories to victory and became prime minister
once again, for the first time with the mandate of winning
a general election as party leader. He remained prime
minister until 1955 when he resigned in favour of Anthony
Eden. His second tenure as P.M. was frustrating, with little
he could to do to reverse Britain's economic decline and
shrinkage on the world stage. In 1953 he suffered a
serious stroke, which was covered up from all but his inner
circle. While he largely recovered, approaching his
eightieth birthday, he acknowledged the inevitable and
gave up the leadership and prime minister positions.
Churchill remained a member of Parliament for Woodford
until 1964. In January 1965 he suffered another
severe stroke and died at age 90 on the 24th of
that month.
It's been a long time coming, but this book is a grand
conclusion of the work Manchester envisioned. It is a
sprawling account of a great sprawling life engaged
with great historical events over most of a century: from
the last cavalry charge of the British Army to the
hydrogen bomb. Churchill was an extraordinarily complicated
and in many ways conflicted person, and this grand canvas
provides the scope to explore his character and its origins
in depth. Manchester and Reid have created a masterpiece.
It is daunting to contemplate a three volume work totalling
three thousand pages, but if you are interested in the
subject, it is a uniquely rewarding read.
January 2013 