He recognizes the significance of passages in Churchill’s writings that others have neglected. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. As an intellectual historian who specializes in modern Britain, he is well qualified to trace Churchill’s literary debts to others besides Gibbon and Macaulay, especially to a host of contemporary writers like H. He has unearthed new evidence in the Churchill Archives Centre and elsewhere of the wide range of Churchill’s reading. In this company Rose makes an important contribution. Ronald Cohen’s magisterial bibliography is the indispensable reference work on Churchill’s vast array of writings. Manfred Weidhorn’s four books, Paul Alkon’s investigation into Churchill’s imagination, Richard Langworth’s survey of the statesman’s books, and David Reynolds’ account of Churchill’s Second World War memoirs have pride of place, along with slighter books by Keith Alldritt, Peter Clarke, Darrel Holley, and Frederick Woods. That leaves room for studies of Churchill’s life as a man of letters. But they leave his literary endeavors in the shade of his political career. Sometimes they tell us he enjoyed music hall shows, plays, and films. They plunder his writings for autobiographical tidbits and acknowledge his Nobel Prize. His biographers notice that he needed income from writing to support himself and his family, and he aimed to vindicate his political record in what he wrote.

Its subtitle indicates that Rose focuses not just on Churchill’s books and other writings, but also on his reading and his interest in the theater.Ĭhurchill himself wrote that his style was modeled on Gibbon and Macaulay, with a bit of his own thrown in. Churchill wrote dozens of books and won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The title of this book by Jonathan Rose, a professor of history at Drew University, reminds us that, aside from political life, Winston S. Jonathan Rose, The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor.

Jonathan rose the intellectual life