Monday, February 25, 2019

Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill

Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell  436 pp.

While there are masses of books about Winston Churchill not much exists on his wife of  56 years. Beginning with her birth to Lady Blanche Hozier there were questions as to who her father was with three men as possibilities including her legal father Henry Hozier. After spending her teen years in France she met and married Churchill at the age of 23. Her life from then on involved supporting her husband's political ambitions, having a brood of mostly unsuccessful children, championing social causes, and being a moral support to her countrymen during two world wars. As biographies go, this one is adequate but not without mistakes. During the battle of Dunkirk credit for rescuing many of the soldiers was given to the Royal Navy with no mention of the hundreds of civilian craft that assisted in the evacuation. My main quibble was with the classically British take on the U.S. failure to enter World War II early on. A number of times FDR was blamed for refusing to declare war on Germany when constitutionally it is Congress that declares war and a majority of Congress was isolationist at the time. 

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