In the introduction to The Churchill Factor, Boris Johnson notes that "there are a hundred books a year on [Churchill]." Churchill ranks with Lincoln, Napoleon, and Jesus Christ as one of the most popular biographical subjects in world history. And many of these biographies are very good. Recent entries, both titled Churchill, include Roy Jenkins’ 1,002-page tome and Paul Johnson’s (no relation to Boris) briefer romp.
So The Churchill Factor has some competition, but it had potential to be a wonderful addition to the Churchill canon. Boris Johnson has a background and skill set that other authors lack. He is both an excellent writer—he edited the Spectator, Britain’s premier political magazine, from 1999 to 2005, and pens a regular column for the Telegraph—and a practicing politician, a former Member of Parliament and the current mayor of London.
Unlike Jenkins, another politician and Churchill admirer, Boris has an aristocratic lineage and is a born Tory. A highflying journalist in Conservative politics—it was a match made in heaven, the perfect alignment of biographer and subject, which could have resulted in a first-rate, knowing treatment.
But The Churchill Factor doesn’t work out. Johnson has produced a thoroughly mediocre, unoriginal, and modish work that is more an attention-seeking device for its author than an incisive study of its subject. In the process, Boris insults both his readers’ intelligence and fails to live up to his own promise as an historical writer.
The problems begin at the beginning, as Boris explains his reasons for writing the book. Churchill, he says, "is in danger of being forgotten, or at least imperfectly remembered." As for those who are aware of the great man’s existence, Boris worries they might be "in danger—through sheer vagueness—of forgetting the scale of what he did." Accordingly, Boris thinks "it is time for a new assessment" of Churchill and his life.
This is nonsense. Of all the problems that Churchill’s legacy faces, being lost is not one of them. In a 2002 BBC poll that attracted over a million votes Churchill was voted "the greatest Briton of all time." The presence (or lack thereof) of Churchill’s visage in the Obama White House became a campaign issue in 2012. John Boehner proudly installed a bust of Churchill in the U.S. Capitol in 2013. An official Churchill Society has chapters in places as diverse as Iceland, Nebraska, Portugal, and Israel. Britain is filled with schools, businesses, and streets named after the grand old man. And—as Boris notes—"hordes of visitors" visit his home at Chartwell, including "a record" 212,769 of them in the last year.
Robert Peel is in danger of being forgotten. Churchill is not.
The fact that Churchill’s memory is alive and well shouldn’t prevent authors from writing books about him. But they should be honest about their reasons for doing so. Because The Churchill Factor’s raison d’être is so manifestly false, it suggests Boris isn’t being wholly upfront about his aims and purposes. It is hard to shake this sour note at the outset as one reads on.
In his early chapters, Johnson dutifully recounts the major points of Churchill’s life, with an eye toward showing how Churchill’s individual presence and character—the Churchill factor—changed the history of which he was a part. This is a fine point, especially for young readers. The knowledge that one person can shape world affairs is inspiring. And Johnson correctly observes that Churchill’s agency had results both glorious (Britain’s resistance to Nazi tyranny) and horrible (Gallipoli).
But this insight can be found in virtually every recent book on Churchill. It is so commonplace as to be banal. The Churchill Factor adds nothing to these works, and includes lapses of analysis that they avoid. For instance, Boris implies that Churchill was right (or at least not wrong) to support the Nazi-sympathizing Edward VIII in his tragicomic quest to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. But Edward was a reckless fool. His insistence on marrying Simpson against the opposition of his ministers showed a contempt for constitutional government—a contempt that is totally inappropriate for a British king to hold.
Johnson’s treatment of American leaders is equally misguided. He wrongly suggests that Woodrow Wilson was in favor of imposing reparations on Germany—in fact, Wilson favored restitution (repairing battlefields and the like) and not the punitive, lasting indemnities for Allied war expenses favored by France and Britain. And in his effort to prove Churchill’s role in bringing America into the fight against the Nazis, Boris discounts the role of Franklin Roosevelt—who actually brought America into the fight against the Nazis.
Roosevelt was a longstanding anglophile who despised Nazi militarism. From 1937 onward, he made a valiant effort to educate the American people about the evil of fascism, and the importance of supporting democratic Britain. Churchill’s presence was crucial to this effort, insofar as Britain resisted the Nazis because of his decisions. But it is FDR, not Churchill, who deserves credit for America’s aid to Britain and entry into the war against Hitler. Though Johnson ultimately admits this, he treats FDR as an empty vessel, wooed and manipulated by Churchill, instead of the sage and canny operator that he actually was.
In addition to these questionable judgments, The Churchill Factor is written like a TV documentary. (Indeed, it probably will be a TV documentary—one of Johnson’s earlier books, The Dream of Rome, became a televised series.) Multiple chapters open with Boris at some place of Churchillian importance—a World War I battlefield, the grave of Churchill’s nanny—and then transition to whatever character trait or career segment Boris wants to highlight. While this style can be charming, too often it descends into schlock ("[t]he spirit of derring-do just pumped through [Churchill’s] veins, like some higher-octane fuel than the one the rest of us run on") and can occasionally be bizarre ("[t]here are some photos of [Churchill] walking across Horse Guards . . . and I swear there is a touch of the Tom Cruise about the heel").
If The Churchill Factor offers nothing new historically and is less than a stylistic triumph, that’s probably because Boris didn’t intend it to be either of these things. Instead, he has written a campaign book.
Boris has made little secret of his desire to lead the Conservative Party. But some Tories don’t trust him. Hard-right traditionalists view his tenure as mayor of London with suspicion, thinking he might be a squish on immigration and Islamism. Metropolitan establishment types are frequently aghast at his politically incorrect statements and sometimes tut-tut at his saucy persona. And a few Conservatives question his character, which can seem opportunistic (for his sudden, post-mayoral interest in promoting "diversity") and disloyal (for his not so subtle challenge to his supposed friend, Prime Minister David Cameron).
The Churchill Factor’s ultimate purpose is to answer these concerns. Worried that Boris is an opportunistic drunk? Churchill was one too!
To lead his country in war, Churchill had to command not just the long-faced men of Munich—Halifax and Chamberlain—but hundreds of Tories who had been conditioned to think of him as an opportunist, a turncoat, a blowhard, an egotist, a rotter, a bounder, a cad, and on several well-attested occasions a downright drunk.
Worried that Boris’ lack of fealty to political correctness will cause problems with the voters? It didn’t for Churchill!
Even those who thought [Churchill] was brilliant . . . were often dismayed by his seeming lack of judgment, his tendency to hyperbole, to overexcitement, even to hysteria. In 1931 he became so worked up about the prospect of Indian independence that he called Mahatma Gandhi a "half-naked fakir"—in words that have certainly not been forgotten in India.
And so on. The Churchill Factor is thus really The BoJo Show, shallow and self-promotional.
One of the West’s finest writers, Plutarch, wrote his Lives as an explicitly moral endeavor: to transmit the habits and character traits of past leaders to the current set, so that the new would improve on the examples of the old. Johnson, a classicist by training, tried to follow in this admirable tradition. But he forgot the most important part of Plutarch’s formula. In a work that records the virtues—or faults—of another person, there is no room for the author’s vanity or special pleading on his own behalf. The focus must always be on the subject and the reader.
Of course, Churchill put himself at the center of his own writing with some abandon. But—and here’s where Johnson commits the cardinal sin of his class and profession—Churchill was never this boring.