Anyone who has swallowed Pat Buchanan’s book is probably beyond my poor attempts at education. But the other six people who have read your message might want to start with my post on that book.

Pat Buchanan is a friend of mine, and one of the best purveyors of Churchill fiction I’ve ever heard. I’d have him in my foxhole, but not teaching history. More here.

As to the rest of your erudite observations: “Malcolm Gladwell is an idiot…” No, Mr. Gladwell is a clever polemicist with a large following. He is simply misled on the subject of Churchill and Lindemann.

“Churchill destroyed the Empire like an idiot.” That took more than an idiot. The Empire’s fate was preordained by the Statue of Westminster and the India Act, long before Churchill came to power. His famous promise not to preside over its dissolution was only evidence of his stubborn optimism. His successors however destroyed the vast potential of the Commonwealth, throwing away what they didn’t have to give up.

“The bombings of the Luftwaffe were in keeping with the established ethics of softening up a target that was being taken by ground forces.” Odd to find the word “ethics” in connection with bombing open cities, which was begun by the Germans over Warsaw and Rotterdam. I must have missed the part about how the London Blitz “softened up a target that was being taken by ground forces.”

“The barbarism of Dresden and civilian terror bombings was Uniquely Churchill.” Actually it was Uniquely Attlee, after demands by another unique character, Joseph Stalin, and Churchill was the only Allied leader to question it. You are way behind the facts, but can fix this deficiency by reading “The Myth of Dresden and Revenge Bombing.”

“Churchill was a flip flopped with no moral compass….” I think you mean “flip-flop,” if that’s a noun.

“…he also brought the west back to barbarism in the first war when he endorsed starving women and children in the blockade.” State your sources, because there is no serious evidence of such endorsement. Which British statesman urged that shiploads of food be sent to Hamburg immediately after World War I ended? Hint: it wasn’t Lloyd George, who preferred “to squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked”—which ultimately gave us Mr. Hitler. Thanks, L-G!

“He himself knew that any unbiased historian would look upon his leadership as the ruin of The UK.” The depths of ignorance implicit in such remarks is remindful of Churchill’s comment that he had never heard the opposite of the truth stated with greater precision. Replying to it would sadly require more adjectives than I have at my disposal. Have a nice day!

Pat Buchanan’s book on the unnecessary war paints the most accurate picture. Your perspective inn churchill seems to be a fantasy.

I didn’t think Young Man in a Hurry was that bad. It seems almost worshipful compared to some of the more recent hatchet jobs! Simon Schama called Morgan “humdrum,” but Paul Johnson, who later wrote an eloquent Churchill biography himself, said “Morgan gets the background right. It is fresh and vivid and treats Churchill as a human being rather than a phenonmenon.”

My own view (from Finest Hour 70) mentioned “In-depth coverage of the Dardanelles with clear maps in the endpapers…. But certain sentences and paragraphs read almost the same as de Mendelssohn’s Age of Churchill: Heritage and Adventure 1874-1911 (1961). There are quotes which Morgan doesn’t put in quotemarks, implying that they are his own words rather than someone else’s. Despite this, the book offers deeper inquiries into WSC’s private life than most biographies. Morgan accepts some common myths which lack evidence to back them up, and dwells overmuch on the dissolute aspects of Victorian society.” Morgan told me he intended to write a second volume, but like de Mendelssohn, the publishers didn’t go along.