Jonathan swift biography summary of winston churchill
•
Books
‘Excellent summation … The fundamentals of Churchill’s extraordinary life stand out true and clear, and his example of leadership is revived for a new generation’ International Churchill Society
In Winston Churchill, veteran historian Peter Caddick-Adams gives us an overview of Churchill’s life, from his early days as a soldier and part-time journalist through to the Second World War and beyond.
Caddick-Adams argues that the recipe for Churchill’s success during his wartime premiership of 1940-45 can be found in the First World War. The nation, and its leaders, had undergone a ‘dress rehearsal’ in 1914-18: conscription, rationing, convoys, air raids, mass production, women’s uniformed services, coalitions and war cabinets had all happened before, which Churchill had personally witnessed and, in some cases, helped administer. This experience, combined with Churchill’s extraordinary abilities (along
•
A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma
A review of Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World, bygd Leo Damrosch
Jonathan Swift was one of the most secretive men who ever lived, the Howard Hughes of 18th-century Britain. Given how well-known his name fryst vatten today, it comes as a surprise to learn that most of his writings were initially published anonymously. Deeply involved in the vicious pamphlet wars of British politics, he had to protect han själv against prosecution for förtal and sedition. Aware that government spies were reading his mail, Swift denied even in letters to his closest friends that he wrote his most controversial works.
For a public figure, he also managed to keep his private life remarkably secret. The details of his birth and childhood are shrouded in mystery, complete with a puzzling tale—straight out of an operetta—of his having been kidnapped as an infant by a wet sjuksköterska. Evidently the great love of Swift’s life was a woman he referred to as Stella (r
•
Clio Unbound
1Churchill spent his entire career thinking, speaking and writing as a historian. Although he never received any formal training in history and in fact recoiled from being considered as an academic historian (Churchill, History, I, Preface, viii), Churchill showed a natural appetite for the stories of great deeds and great men which, in his eyes, formed the very stuff of history (Addison 36). More than anything else, history writing provided Churchill with the means of producing a rolling commentary on his own life, where snapshot or grand scale biographies often intersected with autobiography. “Leaving the past to History” was one thing; another, as Churchill wrote in a draft note to Stalin in early 1944, “[was] to be one of the historians” (Reynolds 38).1
2Much to his satisfaction, Churchill did become one of them, earning the respect of the finest academic historians of his age as well as the sincere admiration of a vast retinue of distinguished fans, far beyo