I don’t do movie reviews in my monthly newsletter, Nick Murray Interactive. But when the film Darkest Hour came out over the Christmas holidays in 2017, I told my subscribers not just to see it, but that if Gary Oldman didn’t win the Oscar for his astonishing portrayal of Winston Churchill, there was no justice. (In the event, he did, so there is.)
The movie is hokum — all historical films are hokum, Hollywood having decided that reality is insufficiently cinematic — but it’s hokum of a very high order. And Oldman is the whole show, as indeed Churchill was. (That said, Darkest Hour features two breathtaking supporting performances: the luminous Kristin Scott Thomas as Winston’s beloved Clemmie, and Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI.)
My subscribers responded, as they often do, by asking me to recommend a one-volume biography of Churchill. I answered with (and now repeat) a question: do you want the long one or the short one?
Because there are, to me, not one but two classic one-volume Churchill biographies. And I could not say that either is “better.” There’s just one that’s more than five times longer than the other one, and so the question becomes one of the reader’s time management: just how interested are you in Churchill’s life?
The contenders for your attention — at 180 and 1,002 pages respectively — are the work of two of the greatest British historians of the past half century: Paul Johnson and Roy Jenkins.
“Of all the towering figures of the twentieth century, both good and evil, Winston Churchill was the most valuable to humanity, and also the most likable.” This is the first sentence of Johnson’s brief account, and it tells you exactly how he sees Churchill, and why his book is so thoroughly delightful to read. (He is also, as was Churchill, an original and brilliant prose stylist.)
Jenkins, the older of the two biographers by eight years, not only knew Churchill well, but served in two of the same British cabinet posts as did he – Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Jenkins wrote his magisterial biography at the age of 80; Paul Johnson — who loves his colleague’s book — pays tribute to Jenkins’ “Churchillian energy and endurance.”
One caution: should you choose the Johnson book, don’t make the mistake of assuming you’re done. You may very well find — as I did ten years ago — that his Churchill propels you on to Jenkins’. If so, you’ll feel, as I did, very well rewarded.
© 2018 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Nick reviews current books, articles and research findings for advisors in his monthly newsletter, Nick Murray Interactive. His most recent book is Around the Year with Nick Murray: Daily Readings for Financial Advisors.