Of the making of books about Churchill there seems to be no end. His own output was large, and largely self-centred. We already have an official life in eight volumes, with several volumes of supplementary papers, a number of single-volume lives, long and short, books by supporters, books by opponents, books by those interested in Churchill’s attachment to their own special subject, books by his personal attendants, books by those who never saw him. Here are two more: a study by a notable historian, who has applied his scholarship to one important corner of Churchill’s life as an imperial statesman, and one by a cousin, who has written a lavish book about the family home for 11 generations, Blenheim Palace.
Each author acknowledges a co-author: Lady Henrietta writes ‘with Alexandra Parsons’, David Dilks ‘with the assistance of Richard Dilks’, his son. Lady Henrietta’s might be described as a coffee-table book with a strong historical content, as well as a strong personal tinge, for she was brought up near and in the great house, which now belongs to her father, the 12th Duke of Marlborough. He writes a foreword; as Lady Soames, Churchill’s daughter, does for The Great Dominion. Lady Henrietta goes back to the first duke’s father, the first Sir Winston Churchill, and so to the courts of Charles II, James II and Anne. For all the help that James was to the young John Churchill, whose sister was long James’s mistress and mothered the first Duke of Berwick by him, ‘there is not one portrait, not even an engraving, of James II in all of Blenheim’. But there are masses of other portraits, splendidly reproduced, coming down to recent years. The palace itself is spectacular as well, and is here treated by someone who runs her own interior decoration business, so knows what to show and how to show it.
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