Churchill: The Bulldog Still Bites

In the 21st century Winston Churchill has largely passed out of the era of personal memory, yet he continues to attract a growing historiography. After his death, the eight-volume official biography, started by his son, Randolph Churchill and finished by Martin Gilbert, was informative but rarely critical. By contrast, Robert Rhodes James, in Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939 (1970), was much less reverential about his earlier career. Subsequently other historians, such as John Charmley, in Churchill: The End of Glory (1993), extended the critique to Churchill’s post-1939 career. By the start of the new millennium, however, the era of revisionary criticism had largely passed. Roy Jenkins, in his well-crafted and popular biography, Churchill (2001), concluded that he was the greatest British statesman of modern times.