Customer Reviews

Churchill: The Unruly Giant

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I am a great fan of Churchill and am always expanding my collection of books about and by the great man. I purchased this book shortly after its publication. I was impressed by Rose's crisp narrative and ability to describe the salient points of Churchill's life. He is able to do this in one volume - not easy to do when the offical biography runs 8 volumes! The only negative about this work is the length to which Rose goes to remain as impartial as possible. I say this is a negative because oftentimes there is much enjoyment to be gotten by reading a book about Churchill where the author's bias is clear. (Since most Churchill biographies are written by obvious admirers - like the yet incomplete William Manchester series; or evident detractors like Charmley.) This work is, sometimes painfully, without bias. This attribute makes "Churchill: The Unruly Giant" a fine introductory work for any reader wanting to learn more about Churchill; and form their own opinion on the greatest man of the 20th Century.

Rose does a good job of providing a one volume biography of Churchill. However, it was obvious to me that he was neither as familiar with Churchill as Martin Gilbert nor as talented a writer as Manchester. His strength is in his objectivity which yields a fair view of the giant.

This book is an easy to read competant one-volume biography of Churchill. Neither as detailed or as erudite as Manchester's (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940), but Manchester never finished his. It is also not as exhaustive as Mr. Gilbert's, but that is ok because Churchill deserves an accesible one volume biography. He was a legend in his own time several times over. In India, the Boer War, Cuba and then in the government in the First World War he became deeply interested in non-conventional assaults on the Central Powers through such places as Gallipoli. After the war he was instrumental in the intervention against Bolshevism and in the creation of Iraq and the support of the British Mandate in Palestine. But then he fell fromf avor over India and his support of the King. He was 'alone' in the 1930s and derided as a war-monger because he dared to warn of the coming war. Brought in in 1939 and 1940 by the government as a last gasp with many feeling that he would be left to sue for peace he instead delivered victory. Dropped in 1945 he returned one last time and helped warn the world of the danger of Communism.

This is a nice biography and a fair one as well, not hagiographic.

Seth J. Frantzman