The Splendid and the Vile

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz- Erik Larson
Crown/Random House
Release Date: February 25, 2020

Rating:
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Synopsis: On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.
 
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

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Erik Larson has done it again! There is no other way to start a discussion of Larson's (Dead Wake) newest book: The Splendid and the Vile.  This is the story of Churchill and his family in his first year as prime minister as Hitler not only takes over swathes of Europe, but also begins bombing England in what would become known as the Blitz.  

Not solely a military or political history, Splendid seeks to answer the question: what was it like for people living through the Blitz?  How did Churchill's family balance politics and personal lives?  Using personal diaries and archival documents, Larson is able to tell these stories using the words of people like Mary Churchill, Winston's youngest daughter; Pamela Churchill, his unhappy daughter-in-law; and John Colville, one of his personal secretaries.  Their loves and losses show attempts to carry on normal lives while also dealing with bombings that often came quite close to killing them. Although I hadn't really thought about it before reading Splendid, I knew very little about Churchill's family and quickly became fascinated to learn about them and their experiences.  I found myself asking the book (in the middle of tense military action when I hadn't heard from the family in awhile) "but how is Pamela coping?  Is Mary really going to marry that guy? What the heck is Randolph thinking?" every bit as anxiously as I found myself worrying over where the next bomb would fall. 

Larson's eye for detail and talent for descriptions create a cinematic effect: the reader can see the moonlit countryside from the view of a Luftwaffe pilot, smell the cordite and taste the dust and grit of bombed out buildings. This should appeal to the casual reader every bit as much as the history devotee.

 My favorite histories are ones that look at the day-to-day experience of regular people as well as the movers and shakers.  Thanks to extensive diaries kept by people across England, those details are available to us and Larson uses these diaries every bit as much as the diaries of Churchill's private secretaries. Because of this, as well as Larson's excellent writing style, readers will be drawn in from page one and held, enthralled, until the very end.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review