Winston Churchill: An Informal Study Of Greatness – Robert Lewis Taylor, 1952 ★★½

Winston Triumphant

Can greatness actually inhibit one’s appreciation of a fellow human being? If you are a biographer, oh yes, indeed!

Robert Lewis Taylor’s enthusiasm for Winston Churchill is boundless, from first page to last. His Churchill divides his time between running governments, fighting wars, and writing best-sellers, then for an encore goes on to save the world from the horror known as Adolf Hitler.

Meanwhile, whatever exists of an inner man slips away unnoticed. For such a public figure with so much written by and about him, Taylor’s Churchill feels a bit thin.

The River War: An Account Of The Reconquest Of The Sudan [Second Edition] – Winston Churchill, 1902 ★★★

Vying for the Nile

History’s ability to keep on repeating itself is frightening. Settling down to read Winston Churchill’s second book, an episode of colonial ambition along the Nile at the end of the 1800s, one expects dusty Victorian drama under the palms. What one gets instead is a sneak preview of the 21^st Century, equal parts western adventurism and Arab unrest.

The Story Of The Malakand Field Force – Winston Churchill, 1898 ★★★

Making His Mark in the British Raj

For many great literary figures, a first book is like a declaration of principles, a bugle call with resonances that echo for posterity yet can be scarcely audible at the time of publication.

That was my main takeaway from reading this, the earliest book by one of the most famous figures of his century, published even before that century had begun.

Winston Spencer Churchill was many things in a lifetime so packed with incident he was very nearly of retirement age before he got around to doing the stuff people best remember him for.