The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters 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.

Erik Larson is my favorite non-fiction author and while he doesn't turn in his best work here (I still think Devil in the White City is superior), this book is still a good read. Larson excels at writing non-fiction in a fiction style, shaping his narrative off of Vonnegut's “Man in the Hole” story arcs (where the main character “experiences great fortune, then deep misfortune, before climbing back up to achieve even greater success”). Where this book lacks however is in the subject. Churchill has been written about so much that it is challenging to find something new to share and Larson acknowledges this in the Sources and Acknowledgements chapter at the end of the book, saying “One danger in writing about Churchill is that you'll become overwhelmed at the very start [...] by the sheer volume of work already in the public domain.” But what Larson does to counteract this is to focus on a short-window, the first year of his Prime Minister-ship and he gives space for small moments of humanity. Some of my favorite moments were the love stories between minor characters in the midst of terrible bombing raids. Larson says this eloquently saying “I tried also to bring to the foreground characters often given secondary treatment in the big histories. Every Churchill scholar has quoted the diaries of John Colville, but it seemed to me that Colville wanted to be a character in his own right, so I tried to oblige him. I know of no other work that mentions his bittersweet romantic obsession with Gay Margesson [...] [Scholars] dismissed these and other omissions as ‘trivial entries which are of no general interest.' At the time he actually made them, however, the events at hand were anything but trivial. What I found so interesting about his pursuit of Gay was that it unfolded while London was aflame, with bombs falling every day, and somehow the two of them managed to carve out moments of, as he put it, ‘sufficient bliss'”. This is where all of Larson's works excel - in creating space and time to recognize small moments of humanity in the midst of larger-than-life historical events. You can feel like you were there because he slows down time and allows for the real moments of life to spill in (just because a war is on, regular life doesn't come to a complete halt, like so history books seem to imply). I just found that there were ultimately too few of these moments to make this as great as his other works. All in all, Larson's writing still excels and this novel is worth reading not only for the moments of humanity he presents but also the displays of leadership he explains. Churchill really seemed like the right leader at the right time and it made me wonder what our current crisis would be like under different leadership.

I think Erik Larson is a fantastic non-fiction author; the way he folds quotes from primary sources (in this case, mostly diaries and recorded speeches) and dramatically structures scenes makes it read like fiction. Churchill has been biographied/written about ad nauseam, but this is an interesting take that focused just as much on the cast of characters surrounding Churchill as the man himself; it is at once a family drama and a war drama. The book begins as Churchill is announced PM, and goes all the way through the US enters the war. I personally have not read many Britain-centric WWII content, so it was interesting hearing about civilian life during the bombings, the new war technologies and tactics (though I found that bit less interesting than the more humanistic angles), the long persuasion of the US to join the war, and a bit about certain characters from the German side (pilots, high-ranking officials). However, it is a long book, and did start losing my interest by the middle/end.

One sentence synopsis... A deep, detailed, and personal exploration of the twelve month long bombing campaign known as the Battle of Britain and Churchill's leadership throughout. .

Read it if you like... Larson's other books, ‘The Devil in the White City' and ‘In the Garden of Beasts' to name a few. He writes nonfiction history better than anyone, using only real documents and quotes to craft a cinematic story. It's refreshing to take a break from today's political mess and read about true leadership. .

Further reading... see next slide (this isn't even a comprehensive stack of all our Churchill books).