CHURCHILL WITHOUT THE RHETORIC

Abstract

Winston Churchill: studies in statesmanship. Edited by R. A. C. Parker. London and Washington: Brassey's, 1995. Pp. xxi+259. ISBN 1-857-53151-5. £30.

Winston Churchill's last campaign: Britain and the Cold War, 1951–1985. By John W. Young. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-198-20367-5. £45.

Churchill peacetime ministry, 1951–1955. By Henry Pelling. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1997. Pp. ix+216. ISBN 0-333-67709-9. £16.

Churchill as peacemaker. Edited by James W. Muller. Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xii+344. ISBN 0-521-58314-4. £35.

Churchill and secret service. By David Stafford. London: John Murray, 1997. Pp. xiii+386. ISBN 0-719-55407-1. £25.

Churchill and Hitler, in victory and defeat. By John Strawson. London: Constable, 1997. Pp. xxxi+540. ISBN 0-094-75840-9. £20.

Over the course of the last decade, historians have set themselves the task of rescuing Churchill from the restrictive embalmment of hero worship. This has been no easy task. His 1930s campaign for rearmament and opposition to appeasement, his ‘finest hour’ in 1940, and his 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, secured for him on both sides of the Atlantic an almost unparalleled relevance in the rhetoric of the following forty years' Cold War. To Western politicians of this period, his career offered pertinent ‘lessons’ – particularly the need to appear resolute in the face or threat of aggression. To this was added the fact that his magnificent command of English made him a rich quarry of quasi-prophetic quotes for an endless succession of political speeches and journalistic articles.