Winston Churchill - A Life
By John Keegan
Penguin, HK$124
Several years ago the BBC held a competition to name the greatest Briton and waged an active 'ABC' campaign, that is, 'Anyone but Churchill'. The winner was, of course, Churchill. Military historian John Keegan's brief and lively biography Winston Churchill - A Life is a celebration of the man who 'morally ... set the agenda of the second world war'. In 1940 and 41, Churchill had only words with which to steel his countrymen to withstand Hitler's Germany. And what words they were. Keegan admits ambivalence to Churchill, whose political career spanned the first, second and cold wars, until he found recordings of his wartime speeches. 'That he represented the spirit of true leadership I thereafter had no doubt,' Keegan says. Churchill had his share of blunders - Gallipoli wasn't his first, nor the Norway raid his last. And he opposed self-government for India, wanting the empire restored after the defeat of Japan. Keegan says Churchill was imbued with a sense of history and his place in it - he believed himself to be a man of destiny. Keegan's dissection of the geopolitics of the alliance of Britain and America is a highlight.
