Cooking the books

Churchill conceded that the ultimate verdict on his conduct of the second world war would have to be left to the judgment of history. But, as a precaution he resolved to write that history himself. The result was the six volumes and nearly two million words of The Second World War published between 1948 and 1954.

David Reynolds, in the relatively short space of 527 pages of text, now gives us a detailed, Gospel-commentary-style analysis of this mammoth work. His purpose is to judge the extent to which Churchill has succeeded in providing the judgment of history upon his own achievement — how far he has, in fact, commanded history by writing about the fighting which he also sought to command. In the concluding passage of his book, Reynolds tells us that Churchill dominated the field for a quarter of a century ‘through speeches and deeds in warfare and, even more, by what he wrote afterwards’.