Volume 36, Number 10 · June 15, 1989
Winston Agonistes
By David Cannadine
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Volume II, Alone, 1932–1940
by William Manchester
Little, Brown, 756 pp., $24.95
Churchill's War: Volume I, The Struggle for Power
by David Irving
Veritas (Bullsbrook, Australia), 666 pp., A$49.95
Winston S. Churchill Volume VIII, 'Never Despair,' 1945–1965
by Martin Gilbert
Houghton Mifflin, 1,438 pp., $40.00
When Sir Winston Churchill died at the age of ninety in January 1965, he was accorded the most magnificent state funeral that a grateful and grieving Britain could give him. In life he had received, or refused, every available honor, and his death occasioned a final display of national thanksgiving and global homage, unique in its intensity and unrivaled in its scope. Setting aside both precedent and precedence, Queen Elizabeth II attended in person to mourn the passing of her greatest commoner and most illustrious subject. Never before, not even for the funeral of President Kennedy, had so many kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, assembled to do honor to one dead man. In Britain itself, and around the world, millions watched and wept before their television sets. At the end of the same year, the final volume of the Oxford History of England set down its authoritative verdict on Churchill's life and achievements. It was written by A.J.P. Taylor, a historian known for his dissenting opinions and provocative irreverence. But in his eulogistic description of Churchill as 'the saviour of his country,' there was not the faintest suggestion of irony or mockery.
Review, 6882 words
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