If the revelations contained in this book about Winston Churchill’s personal finances had been common knowledge in 1940, he might not have become prime minister. For what David Lough shows in compelling detail is that the political risk-taker, who had notoriously described the disastrous Dardanelles expedition as ‘a legitimate war gamble’, was even more reckless in private than he was in his public life. No one who had been so irresponsible with his own fortune, it would surely have been said, should be entrusted with the fortunes of the nation. Luckily for the nation, its saviour kept his serial improvidence under wraps.

Literary Review

Dec 2015

Categories

Piers Brendon

He Did Business in Great Waters

For Whom the Handbell Tolls

He Mesmerised Thatcher

Cometh the Hour

From Great Power to PLC

Heir & Graces

Demonstrate or Procreate

Spooked Out

What’s Going on?

Home from Home?

The Audacity of Hype

Portrait of Pum

No Honest Mistake

A Most Violent Year

Her Militant Tendency

Learning the Lambeth Walk

Toff Negotiators

Vice & Viceroys

Among the Boneheads

Beginning to Swing

What Came After

Looking Back

For King and Countries

‘Low, Dishonest Decade’