Enjoying every moment 
David Reynolds
- Churchill by John Keegan
- Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend since 1945 by John Ramsden
- Clementine Churchill: The Revised and Updated Biography by Mary Soames
- Churchill at War 1940-45 by Lord Moran
- Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy by Klaus Larres
In August 1940, Winston Churchill likened the relationship between Britain and America to the Mississippi: ‘It just keeps rolling along,’ he told the Commons, ‘full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant.’ In the car afterwards he sang ‘Ole Man River’ (out of tune) on the way back to Number Ten.
Sixty years later, one might say the same about Ole Man Churchill, whose reputation just keeps rolling along. The tide of books is unceasing – I could have added several more to those discussed here – as are the movies and documentaries, with Albert Finney following Richard Burton and Robert Hardy as a screen Churchill. As for approval ratings, in an admittedly contrived phone-poll BBC2 viewers last November voted him the greatest Briton of all time.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
David Reynolds’s From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War came out in 2001. He is a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.
print layout
tell a friend