CHURCHILL: AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE

Sarah Gristwood and Margaret Gaskin

National Trust Books, £16.99 ISBN: 978-1-911358-53-4

An accessible read full of the marvellous little details. Who knew that Goebbels envied the propaganda value of Churchill’s readiness to walk among the people after air raids – he could never persuade Hitler to do it. Or that Tatler’s coverage of Churchill’s wedding to Clementine Hozier in 1908 proclaimed it as ‘the wedding of the year’, reflecting, even then, his position as a politician for whom great things were predicted.

Gristwood and Gaskin span the whole of Churchill’s life in this book from his inglorious schooldays to his last days in London and at Chartwell, his beloved home near Westerham, Kent. Open to visitors, it is here you can see many rooms left as he and Clemmie would have known them, and his painting studio crammed with his own works. Outside, there are even the descendants of the black swans he ordered for the lake in the extensive gardens.

It is perhaps the photographs that are most revealing, though. There’s Churchill bowing to his wartime friend, King George VI at the 1951 Festival of Britain, and waving to the crowds in Whitehall on VE Day. Photographs capture the times as well as the man: one picture in 1953 when sweet rationing ended shows countless children running into their local sweet shop!

Like the state funeral, the first given to a commoner in almost 70 years at the time, this is another fitting tribute to our national hero.