We now have two reasons to be grateful to Mr. All told, it must surely be the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written. A life defined by politics here rightly gets a political life. He is Thucydidean in viewing decisions about war and politics, politics and war as the crux of the matter. But it would be foolish to say Roberts made the wrong choice. cultural and intellectual history with the study of high politics. He is out of step with much of the best British history being written today. Some may find Roberts’s emphasis on politics and war old-fashioned, indistinguishable, say, from the approach taken almost half a century ago by Henry Pelling. Often he lays out the various debates before the reader so that we can draw different conclusions to his own. Roberts is admiring of Churchill, but not uncritically so. For a book of a thousand pages, there are surprisingly no longueurs. Writes elegantly, with enjoyable flashes of tartness, and is in complete command both of his sources and the vast historiography.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |