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The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

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There are many good biographies out there, but a great one is rare. This is one of the great ones; William Manchester has taken the art of biography to a new level. Most biographies are merely "interesting," rarely making any effort to give the reader a sense of what it would have been like to be or know the subject. Manchester does just that. Rather than write a narrative story of Winston Churchill's life, he has chosen instead to give us a rich tapestry of Chrchill's life as it was woven. Many biographers are simply idolizers of their subjects; this is not so with Manchester. He reserves no harsh judgment, just as he reserves no due praise; when he is reporting something negative that Winston did he says it was negative, and explains why.

But The Last Lion is more than just a biography. In attempting to capture the essence of Churchill Manchester has written some of the best material about World War I and the appeasement crisis. It is rare that historical events can be made to feel like the present, but Manchester has done this.

Both volumes of this work are well worth your money, your time, and your attention. Indeed, the only bad part of Manchester's biography is that he will not be able to finish it. It is not known how much of the third volume he was able to put together before Alzheimer's made work impossible for him, but it can be hoped that whatever he was able to do will someday be published, no matter how unpolished it may be.

It is hard to tell who is the larger hero -- Churchill or Manchester. Not because the historian is bigger than history, but rather because the historian has so captured history.

Churchill aficionados don't need to read heroic prose to be attracted to all that has been written about him. But for the rest of us, Manchester has strung together the words that truly capture the place Churchill created in world history.

This volume is the first in what was obviously intended as a trilogy. Unfortunately, we have yet to see the concluding book. I hope it makes it.

Here is a challenge. Pick up the book and read the first two pages. You will find yourselve with two major problems. First, about 2000 pages (volumes one and two) of reading that you will want to complete faster than you have time for. Worse, a dull ache of longing for the third volume that may never materialize.

Many lists say the best historical biography is "Disraeli" by Blake. This is better. Way better.

The only author that has ever kept me glued to a book as much as Manchester's is Michael Crichton. It's odd to compare a biography to Jurassic Park, but Manchester makes history come alive. He spends a lot of time and care setting the "culture" in a way that is not pedantic or boring (unlike some Civil War histories I've read!). And then he builds on Churchill's stories in a way that makes you feel like you're in Churchill's shoes, with the same issues and challenges.

Unfortunately, there is no Volume 3 about the war years. Manchester's illness prevented this. What a sad loss to history.

Read Vol 1 and 2. You won't regret it.

Before the cigar-chomping, top-hat-wearing portly gentleman hit the scene, there was a young man who nearly flunked out of school, chased war around the world, played polo, participated in the world's last meaningful cavalry charge, was a war correspondent, and escaped imprisonment as a POW in the Boar War. Churchill got around plenty before settling down in Parliament and "Visions of Glory" covers that portion of Churchill's life.

This book takes an exciting life and brings you into it. As good as biography gets.

Manchester provides a lucid and entertaining perspective of the events that shaped the rise of this century's greatest statesman. This volume of the two volume series is essential to understanding the man, his politics, and his rise to power. Manchester's perspicacious narrative reveals the elements that composed the Churchillian psyche including his mother's maternal indifference and promiscuity, his fathers's political maneuvering, Victorian morality and immorality, his contempt for formal education, his love for military fortunes, and his call to the political arena. Volume I is a must read before Volume II (1932-1940)

Winston Churchill was not a likable or even an admirable man.He was dishonest,childish,ruthless and disloyal.Perhaps worst of all,he was a megalomaniac-he knew that he was a Great Man,and that some day he would fulfill a magnificent destiny. But when war and catastrophe came to England he was perhaps the only politician psycholigically capable of inspiring continued resistence and defiance to Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich.Given that England had already lost the war,that was a breathtaking achievement.

James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson",published in 1791,is generally considered the finest biography produced in the English language.However,Manchester's work is perhaps superior. Boswell was of Johnson's world and therefore conveyed it to his reader only incidently;that is,he naturally assumed that his reader would be familiar with the things and events with which he was familiar.Manchester,writing of the past,appreciated the necessity of re-creating Churchill's world for the reader.He was brilliantly successful.The world which Churchill inhabited would have been amazing even to most of his contemporaries because of his social class.As Manchester points out,in over 90 years of life Churchill never drew his own bath;one of his relatives,visiting friends without his valet,sent down word that he was having trouble getting his toothpaste to "froth properly".He'd never applied toothpaste to a toothbrush himself.It isn't just the story of Churchill's life that is so engrossing.It is the wonderful recreation of Churchill's world,of the people he knew and the conversations he had,the events which occurred and the way that Churchill and his friends and enemies reacted to the events.

As Boswell loved Johnson,Manchester worshipped Churchill.Indeed,Churchill was in some ways a lovable man.He was devoted to his wife and family(happily married for almost 60 years-how many men can say that?) He revered his father (a syphlitic,who depised him,)and he was loyal to his country and the Empire it ruled.Personally,I doubt that I'd have been able to spend more than ten minutes in a room with Churchill.But this book is one of the finest I've ever read.I was honestly sorry to read the last of its almost 900 pages and I'm opening the second volume tonight.In the forward to the second volume Manchester quotes a definition of biographer.The biographer is judged "by his ability to suggest the sweep of chronology and yet to highlight the major patterns of behavior that give a life its shape and meaning."Boswell did that. Manchester,I believe,did it better.

This is a brilliantly written biography of one of the most fascinating characters in history. Like most of Mnchester's work (I must admit to being a big fan), this is a very readable biography, well researched and holds the reader's interest from page to page. We see so much of Churchhill in his role as a WWII leader that we tend to forget there was a young man, living, learning and growing before the back and white films we see today. It is good to be reminded of this from time to time. It is also, for those interested, to learn how a world leader of Churchill's calibre came into being, how he developed and why he was the way he was. This work gives us great insight to those questions. Cannot recommend this work highly enough.

Now that we are firmly into the 21st Century, it might be appropriate to ask, who was the greatest man of the 20th Century. (We might we ask, who was the greatest person of the 20th Century since this was the century that gave us reason to be inclusive with the question). I'm sure I echo the thoughts of many when I suugest that the answer is easy: Winston Churchill. Rather than make my case here, I would direct you to read Manchester's biography of the man, "The Last Lion".

William Manchester set out to write the biography of Winston Churchill and found that it was not going to fit neatly into one volume. We have, in "The Last Lion:Visions of Glory" the first of, presumably 3 or 4 volume. This is quite an undertaking. For me, the prospect of reading so large a book just to get the facts on the first third of a man's life seemed pretty intimidating. I left this book on the shelf for a number of years. Finally, I decided to give it a shot and I immediately found myself immersed in the early years of Churchill. There really is plenty to write about this man and Manchester is just the person to handle the job. I found this book not only hard to put down, when I finished it I got started right away on the second volume; "Alone". I have been waiting patiently while the author continues to age. I have tried to ignore the rumors that there will be no further output from Manchester. Such is the quality of his writing and his thoroughness that this biography ranks at the apex of 20th Century historical writing. Read this book and the second volume and you, too, will demand its' proper conclusion.

This is a two volume work that provides an outstanding portrait of a great man. Mr. Manchester shows him in all of his roles but most importantly he allows the reader to see that Sir Winston was a nineteenth century aristocrat trapped in the twentieth century. Volume One brings Sir Winston to life but Volume Two offers a view of his years in political exile where he became a voice in the wilderness. This biography brilliantly displays the astonishing scope of Sir Winston's strategic and geopolitical insight. It also shows how in many cases - and to the detriment of mankind - he was his own worst enemy.

From a personal perspective I found the details surrounding the actions of Neville Chamberlain to be the most informative because his naiveté has always been astonishing to me. Mr. Manchester puts the whole attitude of appeasement into perspective but unfortunately he seems to portray the appeasers as weak, ignorant men, who placed their personal agendas ahead of the country. While some of this assessment may be correct I think Mr. Manchester fails to show the appeasers as men of their time who had been so appalled by the carnage of WW I that they were willing to do anything to avoid another war.

Volume One clearly shows Sir Winston not only as a man of action but it shows him for what he was underneath - an aristocrat. He shamelessly used his connections to further his own ends and it was these connections that allowed him to flaunt military orders. He did things that another officer would have been court-martialed for. At the core Sir Winston was an aristocrat who treated non-aristocrats with indifference. I felt Volume One showed Sir Winston's flaws as a man but it also showed his development not only as a politician but as one of the most strategic thinkers of the twentieth century. This volume also gives you the foundation for the opposition that he encountered throughout his career. He was so ahead of his contemporaries that they never seemed to grasp what he was saying and he was unable to convey his thinking without coming across as a power seeker. This was the price for his earlier self-promotion.

With the advantage of hindsight, Volume Two shows in painful detail the step by step climb to power by a raving madman - Adolf Hitler. It shows how the European powers had multiple opportunities to stop this and to avoid WW II but they could not bring themselves to take the aggressive steps necessary. The "peace at any price" was the prevailing attitude and the failure by the politicians to act raised the price of peace day by day and year by year until WW II was inevitable. Perhaps the greatest message in this volume goes unsaid and that is that the anti-war and total disarmament crowd always seem to not prevent war but to make the on-coming war more disastrous and more inevitable. Perhaps the ultimate message here is that the absence of war is not peace. In any event these were two very good books. Sir Winston's "World War II" and William Shirrer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" are also well worth reading.

Manchester's work is extraordinary and a journey into the making of a great leader of the world that was the 20th century.

Churchill was a man of vision and he was molded in his early years. Manchester makes a case for his growth coming in the Boar War period.

There is a beginning of greatness. Manchester introduces us to the world that formed this great man.