The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson

Just when you thought everything possible had been written about Winston Leonard Spenser-Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader, along comes another rewrite. 

Not so fast, friends and neighbors, liberals and conservatives.  Johnson approaches the Churchill mystique from a different direction, interweaving Churchill the man, the politician, the writer, and world player par excellence.  Johnson has got the background for it, himself a Member of Parliament, noted journalist, and Lord Mayor of London.

When I took Modern European History in high school, in what I now realize was the tyranny of the clock on the wall, teachers simply did not have the luxury of painting broad sweeps of history with more than a thin coat of watercolor. “You see,” they would say (with the textbook backing up every sharply pronounced syllable) “Napoleon did this and then he did that and that’s why Italy came to be united and the French hate the English and the Hapsburg Empire crumbled.”  I scribbled feverishly, knowing that for reasons unknown, scraps of that pronouncement would appear on the final and I would have to use a trusty No. 2 pencil to prosaically regurgitate.

Although the keepers of the holy historical script did their best, to the seventeen year old mind, the prolonged soliloquies did nothing more than describe the historical road in terms of long, unblemished freeways.

What Johnson does with The Churchill Factor is to give you a tour of the potholes, the resurfacing, the twists and turns and knotty reasons why the historical road is a curving, winding journey, and seldom smooth.  Historical twenty-twenty hindsight aims a bit high and too straight, catching only the occasional glint of the sun.  Johnson gets you down where the asphalt smokes and the steamroller driver screams at the dump truck driver, and the engineers step in to keep things going and the whole things costs ten times what was promised.

First elected in 1900, Sir Winston’s political career, with more highs and lows than a Disneyworld rollercoaster, lasted until 1964, the year before he died.  Two World Wars that set Europe in flames, along with brushfire wars here and there, along with the decline and fall of the British Empire were only a few of the roadblocks that marked Churchill’s journey.  Yes, he was First Lord of the Admiralty a couple of times, and Prime Minister twice, but he also was a conservative (Tory), turned liberal (for twenty years!), turned conservative.  He was a hero, a goat, a hero once again, and unthankfully voted out of office after what would come to be known as his greatest triumph, only to be voted back in six years later.

Did you realize the British Empire at its zenith was six times larger than the Roman Empire?  Did you know Winston Churchill, as a conservative, built the foundations of the modern British welfare state?

You can’t be in politics for well over sixty years and not make enemies, who were once friends, and once again returned to being so.  How in the world can your supporters suddenly despise you and your enemies admire you?

Was the wartime cabinet all Tories?  Not in the least.  As the war clouds formed over Europe and threatened very existence, did all of Churchill’s compatriots fall in line behind him and his stand against the blackness that was Nazi Germany?  Nope.  Then how in the world did he manage to become Prime Minister in 1940, when his enemies were many and his friends few?  It’s a crooked, rock-strewn story and Boris Johnson tells it well.

The Churchill Factor is not a dusted off rendition of what you read in high school.  It’s a polished page-turner that reads like a thriller.  And that’s exactly what Winston Churchill’s life was, a thriller.  He stumbled badly.  As modern speech would have it, he was many times ‘thrown under the bus,’ but he prevailed.  His will and insight and humor and indefatigable energy never failed him, even when those around him dismissed any thought of his rising again.

Churchill humor.  Well there were a lot of things he said and a lot of things he didn’t say that he got credit for saying.  Lady Asquith:  If I were your wife I would poison your tea.  Winston: Madame, if I were your husband, I would drink it.

Or how about Winston in the men’s room?  Someone knocks on the door and announces:  Mr. Churchill, The Lord Privy Seal is here to see you.  Winston:  Tell him I’m sealed in the privy and can only handle one shit at a time.

No, those are not direct quotes.  Read the book for goodness sake!  Don’t expect me to do all your work for you, especially not after Boris Johnson has already done it and done it well.

One proviso:  Best to read this book on a Kindle or Pad because Boris Johnson is an Englishman and the English vocabulary is upwards three times larger than the standard American vocabulary.  Much easier to push on the word and have a definition pop up than to have to perpetually thumb through a dictionary.

But however you read The Churchill Factor, you’re going to enjoy reading a great book about one of the great figures of the 20^th or any other century.  What a story!