Australia, insurance, car, home, live, holidays

Melodramatic:Churchill in Washington in 1953.

He was Winston Churchill,and in Jonathan Rose’sThe Literary Churchill he comes to refreshing,rumbustious and contrary life. Rose’s purpose is not to capture Churchill for any interest by selective quotation,although the subject perhaps invites it by what Rose calls his ‘‘utilitarian flexidoxy,opportunistically adopting any religious or irreligious beliefs that maximized human happiness,however inconsistent they may be’’. His aim is to identify Churchill's real influences,which were not ideological but literary and theatrical.

Churchill was an insatiable autodidact,and less fond of the classics than of popular middlebrow writers (George Bernard Shaw,H.G. Wells,T.E. Lawrence,Margaret Mitchell,and even Oscar Wilde).

The Literary Churchill by Jonathan Rose.

His belief in the sovereignty of the individual was engaged by anti-capitalist muckrakings and science fiction dystopias alike:he lavished praise on Henry Demarest Lloyd’sWealth Against Commonwealth (1894) and Upton Sinclair’sThe Jungle (1906),read George Orwell’sNineteen Eighty-Four (1948) and Nevil Shute’sOn the Beach (1957) twice each.

Above all,Churchill was steeped in the traditions of Victorian melodrama. Rose identifies such long-forgotten entertainments as George R. Sims and Robert Buchanan’sThe English Rose (1890) and Jules Verne’sMichael Strogoff (1880) as earning his particular enthusiasm. Melodramatic forms came to characterise his political and literary careers:a love of political and militarycoups de théâtre,such as sudden revelations and gallops to the rescue;an admiration of death before dishonour that could make him oddly indulgent of terrorism;a partiality in his histories to cliffhanging climaxes;a predilection in his speechifying for words such as ‘‘drama’’,‘‘tragedy’’ and ‘‘epic’’. From the theatre he even borrowed ‘‘iron curtain’’,a once-common safety device,for Cold War rhetorical mobilisation.

Thus,too,the occasionally bracing candour of his great wartime speeches,never indifferent to setbacks and sufferings. ‘‘Melodramatic heroes were always brought to the brink of defeat before their ultimate (and inevitable) victory,’’ observes Rose. ‘‘This is why Churchill’s habit of telling the British people the worst had the counter-intuitive effect of lifting their spirits.’’

Rose is at his best as he sifts these speeches for their layers of reference:revealing how the phrase ‘‘blood,toil,tears and sweat’’ had been 40 years in the making before its deployment in his first speech as British prime minister;how the idea that ‘‘never has so much been owed by so many to so few’’ manifests his political liberalism in trusting in a willing minority to resist an oppressive majority.

Then there is the uncanny prescience of Churchill’s only novel,Savrola (1890),which ‘‘tells the story of a brilliant author and public speaker who uses his wonderful oratorical powers to defeat the evil dictator of a Middle European country,a dictator who tears up treaties,stabs his political rivals in the back,murders prisoners of war,does not hesitate to use torture,and recklessly seeks a confrontation with the British Empire’’. Why was Churchill so quick to intuit Hitler’s depravity? Says Rose:because he had already described it.

Melodrama was Churchill’s weakness too:in it,Rose also locates the vehemence of his militarism,the anachronism of his racial views,the amateurism of his diplomacy,the ineptitude of his administration,and a lifelong tendency to hyperbole and caprice – the Dardanelles being but one example among many.

All the same,Rose is careful in his crediting. It’s become common,for instance,to regard Churchill’s ‘‘Gestapo’’ speech of June 1945,in which he attacked Labor on the grounds that ‘‘no Socialist system can be established without a political police’’,as composed in the grip of F.A. Hayek’s free market ur-textThe Road to Serfdom (1944). Actually,says Rose,there’s no evidence Churchill read Hayek;the likelier inspiration,he concludes,was Sinclair Lewis’ dystopia of fascism,It Can’t Happen Here (1935) which Churchill had reviewed approvingly forCollier’s.

The Literary Churchill invites the criticism of overeagerness – a tendency to seize on any evidence of intertextuality to prove a point. Rose is apt to generalise,to ignore counterarguments,to rush conclusions. But in this sense,he is perhaps a match for his subject.

Captivated by Churchill’s personality and energy,dismayed by his impetuosity and disorganisation,his wartime chief of general staff once wrote in his diary:‘‘I wonder whether any historian of the future will ever be able to paint Winston in his true colours.’’ Jonathan Rose has come as close as any.

Gideon Haigh’s most recent bookAshes to Ashes is published by Viking.