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The Splendid and the Vile is a biography of Winston Churchill and the people around him in the first year or so Winston's time as Prime Minister, covering the period around the Battle of France through Pearl Harbor. The theming could mostly be described as 'ordinary people'. While there is political and military history (and how could there not be?), Larson's primary interest is the texture of ordinary life at this time, an interest that he mostly succeeds in.
The basic thrust is that people and people, and people under stress are mostly horny and drunk. A lot of the book is taken up with the amorous entanglements of the larger Churchill circle, including dissolute son Randolph, daughter-in-law Pamela, younger daughter Mary, and private secretary Matt Colville. It's unclear from this book if Churchill was also sleeping around, but he was definitely drinking heavily. The Prime Ministerial retreat of Chequers was a constant party. On the more adult side, an inner circle of scientific advisor Professor Lindeman, scandal-monger and Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook, and military assistant General 'Pug' Ismay show different aspects of mobilization. Goering, Hess, and fighter ace Adolf Galland are corresponding figures on the Nazi side.
I don't begrudge these leaders their good times, because things were general profoundly bad. I was aware of how dismal the early war was for the Allies, but in about a year Britain endured military catastrophes in Norway, France, Greece, and the deserts of Libya, along with mass bombing and deadly U-boat campaign. Churchill was truly the man of the hour, a resolute believer in ultimate victory (as long as isolationist America could be persuaded to step in), with a true talent for delivering bad news in a way that made listeners feel uplifted.
Though surprisingly, for all of his reputation as a stupendous orator, and his successes in that vein, Churchill had some failures. One early speech on France bombed because he insisted on delivering it with a cigar clenched in his mouth. The famous "blood, sweat, and tears" line received little attention at the time. But this is also a depiction of the steadfast 'Blitz spirit', at every level from Churchill, refusing to take shelter during air raids and confronting the Luftwaffe from the roof of 10 Downing, to the poorest of London's poor sheltering in Tube stations.
The Splendid and the Vile lacks the focused brilliance of Isaac's Storm or The Devil in the White City, but it's a solid supplement to other WW2 histories.
And as a personal aside, I have another line of attack against Connie Willis' execrable Blackout/All Clear, where time-travelling Historians go back to understand the Blitz spirit. Not only did many people recognize they were living through historic times and take detailed notes, but an academic project called Mass Observation collected hundreds of journals at regular intervals from a cross-section of the population. There's probably no other event so comprehensively documented as the Blitz!
The basic thrust is that people and people, and people under stress are mostly horny and drunk. A lot of the book is taken up with the amorous entanglements of the larger Churchill circle, including dissolute son Randolph, daughter-in-law Pamela, younger daughter Mary, and private secretary Matt Colville. It's unclear from this book if Churchill was also sleeping around, but he was definitely drinking heavily. The Prime Ministerial retreat of Chequers was a constant party. On the more adult side, an inner circle of scientific advisor Professor Lindeman, scandal-monger and Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook, and military assistant General 'Pug' Ismay show different aspects of mobilization. Goering, Hess, and fighter ace Adolf Galland are corresponding figures on the Nazi side.
I don't begrudge these leaders their good times, because things were general profoundly bad. I was aware of how dismal the early war was for the Allies, but in about a year Britain endured military catastrophes in Norway, France, Greece, and the deserts of Libya, along with mass bombing and deadly U-boat campaign. Churchill was truly the man of the hour, a resolute believer in ultimate victory (as long as isolationist America could be persuaded to step in), with a true talent for delivering bad news in a way that made listeners feel uplifted.
Though surprisingly, for all of his reputation as a stupendous orator, and his successes in that vein, Churchill had some failures. One early speech on France bombed because he insisted on delivering it with a cigar clenched in his mouth. The famous "blood, sweat, and tears" line received little attention at the time. But this is also a depiction of the steadfast 'Blitz spirit', at every level from Churchill, refusing to take shelter during air raids and confronting the Luftwaffe from the roof of 10 Downing, to the poorest of London's poor sheltering in Tube stations.
The Splendid and the Vile lacks the focused brilliance of Isaac's Storm or The Devil in the White City, but it's a solid supplement to other WW2 histories.
And as a personal aside, I have another line of attack against Connie Willis' execrable Blackout/All Clear, where time-travelling Historians go back to understand the Blitz spirit. Not only did many people recognize they were living through historic times and take detailed notes, but an academic project called Mass Observation collected hundreds of journals at regular intervals from a cross-section of the population. There's probably no other event so comprehensively documented as the Blitz!