"The Splendid and The Vile" by Erik Larson

On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of England.  During that same week, Nazi Germany had invaded and taken over Belgium and the Netherlands, and within a few weeks, France would also surrender to the forces of Adolf Hitler.  Within a month the Luftwaffe would begin an almost nightly series of bombing attacks on Great Britain, most specifically on London itself, that was intended to weaken the British Isles in preparation of a Nazi invasion that was sure to come.

Welcome to 10 Downing Street, Mr. Prime Minister.

Erik Larson's latest book (currently #1 on all significant Non-Fiction Best Sellers lists)  follows the first year of Churchill's tenure as PM.  It is surely the stuff of history, but it is more than that.  Making use of historical documents, as well as letters and diaries, not only of the British officials that surrounded Churchill, but of family members, and ordinary English citizens of the time, Larson gives the reader a look at a period in our history that is almost impossible for one who didn't live through it to grasp.   It also gives a view of what leadership - true leadership - in the person of Winston Churchill meant to the British people when all hope appeared to be lost.  (It also gives a reader today a startling contrast to what passes for "leadership" in 2020, but I digress.)

Larson also gives a glimpse of what life was like, not only in the high reaches of government, but for ordinary English citizens at the time.  Among the "characters" in this book are daughter Mary Churchill, who turned 18 during that year, daughter-in-law Pamela Churchill, 21 year old wife of ne'er-do-well son Randolph, John Collville, one of the PM's private secretaries, Lord Beaverbrook (don't you just love British names like this?), a trusted advisor of Churchill's who had a Machiavellian streak in him, Averill Harriman, an emissary sent from FDR to oversee the American Lend-Lease Program, and scores of others, including King George VI.  He also gives us glimpses of what was going on in Germany through the diaries and papers of Hitler, Josef Goebbels, and Herman Goring.

In 1939, a British government project called Mass-Observation recruited hundreds of ordinary British citizens and asked them to make daily observations of their life.  The goal was to help sociologists of the time and of the future to get a true glimpse of ordinary, daily British life.  These Mass-Observation diaries were also a key source of information used by Larson, and the stuff of those diaries were and are marvelous.  

For example:  When the bombing commenced, and it seemed that the world was going to fall apart, one diarist, Joan Wyndham, decided that the time had come for her to cease being a virgin.  After carefully planning and executing the seduction of her boyfriend Rupert to carry out the deed, she reflected "Well, that's done, and I'm glad it's over.  If that's really all there is to it I'd rather have a good smoke or go to the pictures."

Yes, life went on.  People went to work, went to dances, fell in love, and had children while living in the midst of unbelievable terror and desperation.  Larson's description of calm days shattered by night after night of bombing, of devastation rained upon London and other cites are absolutely mind boggling.  From September 1940 through May 1941, nearly 29,000 Londoners were killed and over 28,000 were seriously wounded during The Blitz.  Throughout the United Kingdom, the totals were 44,652 dead and 52,370 injured.  5,626 were children.  But life DID go on, largely because of the leadership and inspiration of Winston Churchill.  In January of 1941, King George  wrote in his diary that "I could not have a better Prime Minister."

Well after the fact, one of the military assistants to the British War Cabinet wrote of Churchill:

"It is possible that the people would have risen to the occasion no matter who had been there to lead them, but that is speculation. What we know is that the Prime Minister provided leadership of such outstanding quality that people almost reveled in the dangers of the situations and gloried in standing alone."

Another minister wrote "Only he had the power to make the nation believe that it could win."

"The Splendid ad the Vile" is a terrific book about one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, persons of the twentieth century.  It gets the full Four Stars from The Grandstander.

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I thought that I would include in this post some photos that I had taken of statures that we saw in Paris in 2018....

And in Parliament Square in London in 2019....

Also, when Googling "statues of Winston Churchill", one finds that there are statues of Churchill everywhere, literally all over the world.   My guess is that probably Jesus Christ is the only person for whom there are more statues than there are of Churchill.