Eminent Churchillians

by Andrew Roberts

Access to previously unpublished papers and closed archives mean this that this book includes some startling revelations on some very eminent figures. There is a sharp polemical edge to each of the eight self-contained portraits from this talented young historian and journalist.

Genres: History, Politics, Biography, Essays, British Literature

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 1995

About the author

Dr Andrew Roberts, who was born in 1963, took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). He has written or edited twelve books, and appears regularly on radio and television around the world. Based in New York, he is an accomplished public speaker, and is represented by HarperCollins Speakers’ Bureau (See Speaking Engagements and Speaking Testimonials). He has recently lectured at Yale, Princeton and Stanford Universities and at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/928920.html[return][return]It's a book of essays blaming "Britain's postwar decline" [sic] on foolish decisions made by Conservatives themselves. Except it isn't really; most of the essays are attacks on sacred cows. The first piece looks at the character flaws and foolish political views, including thorough-going anti-semitism, of King George VI, and while the evidence is marshalled very skilfully it feels like a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut; it's not like the king ever actually did very much.[return][return]The second piece was on the King's cousin, Lord Mountbatten, a lengthy and total attack on his reputation. While it's difficult to prove that George VI was ever directly responsible for people dying, the death toll in Mountbatten's biography just mounts: from the thousands who died in the Dieppe raid and other comprehensively botched operations in the second world war, for which he bore sole command responsibility, to the hundreds of thousands killed at the partition of India and Pakistan, with the evidence being pretty clear that Mountbatten ignored every chance he had to prevent or alleviate the looming catastrophe, and indeed took some key decisions which made things worse. This habit of recklessness and irresponsibility with other people's safety goes right to the end of his life, when he wilfully ignored security warnings from the Garda

[Robert Webber · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting analysis of some of the figures who lived and occasionally interacted with Winston Churchill. Andrew Roberts is, in my view, a decisive and painstakingly thorough historian whose work is both engaging and perceptive. I particularly enjoyed the section which exposed Mountbatten, a ruthlessly ambitious and brilliant self publicist, as an incompetent, deeply selfish, vain and dishonest man. He proved to be unforgivably careless with other peoples lives and was wholly undeserving of the stratospheric career and status he enjoyed. Equally, the oleaginous historian and hypocrite A C Bryant is forensically exposed as the toadying fascist he was. Overall an interesting analysis of some of Churchill’s prominent contemporaries and the attitudes they displayed during such a critical period of Britain’s history.

[Ben Jeapes · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a title like that, you could easily think it's going to be a hagiography of certain eminent people in Churchill's orbit. Quite the opposite. It's a warts and all look at six distinct people or areas of life at that time, with an emphasis on the warts. George VI and the rest of the royal family around the Abdication crisis; Mountbatten, an incompetent promoted way above his abilities through his royal connections (and protected from the consequences in the same way); the entire backstabbing Tory party and their attitude to Churchill in the early years of his premiership; Churchill again, and the incompetent and outright racist manner in which the Windrush generation was handled at the start; Walter Monckton, whose complacency at the Ministry of Labour inspired the trade unions to the excesses of the 1970s; and Arthur Bryant, who had very little impact on policy but was a vastly overrated, shirt-turning historian who couldn't work out whose side he was on, and who seems thrown in for good measure. None of this changes history but it does provide some very interesting perspectives. Where good points exist, the author does not deny them; George VI and Churchill especially will always be heroes for what they did during WW2, whatever their other flaws may have been. This book gives an excellent and invaluable oversight of the bigger picture.

[Mark Singer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisionist look at selected famous Britons of the mid-twentieth century. The chapter that demolishes the myth of Lord Mountbatten alone makes this worth reading!