title: Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill by: Rubin, Gretchen published: 2004-05-11 read: 2023-10 preview

If you want to know about Winston Churchill, and don’t want to read one of the perhaps hundreds of biographies written about him, and don’t really want to read the things he wrote himself, including an autobiography… in fact you don’t want to know much about Churchill at all, but still find him fascinating?

This is a book that helps in such cases. Gretchen Rubin wrote 40 chapters, different views on Churchill, to make one understand him.

So, a bit of the facts. Churchill was a man who loved wars. He fought in the Boer war in Africa, and was captured and escaped; he fought in the first world war; and of course he won the second, against all odds. The latter was after Hitler occupied many European countries within days of battle: Poland, France, Netherlands, Belgium. And won, within a few weeks, against the French whose army was, then, considered to be amongst the strongest in the world.

And it was Churchill who played the central role of deciding to stop Hitler, and defend the free world. He could not have done it without the USA and the Russians, and certainly had some luck here and there. Churchill played the central role of getting the US involved, instead of just as a supplier of weapons. Remember, that was a world in which the US was not a military superpower yet. In which the airplane carrier still had to be established as a major role; in which aircraft fighting had to be invented.

The book illustrates a many-dimensional character. Churchill the author. Churchill the husband. Churchill the painter, Churchill eloquence, perhaps his most defining character. Churchill the alcoholic; the child; Churchill and sex. Churchill and the British Empire that was no more. Churchill who was instrumental in closing that chapter of British history.

Churchill had his medals, his plumed hats, his ancestral portraits, horses stamping at the touch of his reins. This wasn’t the diminished England, confined to an island, but an England imperial, expansive, and traditional. Of course it must end. But he refused to believe it.

It is the only book I ever read on Churchill, and I think it can be the last one. Since it gives so many views on him, establishing not just as a fascinating character, a brilliant orator, demagogue and strategist, but also as a human.

Ruben writes rather matter-of-factly, with interpretations drily and, often, wittily interspersed. It keeps one entertained, painting a picture of Churchill which feels complete. Very happy I read the book. I forgot many of the details about Churchill, but a general picture and impression remains.