Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him

Historian Reynolds (Island Stories) doesn’t quite find a fresh angle on the much-studied British prime minister in this energetic if familiar study of “how Churchill learned from others as he rose to national and global prominence.” Reynolds begins with profiles of his subject’s mentors, including Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, whose political tactics Churchill adopted early in his career, and prime minister David Lloyd George, who taught Churchill “the language of Radicalism.” Reynolds then moves on to Churchill’s contemporaries during WWII, including his predecessor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain; allied leaders Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin; and Charles de Gaulle, who Reynolds contends was very similar to Churchill, arguing that both saw themselves as the embodiment of their country’s core identities. There are chapters on Churchill’s political foes—Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mohandas Gandhi, and Churchill’s successor Clement Attlee, who leveraged a productive partnership during the war into a postwar ouster—and his wife Clementine, who supported her husband’s ambitions. Throughout, the analysis of how Churchill was influenced by his mentors, peers, and foes is lightly done. (Reynolds’s conclusion that one of Churchill’s “greatest achievements” was learning “the arts of improvisation,” is a well-observed character assessment, though it appears to be more of an innate talent than something developed in dialogue with others.) This one’s best suited to Churchill completists. (Jan.)