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If you read only one book about Churchill

Posted by on Nov 22, 2014 in News, The Books That | Comments Off on If you read only one book about Churchill

THE CHURCHILL FACTOR by Boris Johnson (Riverhead Books, NY, 2014) Mayor of London Boris Johnson, like Churchill a journalist, historian, and rogue elephant of a Tory politician, has produced a wonderfully chatty book on Sir Winston Churchill. Not a cradle-to-grave biography, it’s instead an illuminating study of what it was that made Churchill different. Not just different from every other British politician or world statesman of the 20th century (and beyond), but the only man who could have saved democracy and its benefits for all peoples in 1940. And did. Johnson attacks his subject thematically, and with great dollops of humor.  His chapters open with an evocative scene that introduces some revealing aspect of Churchill’s character. Johnson visits the graveyard of Winston’s nanny as a way of answering a question, “Was he a nice guy.” Yes, Johnson tells us...

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