“Lord Rosebery said, ‘Surely you must write Duke John: he was a tremendous fellow.’” Churchill replied that he had admired him from his earliest years,īut that Macaulay’ s story of the betrayal of the expedition against Brest was an obstacle I could not face. Lord Balfour pressed it upon him” with compelling enthusiasm” over lunch with Lord Rosebery the last obstacle was removed. Despite his hesitations, “two of the most gifted men” he knew encouraged the project, Lord Balfour and Lord Rosebery. But at length he learned to see the story differently. With a pang Churchill had discovered the historian’s judgment of his ancestor, and for years it put him off writing the life of Marlborough. But Churchill had a closer bond with Macaulay than most of his contemporaries: his earliest triumph at school had been his faultless recitation of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, and his reading of Macaulay when he was a young officer in India had helped to form his prose style. With the rest of his generation, Churchill learned modern history from Macaulay, whose considerate preference for the British constitution, perfected through the years, over every other had helped to form the confidence of Victorian Britain. Macaulay’s Marlborough is a man who carried selfishness, bad faith, and mendacity to the highest pitch. Marlborough was one of Macaulay’s villains: a figure less hideous than Lord Jeffreys, who gloried in the judicial murder of decent citizens for their opposition to the tyranny of King James but one whose villainies appear in sharper relief because of his undoubted talents and abilities. Macaulay’s hero is William of Orange, who crossed the Channel to save England from a king who had subverted the constitution and plunged the country into Popish tyranny. First place among them goes to the great Whig historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose History of England from the Accession of James II, published in the middle of the nineteenth century, told the story of Britain’s greatness, tracing the roots of her liberty and prosperity to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. For generations some “of the most famous writers of the English language” had made Marlborough their target and “vied with one another in presenting an odious portrait to posterity” (I 17). Churchill’s reading had shown him the greatness of Marlborough but he had also read of his coming of age in a dissolute court, of his treachery to several sovereigns, and of his notorious avarice. Yet this book might never have been written. Marlborough is Churchill’s masterpiece if he had written nothing else, his evocation of this “great shade” (I 19) would assure him a leading place in English letters. In the aptness of its prose, in the grandeur of its theme, in the fullness of its portrait of an epoch, the book ranks with the histories of Gibbon, Macaulay, and Hume. A monumental work of more than two thousand pages, in four volumes, Churchill’ s Marlborough: His Life and Times served as the capstone of his own political education. To write the life of the man who protected the liberties of Europe and the Protestant religion by breaking the power of Louis XIV was a project that Churchill had long in contemplation: from childhood he read everything he “came across” (I 18) about Marlborough. If I had-which God forbid-to deliver an address on you, I should say ‘Read Marlborough and you may then picture yourself listening to Winston as he paced up and down the Cabinet room with a glass of water in one hand and a long cigar in the corner of his mouth.’ I can hear your chuckles as I read it… -Stanley Baldwin, in a letter to Churchillįor nearly ten years, in the prime of his life, Winston Churchill wrote the biography of his greatest ancestor, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough. I am about a third through it, savouring it as an epicure, and I shall finish it this week. I haven’t enjoyed anything more in years than your Marlborough. Not a whit less important than his deeds and speeches are his writings, above all his Marlborough-the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding, which should be required reading for every student of political science.-Leo Strauss, in a eulogy to Churchill
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