Roy Jenkins' biography of Winston Spencer Churchill is a mighty tome at around 900 with dozens of pages of references and it brought out two major thoughts from me:

• Did Jenkins write it?
• I don't particularly like Churchill

Stirring stuff and I'll deal with the first point secondly.

So what's wrong woth churchill, then? Well, I don't like his personality and in terms of his being an MP I don't think he did much of a job of that. Bear in Mind that it might be that Jenkins has badly portrayed a man who was only recently voted the best Briton ever in a BBC Radio 4 Today programme poll. Jenkins ends his biography with this, though:

I now put Churchillwith all his idiosyncracies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity andhis persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessfulm to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street.

Interesting that Jenkins qualifies his subriquet by saying the greatest human being ...! Moreover, As I was reading the book and forming my opinion of Churchill, it was those very qualities that Jenkins says he likes that turned me against Churrchill.

Churhcill was a mercenary: he persued the money interminably: Jenkisn make much of his being permanently poor for much of his life. Then we are told about publishing deals that run into the equivalent of tens of thousands of Pounds. Think about that now, let alone then. Especially given that Churchill's output was prolific and he did a lot of deals and he did make a lot of money. The reality is that Churchill's tastes were expensive: he stayed at the Ritz and similarly expensive hotels, he was at times almost permanently on holiday. His wife, Clementine, was also almost permanently travelling.

Chartwell, the Churchill residence was not cheap either and he bought and rented properties in London. At times, Chartwell was put under wraps. The Churchills even put the place on the market only to have a stroke of luck meaning that they were able to keep it.

Churchill also moved in high society circles and was never short of the opportunity to live off the fat of the land. Sickeningly, when he was in the trenches during the first world war, we can read about such extravagances whilst the men, the boys, we suffering such monstrous privations, illness and suffering. That Churchill was in the trenches wam, to an extent, laudable, but suffering along with his men de did little of. We read on page 191 that he wrote to his wife on 27th January 1916 from the trenches:

the sort of things I want you to send me are these: large slabs of corned beef: stilton cheeses: cream: hams: sardines: dried fruits: you might also try a big beef steak pie: but not tinned grouse or fancy tinned things.

On the same page is a lengthy request for other luxuries to be sent such as a leather waistcoat, a periscope (most important), sheepskin sleeping bag ...

I realise that a book of only 900 pages cannot do full service to a very long and rich life and Jenkins must, perforce, have left out a great deal. So I was not impressed by Churchill's antics as an MP. The amount of time the man spent away from Parliament and the UK often on private business didn't endear him to me. Once or twice there are comments from Churchill relating to how little he had to look forward to when he lost a ministerial poisiton. Even Jenkins, former MP himself, can't bring himself to say, well how about working on behalf of your constituents, Winston. He doesn't take that opportunity.

I should also stress that Churchill travelled a great deal around Britain and given that he was an MP for Dundee for a time, consider the time taken at that time to get from London to Dundee and back again. Churchill also travelled up and down to Manchester, to Birmingham, to Wales ... no doubt in luxury but still a lot of travelling.

Churchill had a great opinion of himself and I really don't think that Jenkins helped us to understand whether such an opinion was fully justified. Those great rousing speeches and sentiments are in short supply. Churchill was famous for his war time speeches and epithets but some of them are missing: I don't remember the fighting them on the beaches snippet, for example. The Nancy Astor put down isn't there either. We are treated to what Churchill thought and a bit of what he did. We were given the odd aside where someone says something against him; but they are only asides.

One quip that I hadn't heard before and that I did like was the one against Stafford Cripps: There but for the grace of God goes God!

Then again, Churchill was our second world war leader; and I even left that section wondering just how good he was at that too. Churchill spent huge amounts of time away from the UK duringthe war and when everyone was suffering, he spent lots of time on holiday as well as working. There is no doubt he was a sychophant and he spent a lot of time buttering up Roosevelt and Stalin. He spent a lot of time with them or trying to meet them, too. I came away with the impression, too, that Churchill may have been a secondary figure in that tripartite relationship.

What really got on my nerves was the way that Churchill held on to power as Prime Minister: he had many strokes and was already the best part of 80 years old; but his selfishness was allowed to keep him at number 10. He felt that if he let go he would die rather quickly as he would have nothing much to do. There was a country to run and he spent a year and a half or so during which he made and broke promises to resign, much to the consternation of his colleagues. Who knows what damage that man did at that time to Parliament and to the country.

He was elected to Parliament again after that and spent the last four years of his Parliamentary life largely absent from it. Absent from the UK too. Not good, whoever you are.

His wife, Clementine, is an interesting character and she features relatively largely throughout the book as they were married for the majority of their adult lives. They spent a lot of time apart as they both travelled extensively but not awlays together and to the same places. She does come across as having been a wide counsellor to her husband on many occasions. Other than that, I learned little about her.

When we got to the part about the meetings Churchill had with Stalin, I compared what Jenkins had to say with Simon Sebag Montefiore's version of events in his bior=graphy of Stalin. The contrast in styles between the two books is astonishing. Jenkins' style is staid by comparison. Moreover, Montefiore is able to provide a lot more colour and detail and he does.

Now, why do I question whether Jenkins wrote the book? It's all a matter of language. Jenkins died in shortly after he finished this book at a realtively advanced age and as Chancellor of the University of Oxford to boot, his language should hae been more formal than I found at times. I came acros such phrases as these:

• and fairly unfriendlily
• self righteousness and unwisdom
• except through the movies
• also unhappy about Point Three
• in sharp contrast with his optimistic appraisal
• partisanly socialist

There are many more of these too: poor grammar and/or modern language that I doubt that Jenkins used. He does admit in the preface to the book that he was ill towards the end of the book and that he sought help. I think the final version of this text was not Jenkins'. If it was, I am shocked that he allowed such lapses of language.

The book is a slow read and I am glad I read it but I for one would not now vote for Churchill as the greatest ever Briton on the strength of this book!

Duncan Williamson
18^th February 2007