. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Eric Larson - 2020 - 593 Pages

 

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Eric Larson - 2020 - 593 Pages

A New York Times Bestseller

World War Two - September 1, 1939 to September 2, 1945

America, after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 2, 1941 enters the war.  Churchill knew England needed America as a full ally to beat Germany. Larson vividly shows us Churchill’s efforts to get Franklin Delano Roosevelt to give England aid.  Before Pearl Harbor many Americans took an isolatiinist stance.  The end did not come quick but now Hitler’s fate was sealed.

Winston S. Churchill - November 30, 1874 to January 24, 1965

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." Churchill then turned to a colleague and said, under his breath, "And ... we will fight them with the butt end of broken bottles, because that's bloody well all we've got."  June 4, 1940

I offer my thanks to those in The Facebook Serious Non-Fiction Group for letting me know what a great work of narrative non-fiction The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Book by Erik Larson was.  Even though of course I knew the outcome Larson maintains a high level of excitement and suspence.  This is a truly wonderful book.

Winston Churchill was for sure who  England very badly needed to lead them during England’s darkest hours.  

Churchill was a great orator, both in Parliment and on his periodic BBC addresses to The Nation.  He never hid The danger of German invasion but he built up the strength and Will to fight on in the English.  

Larson  brings to life numerous interesting persons in Churchill’s war Cabinet, each with their own strong personality.  Unlike Hitler, Churchill did not surround himself with cowering sycophants but strong knowledgeable men not afraid to contradict him, though he for sure had the final word.

We also get to know his wife Clemintine Churchill, a lady one cannot but admire,his three daughters and their romantic interests, and his gambling spend thrift son Randolph and his long suffering wife Pamela.  All of this “humanized” Churchill.

Larson marvelously describes The Blitz attack by German bombers on London and other cities (September 7, 1940 to May 11, 1941).  Churchill would walk through damaged areas, met by cheering crowds. The Germans could not understand why England did not turn on Churchill and surrender. Larsen shows us Command apparatus of The RAF and The Luftwaffe.

Plus Churchill loves his cat Nelson, often sleeping with him.

One person in The Serious Non-Fiction group said this was a hagiographical biography.  This is simply incorrect. Larson details Churchill’s drinking, his hosting of dinners way in excess of ration regulations, his neglect of citizens of the Empire in Africa and Indian, his pampering of his children, his holding of meetings while in the bathtub.

ERIK LARSON is the author of five national bestsellers: Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm, which have collectively sold more than 9 million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries.

My thanks to Alan u for providing me with the Amazon Gift Card which allowed me to read this book.

Mel Ulm

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins - 2005 - 701 Pages

 Imperial Reckoning:  The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins - 2005 - 701 Pages

2006 Pulitzer Prize Winner

From the Pulitzer Award Statement 

“Imperial Reckoning is history of the highest order: meticulously researched, brilliantly written, and powerfully dramatic. An unforgettable act of historical re-creation, it is also a disturbing reminder of the brutal imperial precedents that continue to inform Western nations in their drive to democratize the world.”

Imperial Reckoning:  The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins deals with Britain’s response to an uprising by Native Kenyans, primarily of members of the largest ethnic group in the country, the Kikuyu, against British colonial rule. This savage response took the form of eight years of systematic murder, starvation,rape, slave labor, torture and confinement in barbaric camps which Elkins justifiably equates to the Germans in the Holocaust and the Gulags in Stalinist Russia.

To the British the Kenyans who fought for independence, the Mau Maus,  were not freedom fighters but savages, cannibal, rapers of white women.  The English employed Kenyans loyal to them as the foot soldiers in their fight against the Mau Maus.  They bribed them with extra food and gave them the land owned by insurgents. They had license to rape women considered anti English. The English were signers to post World War Two documents on basic human rights but there was no consideration to this at all.  The loyalist troops were lead by British officers, many of whom made sport of killing people with no proofs of any crimes.  Loyalist troops had free rein to rape the women of insurgents, as did many officers.  Often after a woman was gang raped she was murdered so she could no accuse anyone.  

Elkins reveals what England under Churchill and conservative politicians wanted to conceal.  For eight years about 1.5 million Kikuyu, nearly the entire population were kept in detention camps behind barbed wire, guarded by Loyalist non-Kikuyu Kenyans seeking advantage and just delighting in their power.  Estimates of deaths are about 500,000.  Most of the survivors lost everything and had their health destroyed for their remaining life.  Women could often not give birth.

After around 1958 when progressive elements in English society became aware of this the authorities did their best to burn all documents related to their actions.

Elkins details the post English rule of Kenya.

Caroline Elkins is an assistant professor of history at Harvard University. Conversant in Swahili and some Kikuyu, she has spent nearly a decade traveling and working in rural Africa. She and her research were the subjects of a 2002 BBC documentary entitled "Kenya: White Terror." This is her first book.

She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She has a second book coming out on March 29, 1196;pages. 

The Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire which traces 200 years of race based violence by England against their colonial subjects.

Mel Ulm