The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

If I were to rank Erik Larson's books, which I suppose I am about to do, I would rank them thusly:

1) In the Garden of Beasts
2) The Devil in the White City
3) Isaac's Storm
3) Thunderstruck 
5) Dead Wake
6) The Splendid and the Vile

That's not to say The Splendid and the Vile is a bad book. It's not. The first issue for me, no doubt, is that having recently read Lady Clementine, I had already reached my Churchill quota. Yes, yes, the two books are entirely different, but, and this brings me to my second issue, however great a leader Churchill may have been - and I'm not disputing that he saved the free world in no small part through sheer grit and determination - he was also, excuse me, a bit of an ass. This is a man who gave dictation from his bed or his bath, or wherever else suited him. He once expected Roosevelt to carry on a conversation with him while he (Churchill) was in the nude, as if this were entirely normal. In debt up to his eyeballs, he demanded his private secretary "fix it."

In many ways, both Lady Clementine and The Splendid and the Vile created the impression of Churchill as a caricature. I don't doubt it, but that render the lack of Larson's asides and flippancy more puzzling. (The example that jumps to mind from Dead Wake is Larson's note that a family by the name of Luck booked passage on the doomed liner, which causes Larson to add, "Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history.") I couldn't say whether the change owes to Larson's (presumed) respect for Churchill or other factors, but I missed the zest.


While the bite may have been missing a bit, Larson was up-to-snuff in bringing to his work the multiple perspectives readers have come to expect. From Lord Beaverbrook to the teenaged Mary Chruchill to a private secretary by the name of Jock Colville, Larson has incorporated the views of those who surrounded Churchill...and then there's the German high command. Hermann Goring in particular features prominently (and is the subject of more than a few Larson barbs); it is one of his diary entries that, in fact, creates one of the most poignant lines in the entire book: "How beautiful the world can be! ... Human beings are so stupid. Life is so short, and then they go and make it so hard for themselves." Even evil can teach us something. Sweet mercy.

Four stars.