“CHURCHILL’S SHADOW:” REALLY?!
Since you are reading this, you’re probably an admirer of Winston Churchill. Certainly we are. Sharing Churchill’s own writings and the many, many, many books about him is pretty much all that Chartwell Booksellers has been doing for nearly 40 years now.
Always we have endeavored to sell every Churchill book without fear or favor. Not all are admiring. Not remotely. Winston Churchill was a very complicated character, which is to say that he was human. Contradictions abounded in his personality and in his political policy. Most books about him have attempted to address these contradictions with equanimity.
What to do, however, when a book appears that flat out trashes him?
This week we begin selling Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Mr. Wheatcroft has pursued a long career as a contrarian Churchill critic. His new 600-plus-page tome is a summation of all the negativity that he has mustered as a lifelong revisionist re-assessor of Winston Churchill.
The book is well written and utterly scabrous in its attempted dismantling of the Churchill “myth.” It questions absolutely everything that Winson Churchill accomplished in his long career, and dismisses just about everything about him that most of us find distinguished and even noble. Again and again, almost without exception, Mr. Wheatcroft finds fault.
We invite you to read Churchill’s Shadow and see what you think. Sometimes viewing Winston Churchill through a negativist’s lens can actually clarify why he was and, in fact, remains really great.
We wish you good health and safety, a vaccinated respite from negativity, and extended immunity from the vilest revisionist history.