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The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz Paperback – February 15, 2022
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“One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
- Print length624 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateFebruary 15, 2022
- Dimensions5.1 x 1.32 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100385348738
- ISBN-13978-0385348737
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From the Publisher
![Bill Gates says “Larson gives the reader a you are there sense of the intensity of Churchill’s work](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media-library-service-media/1c680913-dce0-45ab-9690-89b6711d0942.__CR0,0,970,300_PT0_SX970_V1___.jpg)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Published in the midst of one of the greatest international crises since World War II, Larson’s new book tells the story of London facing the Blitz during that war through the characters of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, members of his family and his various advisers. Readers are left with an indelible portrait of a nation coming together to face a brutal assault from German bombs under leadership that is wise, empathetic and strategic—not to mention highly witty and charming.”—Time
“Erik Larson, in his suspenseful new book, The Splendid and the Vile, captures the foreboding that settled on London leading up to the bombardment, as well as Churchill’s determination not to give in. . . . Plus, there is Larson’s reliable, cinematic writing and his intimate portrayal of Churchill.”—The New Yorker
“An enthralling page-turner.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“A damn good story. There are narrative arcs, heroes, villains, and suspense aplenty to craft the kind of rich, immersive histories that have become Larson’s trademark.”—Rolling Stone
“This is Erik Larson’s moment. His affecting and affectionate chronicle of the Churchill family during the Blitz, the Nazi World War II bombing campaign against Great Britain, has found a hungry audience in the United States.”—The Boston Globe
“Through the remarkably skillful use of intimate diaries as well as public documents, some newly released, Larson has transformed the well-known record of 12 turbulent months, stretching from May of 1940 through May of 1941, into a book that is fresh, fast and deeply moving.”—Candice Millard, The New York Times Book Review
“Larson’s book offers a delicious slice of life of the world’s last great statesman.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Fascinating . . . The entire book comes at the reader with breakneck speed. So much happened so quickly in those 12 months, yet Larson deftly weaves all the strands of his tale into a coherent and compelling whole.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“I have an early copy of this book on my desk and idly began reading the first pages—and suddenly time disappeared.”—The Seattle Times
“Still, it is a time of sadness, fear, grief and uncertainty for so many, and I find myself comforted by reading about other supremely challenging times in human history, and about resilience, and hope. For this, there is no better book right now than The Splendid and the Vile.”—Mackenzie Dawson, New York Post
“Nonfiction king Erik Larson is back.”—PopSugar
“Spectacular . . . Larson, as America’s most compelling popular historian, is at his best in this fast-moving, immensely readable, and even warmhearted account of the battle to save Britain.”—The Christian Science Monitor
"What sets [Larson's] work apart is his signature way of using painstaking research through personal journals and historical records to spin a gripping nonfiction tale through the ordinary lives of the men and women who succeeded, failed, and perished as a result.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“The Splendid and the Vile delivers the great saga with a novelist’s touch. It’s like you’re watching and hearing the days and nights of 1940 as a passenger on a double-decker London bus.”—Chris Matthews, Churchill Bulletin
“The popular historian Erik Larson has done it again. As I read this book, I kept wondering what the swelling of powerful emotion was that I felt, sometimes in an almost physical sense.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, in Air Mail
“A propulsive, character-driven account of Winston Churchill’s first year as British prime minister . . . Readers will rejoice.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
On a Quiet Blue Day
The day was warm and still, the sky blue above a rising haze. Temperatures by afternoon were in the nineties, odd for London. People thronged Hyde Park and lounged on chairs set out beside the Serpentine. Shoppers jammed the stores of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. The giant barrage balloons overhead cast lumbering shadows on the streets below. After the August air raid when bombs first fell on London proper, the city had retreated back into a dream of invulnerability, punctuated now and then by false alerts whose once-terrifying novelty was muted by the failure of bombers to appear. The late-summer heat imparted an air of languid complacency. In the city’s West End, theaters hosted twenty-four productions, among them the play Rebecca, adapted for the stage by Daphne du Maurier from her novel of the same name. Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was also playing in London, as were the films The Thin Man and the long-running Gaslight.
It was a fine day to spend in the cool green of the countryside.
Churchill was at Chequers. Lord Beaverbrook departed for his country home, Cherkley Court, just after lunch, though he would later try to deny it. John Colville had left London the preceding Thursday, to begin a ten-day vacation at his aunt’s Yorkshire estate with his mother and brother, shooting partridges, playing tennis, and sampling bottles from his uncle’s collection of ancient port, in vintages dating to 1863. Mary Churchill was still at Breccles Hall with her friend and cousin Judy, continuing her reluctant role as country mouse and honoring their commitment to memorize one Shakespeare sonnet every day. That Saturday she chose Sonnet 116—in which love is the “ever-fixed mark”—and recited it to her diary. Then she went swimming. “It was so lovely—joie de vivre overcame vanity.”
Throwing caution to the winds, she bathed without a cap.
---
In Berlin that Saturday morning, Joseph Goebbels prepared his lieutenants for what would occur by day’s end. The coming destruction of London, he said, “would probably represent the greatest human catastrophe in history.” He hoped to blunt the inevitable world outcry by casting the assault as a deserved response to Britain’s bombing of German civilians, but thus far British raids over Germany, including those of the night before, had not produced the levels of death and destruction that would justify such a massive reprisal.
He understood, however, that the Luftwaffe’s impending attack on London was necessary and would likely hasten the end of the war. That the English raids had been so puny was an unfortunate thing, but he would manage. He hoped Churchill would produce a worthy raid “as soon as possible.”
Every day offered a new challenge, tempered now and then by more pleasant distractions. At one meeting that week, Goebbels heard a report from Hans Hinkel, head of the ministry’s Department for Special Cultural Tasks, who’d provided a further update on the status of Jews in Germany and Austria. “In Vienna there are 47,000 Jews left out of 180,000, two-thirds of them women and about 300 men between 20 and 35,” Hinkel reported, according to minutes of the meeting. “In spite of the war it has been possible to transport a total of 17,000 Jews to the south-east. Berlin still numbers 71,800 Jews; in future about 500 Jews are to be sent to the south-east each month.” Plans were in place, Hinkel reported, to remove 60,000 Jews from Berlin in the first four months after the end of the war, when transportation would again become available. “The remaining 12,000 will likewise have disappeared within a further four weeks.”
This pleased Goebbels, though he recognized that Germany’s overt anti-Semitism, long evident to the world, itself posed a significant propaganda problem. As to this, he was philosophical. “Since we are being opposed and calumniated throughout the world as enemies of the Jews,” he said, “why should we derive only the disadvantages and not also the advantages, i.e. the elimination of the Jews from the theater, the cinema, public life and administration. If we are then still attacked as enemies of the Jews we shall at least be able to say with a clear conscience: It was worth it, we have benefited from it.”
---
The Luftwaffe came at teatime...
Product details
- Publisher : Crown (February 15, 2022)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 624 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385348738
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385348737
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.1 x 1.32 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in U.K. Prime Minister Biographies
- #4 in WWII Biographies
- #15 in World War II History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Erik Larson](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A10T0AdfejL._SY600_.jpg)
Erik Larson is the author of six previous national bestsellers—The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than twelve million copies. His books have been published in nearly forty countries.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the historical setting fascinating, dramatic, and fresh. They also describe the book as highly readable and providing much insight and reality. Customers praise the leader as confident, brave, and decisive. They describe the content as deeply researched and making it seem alive. Readers describe the characters as grave and determined. Opinions are mixed on the pacing, with some finding it well-paced and enjoyable, while others say it's slow going.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book highly readable, with excellent detail on the nuances of numerous relationships. They also appreciate the vivid and colorful writing, which adds to the fascination of the book. Readers also appreciate that the book weaves together very personal lifestyle events with fairly detailed information.
"Well researched and documented, but reads like a novel. What an amazing man!!! One of the best history books I’ve read" Read more
"Full of wonderful stories, descriptions, real and brave people and their private lives, struggles, and personal triumphs...." Read more
"I thought this was “light” reading...." Read more
"...Larson does an excellent job detailing the nuances of numerous relationships in the book without making the book overly complicated or confusing...." Read more
Customers find the historical setting fascinating, terrific, and wonderful. They also say the book is unique, with relatively brief segments on various events and situations. Readers say it portrays a very dramatic, desperate time and provides a freshness and immediacy to a familiar chapter of history. They say it helps explain the development of technologies, ideas, and various conflicts.
"...What an amazing man!!! One of the best history books I’ve read" Read more
"...real and brave people and their private lives, struggles, and personal triumphs. Thank you, Erik Larson, for another incredible book...." Read more
"...figures involved in the Battle for Britain, Erik Larson provides a freshness and immediacy to a familiar chapter of history...." Read more
"...our way of life as we knew it and needed a voice like his: confident, brave, and decisive...." Read more
Customers find the book deeply researched, with colorful additions. They also say the author has an intelligent mind and a gift for speaking. Readers also find the descriptions of the impact on and responses of the English people excellent. They appreciate the brilliance of the narrative.
"Well researched and documented, but reads like a novel. What an amazing man!!! One of the best history books I’ve read" Read more
"...(and some would say the free world) during WWIi, was an interesting, complex, and brilliant man, though certainly flawed. As a leader, he rose..." Read more
"...life as we knew it and needed a voice like his: confident, brave, and decisive...." Read more
"This was an interesting perspective on Churchill and his inner circle during his first year as PM. It was well-written with a very wide vocabulary...." Read more
Customers find the characters in the book deeply human, heartfelt, and painful. They also describe the book as a thrilling, character-driven page turner. Customers also mention that the man is grave and determined, yet often childlike in his zest.
"Well researched and documented, but reads like a novel. What an amazing man!!! One of the best history books I’ve read" Read more
"...during WWIi, was an interesting, complex, and brilliant man, though certainly flawed. As a leader, he rose..." Read more
"...of Larson’s work, it is part of his genius: he brings history to life with the character development, drama, and pacing of a novel...." Read more
"I love Erik Larson's writing. The ending brought me to tears...." Read more
Customers find the book highly detailed, meticulously researched, and intimate. They say it provides a fascinating new look at Churchill, a very inside view of the challenges faced by the British, and a vivid description of the bombings that took place. They also say the book provides s clear picture of life in WWII.
"Great behind the scenes look at what Churchill and everyday people were facing in his 1st year as a war prime minister." Read more
"This is a very readable and informative look at the first year of WWII...." Read more
"This book gives a very inside view of the challenges faced by the British people and the strength and audacity of its elected leader, Winston..." Read more
"...Reading such detail made it seem alive and I learned while I was entertained." Read more
Customers find the book excellent, entertaining, and insightful into Churchill and his family. They appreciate the small personal details and perspectives. Readers are also awed by the strength of character and dedication of Churchill. They say he was the right person for the time and confident, brave, and decisive.
"...save our way of life as we knew it and needed a voice like his: confident, brave, and decisive...." Read more
"...Eric Larson's book portrays Churchill's essential leadership during one of Britain's worst trials of WWII, the Blitz...." Read more
"...His writing is vivid and colorful, with a keen eye for anecdotes like those recounting the amount of work Churchill did while soaking in bathtubs or..." Read more
"...This book provides the reader with many anecdotes about daily life with and around Churchill---very challenging for those in military leadership...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it well-paced and easy to read, while others say it's slow going and not a quick read.
"...It reads at a breakneck speed. At times I felt I was sitting beside Churchill sharing a big glass of Brandy with him. Splendid Read Indeed!" Read more
"...This is not a 'fast read' but interesting insights pop up regularly...." Read more
"...history to life with the character development, drama, and pacing of a novel. As usual, the detail is astoundingly meticulous, as is the footnoting...." Read more
"...fan of Larson's work and have found each book fascinating in subject, quick and intense to read. This one is the best...." Read more
Customers are dissatisfied with the book's completeness. They mention that it's missing 30 pages, 15 pages have completely fallen out of the binding, and several pages extended past others. They also say that the book is out of order and skips 335-368.
"...But the digital version turned out to be completely corrupted. Missing paragraphs and words on practically every page! Impossible to even follow...." Read more
"...Pages 335-368 are missing! I am beyond the return window so I'm stuck with it...." Read more
"Check book carefully. The book I received is missing 30 pages." Read more
"...however the construction of this book is defective and lost its pages after opening for first time...." Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
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It would be interesting to read of other “great” people’s life this way, perhaps Rosevelt’s, but it seems unlikely that other greats would have left the diaries and private papers, etc. to write such a book.
Although the book is well-documented non-fiction, it reads like a novel. The impressions that present in form of dialogue documented in published papers and books in addition to quotations from the diaries and journals of Churchill's family and subordinates as well as the recorded wartime impressions from more both famous literary figures and more ordinary Englishpeople.
Larson does an excellent job detailing the nuances of numerous relationships in the book without making the book overly complicated or confusing. The way he chronicles Churchill's courtship of Roosevelt is fascinating; as are the relationships of Pamela Digby Churchill (Harriman), his daughter cinemas, who carried out an affair with W. Averell Harriman, Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and subsequently, Station. (In a fascinating turn of events, Pamela and Harriman end up marrying each other much later in life). Detailed portrayals of the people surrounding Churchill are fascinating, and Larson explores Churchill's relationships with the people surrounding him, rather like planets orbiting the sun. Winston Churchill, who carried the weight of Great Britain (and some would say the free world) during WWIi, was an interesting, complex, and brilliant man, though certainly flawed. As a leader, he rose
to a challenge that seemed insurmountable. Churchill had the ability to inspire people that few could match. Extraordinarily, this ability was perhaps matched by one of his contemporaries, F.D.R. Without these two men as leaders during WWII, it is questionable whether democracy would have prevailed at the conclusion of the war. Erik Larson's The Splendid and Vile captures his subject, Winston Churchill, in a brilliant and interesting way. I highly recommend this book.
Based on the 1940 timeline, the reader receives an in-depth analysis of Hitler's rhetorical skills, FDR's immense popularity, and the alcoholism of Hitler's son-in-law, Randolph. Those who enjoy fiction more than nonfiction realize that Churchill's life comes off as too crazy to be accurate. People compare Winston's bold nature to rationalize the actions of some of today's aggressive and foolhardy leaders, but I doubt that history will be as kind to the recent crowd.
The book accomplishes the impossible by desensitizing you to bombs as you hear of them dropping all over Great Britain. Since it has a specific timeline starting on May 10th, 1940, you experience the ebbs and flows of the Great War as the seasons change. You also learn a great deal about the United States as foreign policy dictates action and inaction in a time during which they more clearly defined allies and enemies.
What attracts some to wartime biographers differs from person to person. Any trauma could frame a story. Those who condemn violence in any form would not enjoy a celebration of someone like Churchill, but one needs to consider him in the context of his time. The world knew that stopping Hitler would save our way of life as we knew it and needed a voice like his: confident, brave, and decisive. He made tough decisions at a time when we could not see alternatives.
Francois Truffaut said that you could not make an antiwar film since filmmakers make the violence and combat seem fun. Here, you see a man, Churchill, who seems to thrive on the hustle and bustle of warfare to keep his people calm in a time of great strife. Author Erik Larson does a great job framing the bombing in the context of one man's first year on the job, providing a British perspective to stories of Hitler that we have never heard that way.
Top reviews from other countries
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This is a story that has been told many times, of the events to knock Great Britain out of WW II using air power - The Blitz as it has been described. I've read a good number of books on this topic as well as most of the major sources around Winston Churchill. I was pleased to see a new view of the historic events described from a different perspective with several story arcs tying the facts to what people were experiencing.
The story mostly focuses on those close to Churchill with some additional material from diarists and minor embellishment to the facts around some of the many lives lost - much more interesting to get some minor feel for a person than to learn of their death as another number.
I enjoyed finding that the title comes from paraphrasing a diarist's entry and it was fun to find it and remember reading their memoirs many years ago.
It builds on works previously published, using first source material and keeping the major events in place while adding a new look at some of the more mundane aspects of life to deliver a story that shows the ordinary and extraordinary coexisting against the backdrop of war. The sources, bibliography and index were excellent.
Despite the many story arcs presented, I had no problem keeping it straight over the intermittent reading of the story.
A very satisfying read.
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Mister Churchill has a central role in this account naturally, but other characters are very well depicted also, eg his youngest daughter Mary, one of his secretaries John Colville, Mr Beaverbrook, who filled many different roles.
A German perspective of the planned invasion of Britain is also well documented as is the essential part played by the US prior to December 1941.
Facts and figures of casualties, aerial bonbardments and bonb damage, advances in weaponry are all there and add to the sense of horror, determination to endure and will to overcome such adversity.
I truly enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to anyone interested in this period. It manages very well to bring it to life.
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