Churchill and the Making of His Legend - Reviews - Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend Since 1945 - Book Review

Contemporary Review, July, 2003 by Michael F. Hopkins

Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend Since 1945. John Ramsden. HarperCollins. [pounds sterling]25.00. 652 pages. ISBN 0-00-257034-3.

Winston Churchill's reputation has proved remarkably resilient to revision. Being voted the greatest Briton in a poll organised by the BBC in 2002 was only the most recent recognition of his continued high standing. His claims to greatness rest not just on substantial achievements but on the cultivation of his reputation from his earliest days as Churchill recognised the importance of good publicity. John Ramsden's volume is an assessment of the Churchill legend since 1945, and is a highly effective exploration of the rise of the Churchill myth. He concerns himself less with what Churchill did and more with how his words and deeds were viewed. As Prof. Ramsden shows, the man, the message and the way he so effectively expressed it were indissolubly linked.

The study opens with the encomiums of his funeral in 1965. The hero who was celebrated at the funeral had made his name in his leadership during the Second World War. Indeed, it transformed his reputation. In the first phase of his public career before 1914 he was widely regarded as a young man in a hurry who was self-centred and excitable. Between 1914 and 1939 he evinced an extrovert personality and a lack of judgement. He had to defend himself against accusations about a series of errors at Antwerp and Gallipoli in the First World War, intervention in Russia, the General Strike, India, and the Abdication. His star, however, began to rise almost immediately after he returned to high office as First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1939. Between May 1940 and July 1945 he was the inspirational Prime Minister of Britain at war. The pinnacle of his popularity came in the first year of his premiership.

After Churchill's Conservatives were defeated in the Labour landslide of 1945, few contemporaries thought he had a political future. Yet he was to confound the sceptics: the next decade was to witness the transformation of Churchill into the 'greatest living Englishman'. In the best chapter in the book, the author analyses the 'iron curtain' speech and the war memoirs and corrects the myths surrounding them. Churchill's post-war reputation as an international statesman was established by his 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri when he spoke of an 'iron curtain' descending on Europe to divide the continent. This warning about the Soviet threat fitted neatly into his reputation for having been the only leading politician in Britain to have seen the danger from Hitler. However, as John Ramsden reveals, both the British and American governments 'were in different degrees complicit in his "Fulton" project'. Further speeches served to augment his stature and collections were published and enjoyed wide circulation. They in turn helped burnish his reputation.

One publication in particular proved the most important boost to the Churchill legend: his six-volume Second World War memoirs. They were huge commercial successes that helped establish his reputation as a wise statesman who foresaw the danger from Hitler and who was a masterly war leader. John Ramsden scrutinises the volumes' strengths and weaknesses. They were based on special access to the records and had extensive quotations from his letters, memoranda and dispatches which were impressively integrated into a coherent and dramatic narrative. The publication of so many documents gave an aura of authenticity and impressed even the best informed. Churchill also enjoyed the advantage that his documents were such a good read. Yet against these strengths must be set the selective nature of the memoirs. Only Churchill's successes were recorded, not his failures and his rejected proposals. His own words might have been quoted in extenso but there was much less coverage of replies and reaction. This had the distort ing effect of making Churchill appear at the heart of virtually everything of significance.

Churchill's account remained largely unchallenged for twenty years. This was partly because other historians could not see the documents and no other memoirs by wartime figures, such as Ismay or Eisenhower, were published. Further, the Churchill myth was encouraged by a number of historians, including A. L. Rowse, Lewis Namier and Arthur Bryant. But the most prominent was A. I. P. Taylor who called Churchill the 'saviour of his country'. Television and film versions of his memoirs then passed on his viewpoint to later generations. The Churchill myth spread throughout the world. John Ramsden charts this phenomenon in a series of chapters that also examine Churchill's attitudes to and involvement with Ireland, various West European states, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Ireland alone proved resistant to his claims for greatness.

The final chapter offers an insightful analysis of the enduring nature of Churchill's reputation. Prof. Ramsden finds few critical studies, even after the opening of the archives. He provides an astute assessment of the official biography, begun by Randolph Churchill and completed by Martin Gilbert. The chapter also considers the astonishing range of Churchill memorabilia and commemorations - from porcelain and statues to roads, schools and organisations. Lastly, he turns to the continued invocation of Churchill's spirit by politicians. Here is proof of his enduring status.