October 14, 2008

Reviewed by Richard M. Langworth, Editor Finest Hour
Published in Finest Hour 95

Steven Hayward
Rochlin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1997.

A growing number of Churchillians have acquired their interest intellectually, from reading about Winston Churchill rather than living through the times he bestrode. Many are businesspeople, or those who must speak for a living, fascinated by Churchill’s never-say-die fortitude, and his ability to express it. This book is custom-made for them, because it presents Churchill as a model for leaders, using a his life to illustrate the maxims and character that he relied upon.

The author is a contributing editor for Reason magazine and a research and editorial director for the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. Many equally qualified authors have set out to define Churchill within their specialty with disastrous results; Hayward has not. Whilst at first glance the book appears to be just another inadequate biography, this is anything but the case. The author takes pains to recommend several reliable and readable biographies, along with Churchill’s own autobiography and his multi-volume memoirs of the two World Wars. He also correctly derives the relevant lesson from Churchill’s Marlborough: in reading that great biography one instantly finds “an uncanny foreshadowing of Churchill’s war leadership.” For his own book, however, Hayward has other goals.

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The author writes: “Calvin Coolidge–a much underrated man–once remarked that ‘Great men are the ambassadors of Providence sent to reveal to their fellow men their unknown selves.'” Accordingly, Hayward sifts through Churchill’s life in search of teachings about handling adversity or, what in the modern age of Victim Industry, we now describe as “challenges.” One wonders what Churchill would have said to someone informing him that saving England was a challenge. He would probably have replied, “A Hun alive is a war in prospect.”

Chapter I quickly explains what we are about here. Entitled “The Keys to Understanding Churchill,” it methodically lists all the characteristics absent in run-of-the-mill 1997 politicians: “Candor and plain speaking…decisiveness…historical imagination…balancing overview… attention to details. As with each following chapter, Hayward wraps it up with a recap of key points and offers “Churchill’s maxims” (nicely attributed in an appendix) to support them. Being Churchill’s, the maxims are brief. On Historical Imagination, for example, Churchill’s maxim is: “The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.”

Successive chapters examine the “Executive Churchill,” based on his official career; how to confront failure and learn from mistakes; Churchill’s as administrator and personnel manager (much better than most historians give him credit for); the Churchill thought process; WSC as Great Communicator; Winston the innovator and inventor.

What we have here is a manual for leaders, useful if you lead a troop of Scouts or Guides, or a football team, or a corporation, or…