I must digress before I begin. You will be aware I use Wikipedia a lot. Not so much now. When I ask Google a question AI Overview comes up with the answer. I now realise AI already touches all our lives.
I wanted to know if there were more books about Napoleon or Churchill. AI Review had a think; in a nano second it opined:
“Yes, there are more biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte than Winston Churchill. More than 60,000 books have been written about Napoleon since his death in 1821. Some say that more books have been written with Napoleon in the title than there have been days since his death.
Twenty-six biographies of Churchill were published during his lifetime, and another thirty-six were published between his death in 1965 and the end of the 20th century.” (AI Review)
Of course there have been more Churchill biographies this century. Andrew Roberts and Bouncy Boris spring to mind. When I turned fifty a goddaughter gave me a biography of Roy Jenkins. I might have seen him in the gastro pubs I frequented in Berkshire in those days. He met Robert Harris for lunch in them about once a fortnight for the last seven years of his life. I might have bumped into him at my club where he enjoyed frequent convivial lunches. As one says, he was clubbable. In fact the only time I saw him was at a memorial service for a friend’s father, Sir Richard Way, who had been Permanent Secretary when Roy was Minister of Aviation in 1964.
I have read Churchill’s memoir, My Early Life, and recommend it but you have probably read it too. I have yet to read a biography of Churchill (or Napoleon, for that matter). I have taken steps to rectify this omission and ordered Roy Jenkins’ 2001 biography: Churchill. It is his pre-penultimate book. He died in January 2003 aged eighty-two.
These days Roy Jenkins is remembered as a politician but he wrote twenty-three books including biographies of Attlee, Asquith, Truman, Baldwin, Gladstone and Roosevelt. Like Churchill he earned far more from his writing than politics. I’m looking forward to his Churchill biography. I think he was in the gallery of the House of Commons in 1940 to hear him.
I have read Jenkins’s biographies of Gladstone, Churchill, and Asquith, in that order. Had I started with Churchill or Asquith, I might have stopped right there–Churchill’s career had longer dull stretches, and his domestic foils lacked the style of Gladstone’s, Asquith seemed interesting, but less interesting than Gladstone.
Jenkins’s biography of Churchill is interesting as they shared two senior political roles, those of Home Secretary & Chancellor of the Exchequer, & Jenkins rather goes to town on these chapters. Otherwise Andrew Roberts is a much more exciting read.