Winston Churchill by John Keegan

Winston Churchill Reviews

• 
  Caity

  3.75 stars
  Winston Churchill holds a soft place in my heart. His patriotic and inspiring speeches were a game changer in World War II. A Great War leader that did a hard and courageous job that would have been impossible for many.
  
  Keegan’s biography was a insightful read and it wasn’t all about Churchill’s successes but also include his political downfalls. It was refreshing.
  
  A great quote of Churchill’s about the soldiers who fought in WWII is - “They never asked the question, ‘What shall we gain?’ They asked only the question, ‘Where lies the right?’” Keegan describes this quote as an unintentional epitaph of Churchill’s life. This was thus the best part of the novel. Keegan’s use of the quote finished the novel on an epic conclusion.
• 
  Ed

  One of the reasons I don't read more biographies is that they always provide me with more information than I want. I understand that the author, who has most likely spent years researching a person's life, wants to include as much of the research as possible, I'm just not sure I want to plow through so much detail.
  
  This effort by John Keegan to deliver a short but comprehensive summary of Winston Churchill's life was a joy to read. I'm sure he used only secondary sources but he, somehow, managed to capture the essence of the man and why he was the way he was as well as letting us see his foibles too, all in 177 superbly written pages.
  
  In addition there are enough snippets from his speeches to provide a real flavor of the words that Churchill used to inspire the British people "... in this, their darkest hour...." I was inspired to plan to read both Churchill's
  The Second World War as well as his
  A History of the English Speaking Peoples - 4 Volumes..
  
  This volume is a fine example of Keegan's ability to cut through the mountains of detail to leave the reader with a very real sense of the man he was describing.
• 
  Mark

  Winston Churchill biographies come in all shapes and sizes, from the massive to the svelte. John Keegan's contribution to the genre is definitely on the latter end of that spectrum; his book, a volume in the Penguin Lives series, covers Churchill's nine decades in less than 200 pages. To achieve this, Keegan must condense a long and active life, one that stretched from participation in Queen Victoria's "little wars" to an effort to achieve detente with the Soviet Union. This invariably requires the sacrifice of depth and detail, yet it also gives Keegan an opportunity to define more clearly the overarching themes of Churchill's life, which he sees as defined by clearly delineated moral principles to which he remained true throughout his long political career.
  
  Keegan also brings to his task a long career as a military correspondent and historian, and it is no surprise that his coverage of Churchill's career is exceptionally insightful considering the space available. And yet there are weaknesses that contrast with the book's strengths. The book itself suffers from poor editing, and the narrow focus of his bibliography on military titles raises questions about the depth of knowledge informing Keegan's analysis. For these reasons, Paul Addison's superb
  Churchill: The Unexpected Hero is far superior as a short biography, but for those unable to locate a copy of it Keegan's book will fit the bill for anyone seeking a useful introduction to Churchill and his achievements.
• 
  Jane Beiles

  4+++ an excellent companion read to a trip to London including a visit to Churchill’s War Rooms. Succinct biography not nearly as long as many others available but seemed to provide very good insight into this fascinating 20th century leader.
• 
  K.B. Pellegrino

  Winston Churchill was a flawed, but bigger than life, political figure whose sometimes seat of the pants decisions created a path for freedom. I read everything on him.
  
• 
  Janessa James

  Winston Churchill is one of those historical figures that seem to get more famous and revered with time. His legacy has been told and refigured until, as a millennial, all I had heard about Churchill was his heroic deeds and unwavering patriotism. I hadn’t given thought to his life before World War II, or the mistakes that he made during the war. In John Keegan’s biography Winston Churchill: A Life, he gives the casual reader a brief, and at times skewed view of the famed Prime Minister.
  At the very beginning of the book, Keegan admits to thinking in his younger years that “the prime minister seemed anything but heroic” (p. 1). This mentality lasted the author throughout his adolescent and young adult years, until he happened upon recordings of Churchill’s War Speeches. As a budding military journalist and historian, Keegan was electrified by a sense of pride and common cause. His commentary on Churchill was refreshing as he had the unique perspective of not revering Churchill, as many of his colleagues do, until his adult years. As Keegan writes, his respect for Churchill grows and the reader is able to gain appreciation for Winston.
  As positive as his viewpoint is, Keegan, for the most part, did not sweep Churchill’s mistakes under the rug. In exploring the failures of the prime minister, the book mentions various unwise decisions that he made during his government. These include his overestimation of the effectiveness of the Special Operations executive, his disillusionment with the strategic bombing campaign and his obsession with the Italian front. Keegan does not hide the fact that Churchill was stubborn, elitist and wasteful. As a blind admirer of Churchill, this perspective pushed my paradigm and allowed me to see him as a man. Gone was the consistently brave, intelligent and stalwart man of my imagining, and I was faced with a different, improved Churchill. He was a man with a temper, a drinking problem and many other flaws; a man who lived and breathed.
  In my opinion, the brevity of the biography is this book’s biggest downfall. To condense a character like Churchill to 192 pages is quite a difficult task to undertake, and although Keegan did it well, Churchill deserves more than a short biography. I was quite bothered by the lack of details about the environment Churchill was living in, and bothered by the overused minutia of his personal life. The excavation of Dunkirk was given but a brief nod and the Battle of Britain was summed up in a short sentence. Both these battles had a large impact on Churchill and his future. With Keegan being a military historian, I expected more analysis on the war front and the effects of the decisions that Churchill made, both big and small. I understand the need for a concise biography that gets the base-information out there, but the book would have been much improved if Keegan was allowed a bit of room to expand.
  This novel-esque biography was clearly intended for popular reading and not academic use. While reading, I found many exaggerations and some inaccuracies about Winston Churchill’s political life. Many consider the expedition of Antwerp to be a staggering blow to British lines during World War II, and yet Keegan focuses on the “justifiable pride in (Churchill’s) service… be(ing) a devoted commanding officer”(pg. 90). Keegan fails to recognize Churchill’s involvement in the disaster that was the Scandinavian offensive (pg. 130), the same event that lead to the Norway debate and eventually his replacement as Prime Minister. He also incorrectly refers to Lloyd George as Churchill's successor at the Board of Trade (p. 67), when in fact Churchill was George’s successor. Keegan later laments that George was given credit for the Edwardian Liberal Party’s many achievements (pg. 72). The inconsistencies and flaws in the biography prove it to be a book for the casual reader and should not by any means be used as an academic source.
  After completing this biography of the British Bulldog, I am amazed at the depth of his character and will. If nothing else, John Keegan conveyed to me that although Churchill was not a perfect man, he was the perfect man for Brittan and the world during his lifetime. I believe that if Keegan were able to expand on the turning points in Churchill’s life and fix the inaccuracies, Winston’s legacy would be well preserved.
  Keegan’s Winston Churchill: A Life gave me a short encounter with Churchill and his history, and although I found the brevity and inaccuracies to be detrimental to the character of Winston, It gives a wide audience an accessible and basic overview of a man who changed the world.
  
• 
  Patrick

  Acceptable summary of Churchill's life. Much better books out there on Churchill, of course. Keegan is better as a historian than as a biographer.
• 
  Farzaneh

  وینیستون چرچیل
  نویسنده برندا هاوگن
  انتشارات ققنوس
• 
  Peter

  The Penguin Lives series is/was a series of short biographies published about famous people written by respected authors. The late British Military Historian John Keegan’s short biography of Winston Churchill fits the mission of The Penguin Lives series well. Due to Keegan being a military historian, the biography of Churchill ends on May 8, 1945, when his first term as prime minister ended. The rest of Churchill’s life, from May 8, 1945, until Churchill’s death on January 10, 1965, is covered in Chapter 10, entitled “Apotheosis.” Chapter 10 includes a conclusion for Keegan’s short biography of Churchill. The book was published in 2002. I read the book on the Kindle. The biography is focused on World War II. In Chapter 4, entitled “Parliament 1900-1910,” Keegan maybe underplays the role of Churchill’s views on race may have influenced his views of Irish nationalists such as Michael Collins when compared to Indian Nationalists such as Mahatma Gandhi. That being said, I found this short biography of Churchill to be good if the reader wanted a quick but perhaps older introduction to the biography of Churchill within the era of World War II. This book includes a section on sources. This book both has an introductory section and a concluding section for the biography of Churchill. I found Keegan’s short biography of Churchill, which is focused on World War II, maybe dated, but the biography of Churchill is still interesting.
• 
  Jakub Ferencik

  I finally finished reading Churchill's biography by John Keegan. There were parts of Churchill's life that I was already familiar with due to other literature. I was intrigued by his story & influence because of his infamous use of language and his witty oratory skills that speechwriters still learn from.
  
  He had unmistakeable moral character flaws, which should go without saying. He was short-tempered, stubborn, unkind, fierce, & elitist (to say the least).
  
  Nevertheless, there's something to learn from the way he became PM of the UK. Churchill saw the perils of Nazism despite Chamberlain's purposeful ignorance & Europe's (mainly France's) disarmament post - WW1. Even intellectuals & pacifists like Bertrand Russell (who was jailed for being outspoken against WW1) couldn't foresee the Holocaust, Hitler's vehement Anti-semitism, & white nationalism.
  
  We owe some - if not most - of our freedom to Churchill, despite his obvious flaws. I believe it's worth reading about.
• 
  Kevin Findley

  Keegan's bio is a good study on Churchill's development politically and how he changed over the decades. He clearly lays out how and why the man we know as a wartime Prime Minister was so much more in a career that spanned five decades and saw the world completely change. Churchill's contributions to the social structure and safety net were massive, and it is not unreasonable to say that today's United Kingdom would look very different without them.
  
  I do feel that Keegan rushed through the 1920s. Just prior to losing one election as an MP, Churchill had just had his appendix removed, and could barely campaign. The author gives no mention of this, despite referencing the health problems elsewhere and how they affected his military and political careers.
  
  Still, this is a book on Churchill that should be on the shelf next to William Manchester's The Last Lion as the definitive works (my opinion) on this great man.
  
  Find it! Buy it! Read it!
• 
  SorenKremerPingu

  This book is great, a very informative book about Winston Churchill's exploits, from common knowledge to minute achievement. This is most certainly not an easy biography to read despite it's relatively short 194 pages and being part of a series of such bibliographies with the cute albeit misleading name of 'Penguin Life Biographies'. The first half of the book especially contains mountains of unnecessarily complicated language to describe what could be said in fewer, simpler words. However I do believe that Keegan made up for the fact with his excellent descriptions of Churchill's political life and his part in the Second World War. Overall I would give this book a 4.3/5 because (like many other biographies) it gets better towards the end. I would recommend this book to people (particularly Americans) interested in the life and exploits of Winston Churchill; big and small.
• 
  Laurence

  The stalwart British bulldog, who despite his flaws certainly deserves his place in 20th century history. As the man who guided Britain in its darkest hour, and who made use of his own strengths while in conflict with his own personal demons.
  
  This short biography can't go into great depth, but gives enough context to have a clearer view of the major events and challenges that shaped his attitude and life.
• 
  Nickolette

  This book is just what I wanted it to be. A not too long biography of the man, that would allow me, together with this anecdote from Orson Welles, to be an adequate companion at a hypothetical sophisticated dinner party if the subject of Churchill ever comes up.
  
  
  https://youtu.be/TpqwY7QL7r8?t=48s
• 
  Pei-jean Lu

  Clear and concise biography on one of history’s most charismatic and enigmatic leaders. Keegan has done a masterful job at condensing the extraordinary life of Winston Churchill the man who lead Britain through the darkest days of WWII
• 
  Tom

  This is certainly not the most thorough biography of Winston Churchill but it does a great job of covering the most significant aspects of a very full life. It is well written and handy to pick up and read. It is a great introduction to the man who even today most symbolizes Great Britain.
• 
  Jason Watkins

  “Mostly “ useful biography of Churchill’s wend through political life and military leadership. I was disappointed there wasn’t more regarding Churchill’s role in the Battle of Britain, his influence at Casablanca, and his post war nuclear positions during his second time as PM.
• 
  Katherine

  It was good, but far from a thorough biography. It's a very small teaser of some of the events of his life.
• 
  Joe Oaster

  Good summary and overview of WC's life. Not a lot of detail, but a good overview if someone wants to know the key highlights of WC's life.
  
  
  
• 
  Matthew

  A brief yet incredibly informative overview of the life of Winston Churchill.