The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History by Boris Johnson (Hodder, £25)
We all know about Winston Churchill the politician, soldier and orator. But what about Churchill the painter? In all, Britain’s greatest wartime prime minister produced more than 500 paintings, some of which have been offered to the nation in lieu of tax. But are they any good?
Boris Johnson certainly thinks so. In a gushing passage at the end of his new book, he recalls driving down to Chartwell to inspect Churchill’s studio. “He likes colour, the brighter and lusher the better,” says the Mayor. “He was willing to try it out, to court ridicule, to make mistakes.” And this, he thinks, is the clue to Churchill’s character. In the summer of 1940, when “other hands dithered … Churchill took the plunge, loaded up his brush and applied his bright-hued and romantic version of events in broad and vigorous strokes”.
In my experience, politicians never write books without an ulterior motive, and this one is no exception. Churchill was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary characters in British history: a war hero, a controversial journalist, a reforming Liberal, a reactionary Tory, a ham-fisted military bungler at Gallipoli, a hapless financial muddler at the Treasury, a sulking outcast in the Thirties, a brilliant wartime leader, a Nobel Prize-winning historian and finally a revered national icon. For Johnson, he was the epitome of the British character, “irreverent but traditionalist; steadfast but sentimental; rejoicing in language and wordplay of all kinds”; an individual who stood apart from the party machines. Could he, perhaps, be thinking of somebody closer to home?
In his introduction, Johnson notes that there are already hundreds, if not thousands, of biographies of Churchill. It is time, he says, “for a new assessment”. That sounds like an excellent idea. Alas, the promised new assessment is nowhere to be seen. Instead the Mayor has produced a jaunty but derivative little book with all the trademark virtues and vices that London’s voters have come to know so well.
It is readable, engaging and often funny. But it would, I think, be unfair to treat The Churchill Factor as a history book, for it bears about as much relation to a history book as an episode of Doctor Who does to a BBC4 documentary. It is basically an extended riff, a jolly lecture about a charismatic showman who was often reviled by his contemporaries as reckless, unreliable and untrustworthy but defied the “Tory drips” to enjoy the last laugh. He speaks, says Johnson, “for anyone who has ever eaten or smoked or drunk more than was strictly good for them, anyone who feels that they must battle on against the odds”.
In typical Johnson style there are plenty of wild overstatements: Hitler’s aim, he says at one point, was to convert his conquests into “a sinister edition of the European Union”. Indeed, everything is bigger and brighter than in reality, so Churchill is “the best speaker, the best writer, the best joke-maker, the bravest, the boldest and most original”, which for much of his career was simply not true.
Even his final term as prime minister from 1951 to 1955, which almost all historians regard as an utter waste of time, is supposedly “a story of unbelievable courage and willpower”. You get the impression that if Johnson peered into Churchill’s chamber pot he would detect the scent of English roses.
The truth, of course, is that this is not really a biography of Churchill at all. After Churchill published a book about the First World War, one of his colleagues remarked: “Winston has written an enormous book all about himself and called it The World Crisis.” Boris Johnson has written a very short book all about himself, and called it The Churchill Factor.
Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £20, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p
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