Piers Brendon
Was His Pen Mightier Than His Sword?
The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor
By Jonathan Rose
Yale University Press 516pp £25 order from our bookshop
This is one of the most remarkable books ever written about Winston Churchill. It is clever, fluent and based on wide reading, in and out of the archives. It is original: no academic has studied the literary and theatrical Churchill in greater forensic detail than Jonathan Rose, who portrays him as ‘an artist who used politics as his creative medium, as other writers used paper’. The book is well balanced, neither iconoclastic nor hagiographical, and critical where necessary. It is sometimes funny and often provocative. It is full of shrewd insights into Churchill’s character and astute observations about his career, which it traces from start to finish. Yet Rose’s thesis is hopelessly misguided. It is brilliant but unsound. It is magnificent but it is not scholarship.
Rose starts from the unimpeachable premise that Churchill was in thrall to the words, spoken and written, with which he dramatised his life. There
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘We know that Ballard was many things – novelist, fabulist, one-time assistant editor of “British Baker”, seer of Shepperton, poet laureate of airports. But, it seems, he was not a fan of Mrs Dalloway.’
Joanna Kavenna - Unlimited Dream Company
Joanna Kavenna: Unlimited Dream Company - Selected Nonfiction, 1962-2007 by J G Ballard (Edited by Mark Blacklock)
literaryreview.co.uk
“Remember when being Bono was uncool?” I’m back in my favourite lit mag @Lit_Review for their Christmas special, writing about Lou Reed and his new biography: https://literaryreview.co.uk/walks-on-the-wild-side
'Lord of the Flies meets The 120 Days of Sodom.' Some thoughts on the decline and fall of India’s Princely States for @Lit_Review: