The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz is his best book ever! And the timing is perfect. The world needs to be reminded of what true leadership is and the importance of cohesive single-minded resistance in facing catastrophe.
Larson presents the cold, hard numbers of losses but concentrates on the human side of Churchill's personal family and closest aides and the experience of the common people of England.
Citizens trudged through the rubble to work after sleepless nights in air raid shelters. They planted gardens and kept farm animals to grow their own food. The volunteered their service. They lost everything and carried on.
Churchill was idiosyncratic, the Nazis delighting in making fun of his penchant for pink silk underwear and habitual clenching of a cigar between his teeth. Arriving in Washington, D.C. and staying in the White House, the president opened the door to a naked Prime Minister who quipped, I have nothing to hide, and went on to converse clad in a towel.
Churchill was fearless, watching the Blitz from rooftops, touring the devastated cities in an open car, never concerned for his personal safety. His example and his words inspired the people to find courage.
Churchill showed compassion and sorrow, he truly felt for the people he represented.
Churchill knew that Britain could not win a war against Germany. He kept up morale while desperately working to secure the American assistance that would save his country.
Drawing from her diary, Larson includes the personal life and romantic interests of the prime minister's daughter Mary Churchill. And we read of the doomed marriage of Randolph Churchill, a gambling addict and womanizer, his wife Pamela falling for the American Averell Harriman who was negotiating the Lend-Lease program.
Readers also follow Nazi leaders, whose idiosyncrasies outpaced even Churchill's. Goring liked to dress in costumes and makeup and amassed a huge collection of stolen art. Hesse traveled with a collection of pills on his clandestine flight to Britain, hoping to forge a peace agreement.
The book is everything you have heard it is.
I received an ARC from the publisher through Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.
from the publisher
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when–in the face of unrelenting horror–Churchill’s eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
by Erik Larson
Crown
ISBN-10: 0385348711
ISBN-13: 978-0385348713
