Churchill’s Shadow: An Astonishing Life and a Dangerous Legacy
by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Bodley Head, £25, 545 pages
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‘History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past.” So said Winston Churchill in his 1940 parliamentary tribute to his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain. Geoffrey Wheatcroft quotes the passage to round off his new portrait of Churchill and seldom have the words seemed so apt.
Wheatcroft’s aims are to “look hard” at Churchill’s “reputation during his lifetime, and his influence since he died”. The prologue claims that he did not plan “a hostile account”, but Wheatcroft admits to “a contrary nature” and an admiration for HG Wells’s concept of the ideal biographer as “a conscientious enemy”. So it should come as little surprise to Churchill’s admirers that “harsh words will be found about him in these pages”.
