“Churchill Defiant”: 2010 Churchill Book of the Year
“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).…