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REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING
The military historian Peter Caddick-Adams has written this witty and enjoyable political biography of Winston Churchill. Unlike the multivolume authorised biography written mostly by Sir Martin Gilbert – which contained more than three million words – Caddick-Adams’ book is blissfully short at barely 200 pages in length. But although brief, his biography is rounded, with plenty of criticism of his subject, as well as praise where due, and constantly enlivened by Churchill’s own wonderful one-liners, which make the story sparkle.
There is nothing startlingly new in the biography – how can there be in a life that has generated a mini-industry of scholarship? But there is little of real importance in Churchill’s long and action-packed life that is left out here. And the central thesis of Caddick-Adams’ book is surely spot on: the First World War provided a sort-of dress rehearsal for Churchill’s leadership of the Second. He had closely watched first Asquith and then Lloyd George as they had struggled to lead the nation in war. He had observed their successes and failures in attempting to build a vast land army, enduring air raids, constructing an armaments industry, drawing millions of women into the economy, and maintaining fractious war cabinets.
Moreover, Caddick-Adams rightly argues that Churchill’s so-called ‘Wilderness Years’ from 1929 to 1939 were not a wasted decade, but instead gave him the credibility to become the great wartime leader of 1940. He had remained outside the governments of ‘guilty men’, forever associated with the doomed policy of appeasement. But all three Prime Ministers of that decade encouraged officials to feed him discreetly with detailed information about Germany’s re-armament, enabling the then-backbencher Churchill to speak out when necessary. It all helped prepare him for the ultimate test when it came.
As we move through the war years, Caddick-Adams relates with ease and confidence the broad brushstrokes of the military dramas. These are familiar stories, but all are told from Churchill’s perspective. How did they impact on him? How did his decisions affect the course of the war? We have his great speeches of 1940 that inspired the nation. He is rightly blamed for the disasters of 1941 in the Mediterranean and North Africa, where he had spread Britain’s forces too thinly but ended up blaming General Wavell for the failures.
Churchill is also rightly blamed for sending the Repulse and the Prince of Wales to their watery graves in December 1941: he still believed in the supremacy of the battleship, and had not yet grasped the importance of air power at sea. But Caddick-Adams lets Churchill off lightly for the run of disasters in 1942. He knew that his political career would be over with one more battlefield defeat in North Africa. But then Montgomery, whom he never liked, saved him by a delivering an overwhelming victory at El Alamein in October that same year.
Caddick-Adams rightly shows how, after the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, Britain and hence Churchill’s power waned, as the US took on the lion’s share of the fighting. He is a bit too forgiving of Churchill’s role in the Bengal Famine of late 1943, but captures his almost boyish enthusiasm for witnessing the fighting first hand at D-Day (which was denied) and at the crossing of the Rhine (at which he was present) in March 1945.
The biography concludes with his post-war career, his genius for predicting the divisions of the Cold War, and his unexciting second term as Prime Minister. In many ways, Churchill’s life is the story of more than half a century of conflict and change. Reducing this, as Caddick-Adams has brilliantly done, to a very readable and entertaining narrative is a fine achievement.
Winston Churchill
Peter Caddick-Adams
Swift Press, hbk, 176pp (£16.99)
ISBN 978-1800753556
