'Churchill' - Samantha Heywood - review

Samantha Heywood is the recently appointed Museum Director and Director of Exhibits at Natick’s Museum of World War I.  In this short volume she examines his influential parliamentary career from its onset in 1900 to his retirement as Prime Minister in 1955.  She evaluates key decisions he made, such as the bombing of Dresden and his failure to bomb Auschwitz despite British intelligence knowing of the purpose of the camp by 1944, and Harris launching air offensives on the synthetic oil plant in neighbouring Monovitz.  She applies a wide variety of often conflicting sources to ask practical as well as ethical questions of Churchill’s actions, whether they be the morality of excessive civilian casualties from bombing raids, or his budgets during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer.  These vary from sermons by Bishop Bell of Chichester to letters from his wife, this is very effective in humanising the greatest Englishman and giving a window into popular opinion throughout the 20^th Century. 

The book gave a decent overview of Churchill’s career, but did not offer any particularly original insight into his famous life. It gets 3/5.