The Birth of Britain by Winston S. Churchill

In the “wilderness” years after Winston S. Churchill unflinchingly guided his country through World War II, he turned his masterful hand to an exhaustive history of the country he loved above all else. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.The first volume of the Nobel Prize–winning prime minister’s breathtaking history of Britain explores the birth of a great nation and world power. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine.

And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. For Bemelmans was 'the man who came to cocktails'. Exciting and revealing reading, this provides the background we need for other reading-fact and fiction, and leaves us with eager anticipation for the volumes to come.Īn extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. He reinterprets old legends, retaining much we learned in childhood, but throwing new light upon it.

His human beings stand out against their times- good and evil as they may be. He makes his story a living, growing thing. Churchill does not hesitate to illumine the past through contrast and comparison with the present. The things that characterize the English speaking race today put down roots that survived. Great figures and events took place on the stage of history. Men advanced the island's development- or threw it back for long periods. Romans, Danes, Normans, each in turn became part of the life stream. One goes through successive invasions, conquests, struggles for power with an awareness of the contribution each invader, each conqueror made to the building of a nation. For Sir Winston makes even his earliest period, in the dawn of the island's checkered history, seem alive. 'Begun in 1939, now finished, to be issued in four volumes over the next three years, this will be for the average reader the definitive history for the student an inspiration for further study.

Winston Churchill was endowed with a sense of history- and this is an ambitious project into which he has poured his great gifts. A rare gift for vision, a sense of drama, a genius for the right word, an imaginative sense of people and story are here applied to the beginnings of a great people.

The Birth of Britain by Winston S. Churchill