MixedThe Times (UK)Wheatcroft claims in his opening pages that \'this is not a hostile account\', adding \'nor is it contrarian\'. This is true in the sense that Wheatcroft takes the now widely held, even fashionable view of Churchill, which is that he was reckless and racist ... The book is something of a penny-farthing. Its larger, front part is a thorough if slightly florid account of Churchill’s life ...Then comes the penny-farthing’s smaller wheel, when Wheatcroft laments the way that misinformed \'Churchillism\' has taken hold ... Wheatcroft relies on other politicians’ memoirs, Westminster and Whitehall records, gossip from aristocratic drawing rooms and observations from fellow Churchill historians. The trouble with these sources is that they are too intellectual and do not explain how Churchill retained a popular following.
Josh Ireland
PositiveThe Times (UK)On casual inspection Randolph was a failure, his career in journalism, politics and the army blighted by marital discord and drunken oafishness. Josh Ireland’s Churchill & Son chronicles these faults vividly, but suggests that there was more to Randolph than the two bottles of whisky and 100 cigarettes he was consuming daily before his terminal decline ... No matter how low Randolph’s reputation plummeted, Winston’s love remained undimmed and this fine book may now allow the rest of us to appreciate the younger Churchill’s merits.
Barbara Amiel
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)... throughout this book she remains very much Barbara the undermothered Jewish girl from Hendon, a wartime kitten who, with no little melodrama and self-pity, has survived by purring and biting and writing ... This book is in part a love letter to Black, in part a bracingly intimate chronicle of financial free fall ... Calamity, in the form of protracted lawsuits and ruin, made her more likeable ... There is something magnetic and magnificent about this sustained, occasionally deranged lament.
Sally Bendell Smith
RaveThe Wall Street JournalUnlike some earlier sensation-seeking biographers, who have dwelt on the Diana disaster above all else, Ms. Bedell Smith, who has previously written biographies of the Kennedys and the Clintons, resists any temptation to take sides ... Here is one of the paradoxes of Charles evident from Ms. Bedell Smith’s masterly account: encased in his own glass box of privilege, he is sometimes quicker than elected politicians to voice popular dissent. Having seen where narrow duty can lead, he follows his instinct, sometimes naïvely.
