Great Contemporaries [Paperback]

His life was long, stretching past the 90-year mark, allowing him ample time to write and give speeches, which are routinely quoted to this day. He was a master at both disciplines, with his writing awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature in 1953.

"Great Contemporaries" is a book that is more about the men and women he knew than about the Author. He is evident throughout the read, as the impressions of these people of History are his. The 21 profiles he shares with the reader are incredible in their range, and that they were his "contemporaries" is one testament to the History he created and was a part of.

Contemporary people of fame are often identifiable by a first or last name alone. However as we live in an age where you can chat in real time across the planet, fame does not require the same level of notoriety. The fame is of a different character and caliber.

The Kaiser, Shaw, Chamberlein, Hindenburg, Foch, Trotsky, these are only a fraction of the essays this man of history will share. Too, there is Lawrence of Arabia who requires a bit more than a last name, but it is not do to his renown, rather the generic nature of the end of his sobriquet.

These reminiscences are different than those of today's leaders, there was very little distance between these people, they often met alone, and they did not bring an array of lackeys, translators, and gadflies.

A tremendous sweep of one man's impressions of people whose actions resonate to this day, and in all likelihood will not cease.

"At the time, conflict unceasing grew year by year to a more dangerous intensity at home, while abroad there gathered sullenly
the hurricane that was to wreck our generation. Our days were spent in the furious party battles..., while always upon the horizon deadly shapes grew or faded, and even while the sun shone there was a curious whisper in the air."

Who could the author of such Churchillian lines be but Winston Churchill himself? The stately but rarely stentorian pacing and tone, imitations of which are rarely successful, still impresses upon the reader the power and beauty of the English language.

These biographical essays, written while Churchill was in political exile in the Thirties, were collected in book at the end of that decade. His majestically simple (or simply majestic) writing brings long-gone controversies and personalities back to life, if unavoidably suffused with the aura of the author's own personality.

Some notables that would seem to have been natural subjects for this book are missing: Gandhi, Lloyd George, Edward VII. But an American reader only passingly acquainted with the luminaries of early 20th century Britain would be interested in Churchill's memories of the First Earl of Birkenhead, Herbert Henry Asquith, and George Nathanael Curzon. The pieces are light on biographical detail and heavy on evaluation, but Churchill's estimation of most of these people is generous. He dismisses George Bernard Shaw as a jester, gallantly defends the ex-Kaiser from the worst of the late war-time propaganda, and warns of the rising influence of Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler. The reader is also reminded from time to time that Churchill was indeed a politician, as in the essay on Lord Fisher, in which he deflects blame for some WWI naval setbacks onto that gentleman.

Excepting Walpole, probably no statesman's collected bread and butter writing has ever been so memorable, or made for such good reading.