United Kingdom Books

An exceptional look at how Chronicles were written in late medieval England and what uses they served. The scholarship is evident, if not omnipresent, throughout the work, which makes the prose very readable and interesting, but still leaving the extensive notes in the back of the book handy should the reader grow interested. That being said, this book is for those who are interested in history, the middle ages, or some combination of the two. Can also be read as a history of history of sorts, in late medieval England, a subject interesting in and of itself. To be fair, there is the chance of casual readers growing bored with the material.

This volume gives a series of fine studies on major turning points in early church history. Bonner traces the first real schism, the Donatist rebellion in North Africa, with its concerns about the requirements of church membership and the right of Christians to choose their own leaders. He follows the reasoning and concerns which led Rome's newly official state church to a series of painful choices. In response to a rebel, anti-colonial sect, the authorities basically denied the right of Roman subjects to choose or reject their appointed religious leaders. Bonner explores the ensuing series of fierce debates over sin and freedom, which altered the course of religious history for at least 1,500 years. With elegant dispassion he clarifies the clashes of thought and feeling behind the momentous events unfolding from North Africa to Northumbria.

--author of "Different Visions of Love"

This book is by far the most exhaustive text on the subject. It is wonderful in that respect. It is a difficult read and not for a casual entertainment in my opinion. Think more of a in depth study or someone seeking a deep understanding of the subject.

I intend to use this as one of my foremost references for AS Church research for quite some time to come.

By most reasonable standards, Sir Winston Churchill was one of the great leaders of the Twentieth Century - - if not the greatest.

Robbins portrays him as the ultimate conniving and opportunist whose only persistent idea was to 'Defeat Germany.'

As Robbins writes, "Indeed, Churchill had to admit that he very rarely detected genuine emotion in himself and normally lacked 'a keen sense of necessity or of burning wrong or injustice' such as would make him 'sincere'. It could be, therefore, that politics was an activity without values."

During World War I, Prime Minister Lloyd George wrote of Churchill and the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, "When the war came he saw in it the chance for glory for himself and has accordingly entered on a risky campaign without caring a straw for the misery and hardship it would bring to thousands, in the hope that he would prove to be the outstanding man in this war."

In retrospect, looking back for a hundred years, is such an attitude better or worse than the burning ideologi8cal certainty of leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse Tung, Hidekei Tojo and others who fanatically tried to inflict their beliefs on the world?

Maybe the opportunist, always trying to satisfy the latest wishes and whims of "the people", is the ideal leader for a democractic world.

Consider, for example, the impact of true believers such as the neo-cons of the Bush administrataion compared to the relaxed opportunism of the Clinton years.

As for Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Britain during World War I, he had no shame in sending hundreds of thousands of young British men to their deaths under the command of hopelessly inept but properly aristocratic generals in the trenches of Europe. Churchill at least tried an end run at Gallipoli, instead of constantly trying to bully through the middle in futile power plays.

Churchill may have blundered at Gallipoli; but, it's more likely the blunders were due to obstruction by Lord Kitchener and Sir John Fisher. Faced with a new idea, they doomed this innovative maneuver. Instead, their always seemed to favour the "glory" of a spirited rush by a mass of determined men to overwhelm defenders with machine guns.

Granted, Gallipoli wasn't Churchill's only blunder. He erred as badly in the spring of 1940 in assuming Norway could not be conquered, due to the presence of the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow. So, instead of invading by ship, the Germans used airplanes. The Royal Navy beat a hasty retreat, just as at Gallipoli.

A few weeks later, Churchill became Prime Minister.

Clearly, he was an opportunist - - always willing to respond to most of the people most of the time on most issues. It seems, right or otherwise, that's what democracy is all about. It's not the ideological purity and ansolute certainty of being always right all of the time on all issues; it's responding to the people, and having the courage to admit and correct mistakes when they occur.

Because, mistakes will occur. The true test of good government is not the mistakes, it is how they are corrected. This Churchill knew how to accomplish. The last century, like the dynasty of father-and-son Bush presidency, shows the perils of dynasties, ideologues and incompetents who cling to power.

Churchill, as Robbins makes clear, appreciated the British ability "to manage political change in such a way that bright stars who shone under one dispensation could continue to do so in very different political circumstances."

Sometimes, Churchill didn't shine very brightly. But, as Robbins eloquently portrays, he shone very brightly when a guiding light was most needed.

This analytical and thorough work builds nicely on the current critical look at Churchill's achievements. Carlton reminds us that Churchill, at bottom, was just another politician. Certainly, he believed passionately that the Soviet empire was evil and tyrannical; yet, in his zeal to be remembered as a world statesman (rather than just one of the protagonists in World War II) he was willing to flip flop whenever it suited him. Carlton also, repeatedly, reminds us that Churchill probably thought the Russians to be more wicked than the Germans and that he advocated the preemptive postwar use of nuclear weapons before the Soviets had developed a nuclear arsenal. Churchill's duplicity, vanity and senility in his last years are also brilliantly illustrated in this book. This is not the Churchill that many of us were taught by our history masters. Thanks to David Carlton, we now have a readable account of the whole man and not just the man as he would have us remember him. A must read.

The political analyst and historian Richard Lamb waited 50 years after events so that the British archives could be freely searched for first drafts of letters, memos, cables, and other communiques. We learn what the principals were actually thinking and feeling before they toned down their language in later drafts. Many hints of Winston Churchill's less than perfect diplomacy and military "genius" are scattered through histories and memoirs that he could not bowdlerize. Along with a generally positive assessment of Churchill's popularity as at tough pitbull, these imperfections are highlighted in Lamb's account. Here we find Churchill to have been doggedly and impetuously fallible, terrible in confrontation, mulish in his negotiations, and very shrewd in his sub-rosa efforts to bring the United States into the war. He fired good generals and kept on mediocre ones; he blundered so badly with the French that Americans paid blood on the beaches of North Africa. He pushed for boyishly-conceived sallies against military advice and got blood on his hands for which he dodged responsibility.

Without stating so explicitly, Lamb makes it clear that of the three European warlords, Churchill was the least capable; if it had not been for the codebreakers (Ultra), Hitler's strategies and tactics likely would have mangled every British, Canadian, and British-American venture. And the perfidy Churchill used to further his post-war aims for the British Empire was outclassed and outgunned by Stalin.

Lamb's prose is elegant as his research is uncannily good. Every WWII amateur should read this book. Pity that it went out of print.

Martin Gilbert, now Knighted as Sir Martin Gilbert, is one of the great historians of our time, and he has written the definitive biography of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill. He has been at work for 38 years, and the task is not yet complete. The biography itself was completed in 1988, the production of these companion volumes continues.

The biographic work itself is 8 volumes in length, and presently there are 15 additional companion volumes that contain every note and correspondence imaginable. These books get right down to the one-sentence telegrams of congratulation. To give you a sense of their scope and detail, this volume that covers 9 months runs to 1,370 pages with notes.

The books are fascinating for what they contain, and for the completeness they represent. All the information is here, these were not meant to be widely read, but to be documentary, so there is nothing missing. I also enjoy them as they give the reader a glimpse in to the world of the Biographer, a man who in this instance has spent nearly 40 years of his life on his subject.

These put the work of the Biographer in perspective. It may be more appropriate to say a Biographer of Mr. Gilbert's stature. It is often remarked that no biographical study has ever been so complete as his work of Churchill, and if you happen to have one of these books you will certainly see why. I enjoy reading them a bit at a time, as they bring you into Mr. Churchill's day, note-by-note, letter by letter, and they document an incomparable life.

Never Surrender is yet another volume in what already is the longest biography in the world. (At least according to the good people at the guiness book of world records. ) It is a collection of all the speeches and papers of Winston Churchill during the most critical phase of his Prime Ministry, and perhaps the most critical phase of World War Two. In this volume we get to witness Churchill's reaction to Dunkirk, the fall of France, and the Battle of Britain, and we also get to witness Churchill's heroic response to them. In this volume we see Churchill at his absolute best.

The offical biography is written by Martin Gilbert, a task he assumed after Randolf, Winston Churchill's son, died. The bigraphy consists of eight biographic volumes, and each volume has a few volumes of relevant documents to support it. Never Surrender is one of the document volumes which support the biographic volume "Finest Hour: 1939-1941" which is perhaps the finest volume of the entire biography. With all biogrphic volumes and the supporting books, The entire biography now stands at 23 volumes. Roughly 7-10 more are expected.

Never Surrender is probably the finest supporting volume of the entire set. It covers possibly the most important moment in British history, and it is a fine read in itself thanks to the usual outstanding work of Gilbert. The book is not for everyone, only those well versed in Churchill lore, and also keep in mind the book is not a narrative, but more like a collection of letters. But to anyone truly interested in Chuchill, or this era of English history, the book is nearly a must-have.

This is a pleasant surprise of a book. Instead of rounding up the usual suspects (Powell&Pressburger, Carol Reed, David Lean, Ealing comedies) this book selects 24 films from the late silent era to the end of the 90s that reflect developments in British cinema. These are films that most Americans are not familiar with. Hammer horror, for example, is represented by "Demons of the Mind," while Ealing is represented by "Pink Sting and Sealing Wax," a gaslight noir. When a famous movie is in the book, such as "Tunes of Glory," it is one that has become a bit obscure in recent years.

Consequently, "Cinema of Britain and Ireland" points the American reader in the direction of some very interesting films that are both well-made and not overexposed. The contributors all avoid academic jargon in their discussions, and the book reads quickly and makes you want to see these unfamiliar titles as soon as possible.

A truly outstanding introduction to the politics of the period. Although this is not a recent work, it's interest lies in what it tells us about the general attitudes of the political establishment of the time quite apart from the Appeasement debate.