Books on Churchill continue to pour from the world's presses, but nearly all are biographical/historical/political. Paul Alkon's Winston Churchill's Imagination is something very different--a study of the receiver of the Nobel prize for literature's imagination. Churchill was also, of course, a significant `amateur' painter. He was also a cinematic collaborator with Alexander Korda, and (as all are aware) a masterful biographer and journalist.
Paul Alkon is a literary historian, known in particular for his work on Samuel Johnson and on science fiction, both of which bear directly on this study, for Churchill was an admirer of Johnson, with whom he shares many traits and attitudes, and a serious reader of science fiction and acquaintance with H.G. Wells.
The truly imaginative aspect of this study is the manner in which the author gains entry into his subject. He studies Churchill's relationship with the very literary (both as practitioner and subject) T. E. Lawrence, his work with Korda, his techniques as a painter, his military reportage, his knowledge of science and study of science fiction, his biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and his dream vision piece concerning a conversation with the ghost of his long-dead father, Sir Randolph.
This is a very unique book, a fresh take on important aspects of Churchill's mind and vision by a person perfectly positioned to offer it. It is one of those books that Samuel Johnson always promoted: something both familiar and fresh, the kind of book that no one else had thought of writing but then, having once seen it, would say, `why didn't I think of that?' Johnson would say that it is both `novel' and `true', exhibiting our twin desires for something both `new' and, simultaneously, `traditional', a work that squares with our knowledge of human psychology but simultaneously extends it.
This is very nice work and highly recommended.
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