Richard M. Langworth

“Where Oth­ers Heard Taps, Churchill Heard Reveille”

Churchill Defi­ant: Fight­ing On 1945-1955, by Bar­bara Leam­ing. Lon­don: Harp­er Press, 394 pages.

“Great cap­tains must take their chance with the rest. Cae­sar was assas­si­nat­ed by his dear­est friend. Han­ni­bal was cut off by poi­son. Fred­er­ick the Great lin­gered out years of lone­li­ness in body and soul. Napoleon rot­ted at St. Hele­na. Com­pared with these, Marl­bor­ough had a good and fair end to his life.” —Churchill, Marl­bor­ough: His Life and Times, 1936, vol. IV

On the sur­face, Bar­bara Leaming’s book on Churchill’s last ten years of active pol­i­tics is “pop­u­lar his­to­ry”: only 300 pages, para­phras­es instead of lengthy quotes, no con­ven­tion­al foot­notes (the back pages pro­vide line ref­er­ences).…

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