Winston Churchill: A Life

Penguin Lives

by John Keegan

One of the greatest historians writing today gives us a defining portrait of the incomparable Winston Churchill

In his landmark biography of Winston Churchill, acclaimed historian John Keegan offers a very human portrait of one of the twentieth century's enduring symbols of heroic defiance. From Churchill's youth as a poor student to his leadership during World War II, Keegan reveals a man whose own idea of an English past—eloquently embodied in his speeches—allowed him to exhort a nation to unprecedented levels of sacrifice. The result is a uniquely discerning look at one of the most fascinating personalities in history.

“The best military historian of our generation.” –Tom Clancy

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, World War II, Politics, Biography Memoir, Historical

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan, OBE, FRSL was a British military historian, lecturer and journalist. He published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime and intelligence warfare as well as the psychology of battle.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very nice read. Great history overview of this Person. Recommended

[Caity · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars
Winston Churchill holds a soft place in my heart. His patriotic and inspiring speeches were a game changer in World War II. A Great War leader that did a hard and courageous job that would have been impossible for many.

Keegan’s biography was a insightful read and it wasn’t all about Churchill’s successes but also include his political downfalls. It was refreshing.

A great quote of Churchill’s about the soldiers who fought in WWII is - “They never asked the question, ‘What shall we gain?’ They asked only the question, ‘Where lies the right?’” Keegan describes this quote as an unintentional epitaph of Churchill’s life. This was thus the best part of the novel. Keegan’s use of the quote finished the novel on an epic conclusion.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the reasons I don't read more biographies is that they always provide me with more information than I want. I understand that the author, who has most likely spent years researching a person's life, wants to include as much of the research as possible, I'm just not sure I want to plow through so much detail.

This effort by John Keegan to deliver a short but comprehensive summary of Winston Churchill's life was a joy to read. I'm sure he used only secondary sources but he, somehow, managed to capture the essence of the man and why he was the way he was as well as letting us see his foibles too, all in 177 superbly written pages.

In addition there are enough snippets from his speeches to provide a real flavor of the words that Churchill used to inspire the British people "... in this, their darkest hour...." I was inspired to plan to read both Churchill's The Second World War as well as his A History of the English Speaking Peoples - 4 Volumes..

This volume is a fine example of Keegan's ability to cut through the mountains of detail to leave the reader with a very real sense of the man he was describing.

[Phil Cotnoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winston Churchill biographies come in all shapes and sizes, from the massive to the svelte. John Keegan's contribution to the genre is definitely on the latter end of that spectrum; his book, a volume in the Penguin Lives series, covers Churchill's nine decades in less than 200 pages. To achieve this, Keegan must condense a long and active life, one that stretched from participation in Queen Victoria's "little wars" to an effort to achieve detente with the Soviet Union. This invariably requires the sacrifice of depth and detail, yet it also gives Keegan an opportunity to define more clearly the overarching themes of Churchill's life, which he sees as defined by clearly delineated moral principles to which he remained true throughout his long political career.

Keegan also brings to his task a long career as a military correspondent and historian, and it is no surprise that his coverage of Churchill's career is exceptionally insightful considering the space available. And yet there are weaknesses that contrast with the book's strengths. The book itself suffers from poor editing, and the narrow focus of his bibliography on military titles raises questions about the depth of knowledge informing Keegan's analysis. For these reasons, Paul Addison's superb Churchill: The Unexpected Hero is far superior as a short biography, but for those unable to locate a copy of it Keegan's book will fit the bill for anyone seeking a useful introduction to Churchill and his achievements.

[Aleks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was small, cheap, and I like biographies and history.

The book was very short. It's only surface deep and doesn't tread deeply into any part of Churchill's life. It really lacks primary sources from Churchill and is completely devoid of any from the people around him.

It is an easy read, very concise, but it's really just a brochure into the topic of Churchill -- if you like this book, then find a real biography to read.

[Jane Beiles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+++ an excellent companion read to a trip to London including a visit to Churchill’s War Rooms. Succinct biography not nearly as long as many others available but seemed to provide very good insight into this fascinating 20th century leader.

[Leo Mccarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read, concise, well written biography.

[K.B. Pellegrino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winston Churchill was a flawed, but bigger than life, political figure whose sometimes seat of the pants decisions created a path for freedom. I read everything on him.

[Janessa James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winston Churchill is one of those historical figures that seem to get more famous and revered with time. His legacy has been told and refigured until, as a millennial, all I had heard about Churchill was his heroic deeds and unwavering patriotism. I hadn’t given thought to his life before World War II, or the mistakes that he made during the war. In John Keegan’s biography Winston Churchill: A Life, he gives the casual reader a brief, and at times skewed view of the famed Prime Minister.
At the very beginning of the book, Keegan admits to thinking in his younger years that “the prime minister seemed anything but heroic” (p. 1). This mentality lasted the author throughout his adolescent and young adult years, until he happened upon recordings of Churchill’s War Speeches. As a budding military journalist and historian, Keegan was electrified by a sense of pride and common cause. His commentary on Churchill was refreshing as he had the unique perspective of not revering Churchill, as many of his colleagues do, until his adult years. As Keegan writes, his respect for Churchill grows and the reader is able to gain appreciation for Winston.
As positive as his viewpoint is, Keegan, for the most part, did not sweep Churchill’s mistakes under the rug. In exploring the failures of the prime minister, the book mentions various unwise decisions that he made during his government. These include his overestimation of the effectiveness of the Special Operations executive, his disillusionment with the strategic bombing campaign and his obsession with the Italian front. Keegan does not hide the fact that Churchill was stubborn, elitist and wasteful. As a blind admirer of Churchill, this perspective pushed my paradigm and allowed me to see him as a man. Gone was the consistently brave, intelligent and stalwart man of my imagining, and I was faced with a different, improved Churchill. He was a man with a temper, a drinking problem and many other flaws; a man who lived and breathed.
In my opinion, the brevity of the biography is this book’s biggest downfall. To condense a character like Churchill to 192 pages is quite a difficult task to undertake, and although Keegan did it well, Churchill deserves more than a short biography. I was quite bothered by the lack of details about the environment Churchill was living in, and bothered by the overused minutia of his personal life. The excavation of Dunkirk was given but a brief nod and the Battle of Britain was summed up in a short sentence. Both these battles had a large impact on Churchill and his future. With Keegan being a military historian, I expected more analysis on the war front and the effects of the decisions that Churchill made, both big and small. I understand the need for a concise biography that gets the base-information out there, but the book would have been much improved if Keegan was allowed a bit of room to expand.
This novel-esque biography was clearly intended for popular reading and not academic use. While reading, I found many exaggerations and some inaccuracies about Winston Churchill’s political life. Many consider the expedition of Antwerp to be a staggering blow to British lines during World War II, and yet Keegan focuses on the “justifiable pride in (Churchill’s) service… be(ing) a devoted commanding officer”(pg. 90). Keegan fails to recognize Churchill’s involvement in the disaster that was the Scandinavian offensive (pg. 130), the same event that lead to the Norway debate and eventually his replacement as Prime Minister. He also incorrectly refers to Lloyd George as Churchill's successor at the Board of Trade (p. 67), when in fact Churchill was George’s successor. Keegan later laments that George was given credit for the Edwardian Liberal Party’s many achievements (pg. 72). The inconsistencies and flaws in the biography prove it to be a book for the casual reader and should not by any means be used as an academic source.
After completing this biography of the British Bulldog, I am amazed at the depth of his character and will. If nothing else, John Keegan conveyed to me that although Churchill was not a perfect man, he was the perfect man for Brittan and the world during his lifetime. I believe that if Keegan were able to expand on the turning points in Churchill’s life and fix the inaccuracies, Winston’s legacy would be well preserved.
Keegan’s Winston Churchill: A Life gave me a short encounter with Churchill and his history, and although I found the brevity and inaccuracies to be detrimental to the character of Winston, It gives a wide audience an accessible and basic overview of a man who changed the world.

[Shelly Baird · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love history and biographies but don't often read them. I appreciated this one because it was short, well-documented and showed both his military and political careers as well as his personal life.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acceptable summary of Churchill's life. Much better books out there on Churchill, of course. Keegan is better as a historian than as a biographer.

[Farzaneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

وینیستون چرچیل
نویسنده برندا هاوگن
انتشارات ققنوس

[Ed Bernard · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not fair to call this book a disappointment – given how short it is, and how it covers Churchill’s entire life, how could it be anything other than a surface treatment of one of the great men of the 20th century (actually born in the 19th, of course)? And we do get some interesting points of view from a celebrated and accomplished historian of WWII – for example, Keegan opines that Churchill’s greatest gift is his ability to speak in a way that moves people – which, combined with his encyclopedic knowledge of history (virtually all self-taught), pretty much kept Britain in the game when nearly every other country in Europe capitulated to Hitler. I think of Churchill as a great leader, but both as an inspiration AND a tactician, which, at least as a wartime commander in chief, Keegan says he was not – and was increasingly marginalized by FDR and Stalin as the war progressed. So that’s interesting. Otherwise, there’s a lot in this book I already knew, but in a sense, that’s why I listened to it – wanted to get my bearings on Churchill before I undertake any more specialized histories of him. One thing about the audio version that was nice – the reader invokes a Churchillian voice when reading his speeches, and he was pretty darn good at it, which made them seem even more stirring … especially valuable given how well known so many of them are. Taken for what it is, I think it’s a terrific overview, as long as those are your expectations. I am going to grade it on its own merits.
Grade: A

[Christopher Bianco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, while being very informative and educational, had a few fairly important issues. I did really like the information presented in the book and I think it is definitely worth a read, but there were a few things that detracted from the books value. Firstly, a lot of the language is unnecessarily academic and florid. In many cases, a much simpler word would have worked better in the place of what was actually used. Secondly, the book seemed to assume that you already had some knowledge about the subject of World Wars one and two, as well as British politics and some specific European and North African geography. While this didn't make the book impossible to understand by any means, it did make some of the information presented a little harder to digest. Finally, it was sometimes to hard to follow all of the people and names. While this is something that a lot of these kind of books suffer from, I think a glossary of important names and places could have gone a long way in making this book more readable. Overall, I think is is worth a read of you find Winston Churchill or that period of time interesting. It definitely has its flaws, but is overall quite a good book.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Penguin Lives series is/was a series of short biographies published about famous people written by respected authors. The late British Military Historian John Keegan’s short biography of Winston Churchill fits the mission of The Penguin Lives series well. Due to Keegan being a military historian, the biography of Churchill ends on May 8, 1945, when his first term as prime minister ended. The rest of Churchill’s life, from May 8, 1945, until Churchill’s death on January 10, 1965, is covered in Chapter 10, entitled “Apotheosis.” Chapter 10 includes a conclusion for Keegan’s short biography of Churchill. The book was published in 2002. I read the book on the Kindle. The biography is focused on World War II. In Chapter 4, entitled “Parliament 1900-1910,” Keegan maybe underplays the role of Churchill’s views on race may have influenced his views of Irish nationalists such as Michael Collins when compared to Indian Nationalists such as Mahatma Gandhi. That being said, I found this short biography of Churchill to be good if the reader wanted a quick but perhaps older introduction to the biography of Churchill within the era of World War II. This book includes a section on sources. This book both has an introductory section and a concluding section for the biography of Churchill. I found Keegan’s short biography of Churchill, which is focused on World War II, maybe dated, but the biography of Churchill is still interesting.

[Almantas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Puiki John Keegan knyga apie iškilų Didžiosios Britanijos ir Europos politiką ir tikrą lyderį. Šaunu, kad knygą apie tokį žmogų ėmėsi rašyti tikrai pripažintas istorikas, turintis labai aiškią argumentuotą poziciją (pvz. jo knyga The History of Warfare, kur jis kritiškai argumentuotai vertina von Clausewitz; ją tikrai verta perskaityti). Akivaizdu, kad Churchill buvo krizės meto lyderis, turėjęs įžvalgų, viziją ir užsispyimo tai įgyvendinti. Jo pasiryžimas pritraukti JAV išspręsti Europos egzistencinės grėsmės klausimą yra beveik neįtikėtinas. Jo indėlis į padedant pagrindus bendrai Europai su NATO yra neabejotinas. Tikriausiai mažai stebina, kad jo pagrindinis karinis patarėjas 2-ojo pasaulinio karo metais Hastings Ismay (vėliau - Lord Ismay) tapo 1-uoju NATO generaliniu sekretoriumi. Tačiau Churchill nebelieka vietos politikoje iškart po karo, nes krizė jau išspręsta. Įdomus faktas, kad Churchill beveik neturi formalaus išsilavinimo. Jis šį trūkumą sugebėjo išspręsti savišvieta ir skaitydamas klasikų knygas.

[Jakub Ferencik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally finished reading Churchill's biography by John Keegan. There were parts of Churchill's life that I was already familiar with due to other literature. I was intrigued by his story & influence because of his infamous use of language and his witty oratory skills that speechwriters still learn from.

He had unmistakeable moral character flaws, which should go without saying. He was short-tempered, stubborn, unkind, fierce, & elitist (to say the least).

Nevertheless, there's something to learn from the way he became PM of the UK. Churchill saw the perils of Nazism despite Chamberlain's purposeful ignorance & Europe's (mainly France's) disarmament post - WW1. Even intellectuals & pacifists like Bertrand Russell (who was jailed for being outspoken against WW1) couldn't foresee the Holocaust, Hitler's vehement Anti-semitism, & white nationalism.

We owe some - if not most - of our freedom to Churchill, despite his obvious flaws. I believe it's worth reading about.

[Kevin Findley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keegan's bio is a good study on Churchill's development politically and how he changed over the decades. He clearly lays out how and why the man we know as a wartime Prime Minister was so much more in a career that spanned five decades and saw the world completely change. Churchill's contributions to the social structure and safety net were massive, and it is not unreasonable to say that today's United Kingdom would look very different without them.

I do feel that Keegan rushed through the 1920s. Just prior to losing one election as an MP, Churchill had just had his appendix removed, and could barely campaign. The author gives no mention of this, despite referencing the health problems elsewhere and how they affected his military and political careers.

Still, this is a book on Churchill that should be on the shelf next to William Manchester's The Last Lion as the definitive works (my opinion) on this great man.

Find it! Buy it! Read it!

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot of interesting things I didn't know about Winston Churchill: that he was a POW who made a daring escape, that he was a very successful author and war reporter before he was ever a politician, that he had a lot of health problems throughout his life. However, at under 200 pages, and small pages at that, a biography of a man who lived so great of a life is going to have to leave a lot out. Unfortunately, during the WWII years, so much time was spent recounting the acts of troops and nations that very little was said about Churchill himself. How he was doing emotionally? What conversations was he having? What was going on with his family (very little about his children ever)? What did he truly believe? Also, I felt that more and longer excerpts from his great speeches would have been beneficial in better understanding and knowing him. Still a decent biography for the length.

[sorenkf · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great, a very informative book about Winston Churchill's exploits, from common knowledge to minute achievement. This is most certainly not an easy biography to read despite it's relatively short 194 pages and being part of a series of such bibliographies with the cute albeit misleading name of 'Penguin Life Biographies'. The first half of the book especially contains mountains of unnecessarily complicated language to describe what could be said in fewer, simpler words. However I do believe that Keegan made up for the fact with his excellent descriptions of Churchill's political life and his part in the Second World War. Overall I would give this book a 4.3/5 because (like many other biographies) it gets better towards the end. I would recommend this book to people (particularly Americans) interested in the life and exploits of Winston Churchill; big and small.

[Brent Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keegan is British, a historian of war. He admits to knowing little of Churchill's great war time speeches when he was a young man. Interesting way to start a biography.

The book ends with a quote from 1926 that should guide many who seek to serve. "They never asked the question, 'What shall we gain?' They asked only the question, "Where lies the right?'"

An interesting read that focuses on Churchill's insight into the dangers of Authoritarian Nationalism and the perils of appeasement by democracies in the interwar years of Europe, especially with the war in Ukraine currently being fought. Keegan describes the USA in 1940 and 1941 as admiring British pluck, but not ready to fight alongside Britain. Is that what we are doing now with the Ukrainians?

[Marco Aurélio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breve biografia dessa super personalidade do Século XX.
Controvérso e polêmico, foi sem dúvida nenhuma um dos maiores líderes e estadistas da história.
O que importa para mim é que a despeito de alguns fracassos retumbantes no passado, como Galípoli na Primeira Guerra Mundial, foi a maior liderança no combate a Hitler e sua máquina de guerra. Sem sua liderança e tenacidade a Grã-Bretanha teria sucumbido e a história do mundo e a nossa própria história, seria outra, provavelmente muito pior. Estava do lado certo e fez a coisa certa. "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

[Laurence · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stalwart British bulldog, who despite his flaws certainly deserves his place in 20th century history. As the man who guided Britain in its darkest hour, and who made use of his own strengths while in conflict with his own personal demons.

This short biography can't go into great depth, but gives enough context to have a clearer view of the major events and challenges that shaped his attitude and life.

[Antonia M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brevity Matters

It seems to be the norm these days that biographies run from 500 to 900 pages. It is as though the biographer cannot bear to winnow his or her notes. Lytton Strachey knew better, and so does John Keegan. A good biography distills the essence of its subject. The rest may not all be chaff, but it is a distraction. This biography gives us the essence of Churchill against the essential historical background of his life without dilution through prolixity. It is an an engrossing work.

[Nickolette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is just what I wanted it to be. A not too long biography of the man, that would allow me, together with this anecdote from Orson Welles, to be an adequate companion at a hypothetical sophisticated dinner party if the subject of Churchill ever comes up.

https://youtu.be/TpqwY7QL7r8?t=48s

[Edmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last few chapters were just the best part of this book. How in 1940 his speeches raised the morale to fight against the Nazis and how he was able to negotiate with Americans and Soviets to help win the war against Nazidom. He was smart, a great war time prime minister and a person to be honored.

[Pei-jean Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear and concise biography on one of history’s most charismatic and enigmatic leaders. Keegan has done a masterful job at condensing the extraordinary life of Winston Churchill the man who lead Britain through the darkest days of WWII

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book for the ones who don’t want to read hundreds of pages about one man’s life. But for me, the book was more frustrating than exciting. Lots of steps in Churchill’s life deserved more than a couple of lines. I was not expected it would be so much summarized.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is certainly not the most thorough biography of Winston Churchill but it does a great job of covering the most significant aspects of a very full life. It is well written and handy to pick up and read. It is a great introduction to the man who even today most symbolizes Great Britain.