Larson makes use of many types of primary source documents including Mary Churchill’s diary. His youngest daughter’s insights cast not only details on the Churchill’s family life, but a feeling of what it must have been to live through those times. He also makes use of the network of “Mass-Observation” diarists, “an organization launched in Britain two years before the war that recruited hundreds of volunteers to keep daily diaries with a goal of helping sociologists better understand ordinary British life. One volunteer wrote ‘if I had to spend my whole life with a man I choose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr. Churchill if there was a storm and I was shipwrecked.’“ These sources give Larson’s work as special kind insight and personalization, often lacking in historical works.
The writing is exquisite, such as when Larson describes Hermann Göring who became, among many titled positions, the Chief of the Luftwaffe, who had promised Hitler that his air force could single-handedly destroy Britain. Larson says Göring was “large, buoyant, ruthless, cruel [and] had used his close connection to Hitler to win this commission, deploying the sheer strength of his ebullient and joyously corrupt personality to overcome Hitler’s misgivings.” He gleefully went about the task of introducing hell on earth first in London, and then in smaller UK towns to break the will of the British people. Massive incendiary bombings preceded the heavy bombings to light the way for the German bombers.
The Luftwaffe had developed a guidance system which a young Dr. Reginald Jones discovered, and he was unexpectedly whisked into a Churchill Cabinet meeting to present his evidence. Here Larson writes a suspenseful narrative: “Churchill listened, wrapped, his fascination for secret technologies in full flare but he also realized the bleak significance of Jones‘s discovery. It was bad enough that the Luftwaffe was establishing itself at bases in captured territory just minutes from the English coast. But now he understood that the aircraft at those bases will be able to bomb accurately even a moonless night and in overcast weather. To Churchill, this was dark news indeed ‘one of the blackest moments of the war.’…Until this point he had been confident that the RAF could hold its own, despite being, as air intelligence believed vastly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe….If the German planes could bomb accurately even in heavy overcast and on the darkest nights, they would no longer need their swarms of fighter escorts and no longer be restrained by the fighters’ fuel limits and they could traverse the British Isles without restriction, a tremendous advantage and laying the groundwork for invasion.”
London was always one of my favorite places to visit, and I did so frequently either on my way to the Frankfurt Bookfairs or attending the London Bookfairs and seeing our selling partners there and arrange for co-publishing projects with several British publishers. So many personal landmarks are conjured up by this work and in my mind’s eye I can see them and imagine how they would have been then, Piccadilly, the British Museum, Hyde Park, the financial district, the River Thames, Covent Garden, and London’s wonderful underground system, which was used as bomb shelters, not always successfully. Frequently, Londoners would have to choose whether they might potentially be buried alive or allow it to fate to stay in their homes.
The first time we stayed in London was the early 1970’s at the Dorchester. Larson reveals the Dorchester was highly sought after by ambassadors during the war because it was a poured concrete building and billed as “bombproof,“ although people evacuated the top floor during the heaviest bombings. He describes a debutante party at Grosvenor hotel, also facing Hyde Park, the Dorchester only blocks away to the south. The ball -- where Mary Churchill had been “presented“ the year before -- took place in May 1940 on a night when there was one of the heaviest bombings and Larson spares no detail regarding the horror of that night, even decapitations, people fleeing for the safety of the Dorchester. I just had no idea until reading this work that where I stayed only thirty years later that this was part of its history..
Churchill knew that Britain was at the end of a tenuous string, that it was imperative on the one hand he impress FDR with his people’s resiliency, but on the other hand signal their need for massive help from the U.S. FDR’s hands were tied by the election, the cry for isolationism at home, and Larson amusingly paints a picture of Churchill’s puzzlement: if he is the President of the US, why can’t he just do it? Ultimately, Pearl Harbor, which occurs after the purview of this book, resolves the issue of the USA’s involvement, a great relief to Churchill, but in the interim it was the Lend Lease Act which helped to fortify Britain’s resolve.
The role of Churchill’s deliberations at Chequers, the country house of the Prime Minister, about 40 miles NW of London, on most weekends except when there was a full moon leaving it vulnerable to night bombing, the locale then shifting to Ditchley Park, owned by a friend, and located in Oxfordshire, a home that was more difficult to see from the air, cannot be understated. In these places Churchill would “hold court” with his entire staff, generals, ambassadors, anyone involved in the war effort, to talk openly and until late at night frequently his family also residing there.
It was there that Churchill befriended and impressed FDR’s personal emissary, Harry Hopkins who in turn became an important intermediary to persuade FDR. One night Hopkins stayed up till 4:30 in the morning and writing FDR “the people here are amazing from Churchill down and if courage alone can win – the result will be inevitable. But they need our help desperately and I’m sure you will permit nothing to stand in his way.” Hopkins continues: “Churchill held sway over the entire British government and understood every aspect of the war….I cannot emphasize too strongly that he is the one and only person with whom you need to have a full meeting of the minds. This island needs our help now Mr. President with everything we can give them.“ This ultimately led to the Lend Lease Act.
A leitmotif in the work is the personal letters of so many of Churchill’s associates such as those of John Colville, one of Churchill’s secretaries, who expresses throughout the period his endless unrequited love towards Gay Margesson, a student at Oxford. Or the unusual relationship Churchill had with a “longtime friend and occasional antagonist Max Aitken –Lord Beaverbrook – a man who drew controversy the way steeples draw lightning.” He had made his fortune in newspapers, but Churchill recognized a special kind of genius, appointing him as Minister of Aircraft Production, a new position to get around the red tape of the military. Churchill knew that building the RAF was the key to defending Britain and production had lagged. He needed a trusted mover-and-shaker and Beaverbrook was it. His friend made enemies, circumventing traditional channels, but he significantly increased fighter production. On a number of occasions, he tried to resign but Churchill was able to inveigle him back to the yoke and gave him more and more responsibility for a number of projects.
Throughout it all his wife Clementine was a steadying keel and did not hesitate to be outspoken with guests, be they ambassadors or the military, and of course with her husband. She too did not suffer fools lightly and managed the family life (not tolerating their son Randolph’s drunkenness and gambling).
There are so many “players” in this history that reads like a novel, too many to mention. Larson answers one of the questions that came to my mind before reading this work. Why? There are so many books about the period and Churchill. 9/11 had something do to with Larson’s motivation. He got to wonder how Londoners could endure the never-ending shock of the war. He endeavored to rely on more than the standard histories: “I set out to hunt for the stories that often get left out of the massive biographies of Churchill, either because there’s no time to tell them or because they seem too frivolous. But it is the frivolity that Churchill revealed himself, the little moments which endeared him to his staff, despite the demands he placed on all.” Larson captures those moments along with the grand and frightening story. He also thanks, by name, the entire publishing staff of Random House and Crown who brought this insightful book to life. It was wonderful reading the hardcover edition, so handsomely designed, a treasure to keep.
