By: Andrew Greenwood

Andrew Greenwood — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:57:55 +0000

Could one make the argument that Marlborough: His Life and Times is a war book? Certainly it centrally presents military history in documenting Marlborough’s considerable achievements. And it does so impeccably well. Writing it also helped to forge the war leader Churchill was to become. To paraphrase from you and others, to understand the charismatic, commanding, defiant, inspiring and tactically bold Churchill of the Second World War, one MUST read Marlborough. David Starkey’s excellent documentary further argues that it was writing Marlborough that reinforced in Churchill the sense of Britain’s—and his own—destiny, sharpened his rhetoric and afforded him the tools with which to overcome the most formidable of foes, Adolf Hitler. So I would suggest that this book, spun round an epic 18th century conflict, qualifies as a war book and, in so doing, takes the gold medal! The World Crisis and The River War take silver and bronze respectively. - You are absolutely right that Marlborough is in part a war book, and a great one, probably Churchill's single best title. But it is also much more than that, as the scholar Leo Strauss often told his students: "The greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding, which should be required reading for every student of political science." To consider it strictly a war book is what Henry Steele Commager did in 1968, when he controversially abridged the work for Scribners, leaving in most of the soldiering while trimming much of the politics. You are right too that only in Marlboroough can we find the root of the speeches that inspired Britain to stand when she had little else to stand with. It stands, in effect, on a higher rung than his memoirs of the three wars. It is in a class by itself. RML

Comments on: Winston S. Churchill’s Three Best War Books (Excerpt)

By: Andrew Greenwood