Winston Churchill ranks amongst the greatest blackguards ever pupped, but also amongst the most fascinating. Brave to the point of foolhardy, clever -more than bordering on genius,hard-working and witty. His Parliamentary witticisms were rarely spontaneous but hidden products of his industry
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A 920 page biography with a further 100 pages of notes, published in 2001 and bought at a snip, it has languished in my attic a couple of years. And I took it out for perusal a few days ago.
It was hailed as a masterpiece by all shades of British opinion, and in Dublin, in THE IRISH TIMES it was described by Garrett Fitzgerald as “a tour de force” and its author, Roy Jenkins, as “a master of style.”
Roy Jenkins’s star blazed across the Heavens for years and he won many glittering prizes. Cabinet Office, as Minister for Aviation, Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer’ for example, President of the European Union, Chancellor of Oxford Union. Author of many books including biographies of Gladstone and Asquith. A persuasive speaker and journalist.
The one Glittering Prize that escaped him was 10 Downing Street when he broke with Labour and teamed up with David Owen who was outpolled by another election loser, Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party. But Jenkins’s own star was outshone at the polls by the colourful George Galloway.
I read the first few chapters with rapt interest. But when I came to a sentence on Gladstone and Orange opposition to Home Rule I saw a sentence which might suggest that the Orangemen followed William to Ulster -( and the Apprentice Boys of Derry followed him there,I suppose?) and I started dipping into later chapters.
Coming to 1920 it is clear that while Jenkins had earlier recorded the landslide republican victory in Ireland in the 1918 Election he regarded the Irish defence of their recently established state as murderous crime. The Irish exercise of self determination cut little ice with Jenkins, a quondam Socialist and later “Social Democrat.”
What a Wimp!
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