Churchill’s Shadow by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Winston Churchill’s legacy is as difficult to measure as the man himself. British essayist Geoffrey Wheatcroft admits to being a bit daunted by adding to the library on the subject but his efforts are worthwhile for giving Churchill—still influential nearly 60 years after his death—a critical yet fair hearing. The record is mixed. Churchill was right about Hitler but wrong about Gandhi; he was a racist who condemned anti-Semitism; he was a prophet whose oracles sometimes failed. Churchill had bravery and imagination, as well as great gifts of oratory, but was erratic, sometimes unhinged, a political chameleon who championed issues only to abandon them. He possessed “real if intermittent compassion.” In Wheatcroft’s cheerfully blunt assessment, he was a statesman worth studying for his failures as well as successes as well as for the mythology that has grown around his name.
