“One young boy, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, a fireman or pilot or such, answered: "Alive.”
Jen on the beach. Ellis Beach, Far North Queensland. April 2021. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson There has with no doubt been a great deal of work and fine scholarship put into this book, and to that, I will credit Larson. Yet too often, I find that anything that touches upon Churchill drifts too easily into the hagiographic, which I do not understand. There is plenty here that showcases the flaws of the man and his temperament - consider the impetuous way with which he pursued the frankly ridiculous idea of air landmines (at who knows what opportunity costs) or the taste for luxury in a time of extreme deprivation. In total, are we really supposed to overlook these flaws because of... why exactly? That he was prone to cry? I confess that I don't get it. I found the boorish tales of his family living it up while men were dying in huge numbers; the British public was going without, and the Empire's colonial...