October 17, 2008

 First English Edition: Thornton Butterworth, London, 20 October 1930

Reviewed by Michael Richards
Published in Finest Hour 35
 
    Senior editor Dalton Newfield says, “Whenever anyone says they really want to understand Churchill, I invariably recommend My Early Life (published in USA as A Roving Commission.) This reviewer would certainly second the motion, although I was predisposed to like it: I found Woods 37b in a New England flea market for one dollar!

    Churchill’s account of his activities through his marriage in 1908 reads like a novel – perhaps unsurprisingly, since his early life was indeed a great adventure. There are some superb passages, many of which have become immortal, having been quoted and requoted in dozens of books about Sir Winston. My own favorite (having had the same experiences with mathematics as WSC), comes in Chapter III, and I can’t better describe My Early Life than by quoting it:

        “We arrived in an ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ world, at the portals of which stood ‘A Quadratic Equation.’ This with a strange grimace pointed the way to the Theory of Indices, which again handed on the intruder to the full rigours of the Binomial Theorem. Further dim chambers lighted by sullen, sulphurous fires were reputed to contain a dragon called the ‘Differential Calculus.’ But this monster was beyond the bounds appointed by the Civil Service Commissioners who regulated this stage of Pilgrim’s heavy journey. We turned aside, not indeed to the uplands of the Delectable Mountains, but into a strange corridor of things like anagrams and acrostics called Sines, Cosines and Tangents. Apparently they were very important, especially when multiplied by each other, or by themselves! They had also this merit – you could learn many of their evolutions off by heart. There was a question in my third and last Examination about these Cosines and Tangents in a highly square-rooted condition which must have been decisive upon the whole of my after life. It was a problem. But luckily I had seen its ugly face only a few days before and recognised it at first sight. I have never met any of these creatures since .”

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    But let us not give you any more of these rich mixtures than you may otherwise absorb quite happily and at length, in the book itself. Last issue we promised you some contemporary reviews of Churchill’s books when they were published. Here is what the critics had to say about My Early Life:

    “For the task of writing autobiography Mr. Winston Churchill is wonderfully well equipped. In the first place he is an artist in letters, in the second place he is an artist in life. Words are for him the precious material of a delicate craft; days are the still more precious, because more strictly limited, material out of which to construct a fabric of romance, adventure and achievement . . . Its magnificence is mainly due to the fact that the author has enjoyed writing it as much as he enjoyed living it, and that he is able to convey his enjoyment to the reader who shares it with him to the full. Into an age of introspection, Freudian complexes, doubt and despair, Mr. Churchill comes like a great wind blowing through a little window into a musty, over-furnished room.” -Duff Cooper, ‘The Spectator‘

    “In this latest book of his Mr. Churchill describes excellently his years of adventure. Besides being a playboy and a politician, he is a born writer. His book, though written recently, long after his period of adventuring, nevertheless preserves the zest of youth. Winston Churchill, the mature man, has played fair with Winston Churchill, the callow youth; the Winston Churchill now living in this post-war age of disillusionment and skepticism resuscitates for himself and his reader a Winston Churchill of a day that was brighter and happier, more real and more solid.” – T. R. Ybarra, ‘The New York Times‘

    “Mr. Churchill’s record of his youth and young manhood is his finest literary achievement. This book is as regards style – or, one may say, styles – better than anything which has gone before. Its variation and development in this matter of style are the greatest of its charms. One fancies one hears the small boy, the youth at Sandhurst, the young soldier, the slightly older politician each telling his story in his own way. Of course no gentleman cadet, still less a small boy, could write like that; that Mr. Churchill should contrive to bewitch his readers into the momentary impression that they can is proof that he has at his command the art of the autobiographer.” – The Times Literary Supplement, London

    “However fascinated we may be with what Churchill did, the impression cannot be avoided that he was a singularly pushing and cock-sure young man. But his story is told with such frankness and charm that its appeal, especially to those with any spirit of adventure, cannot be resisted.” -F. D. Dulles, ‘The Bookman‘

    “‘A Roving Commission‘ sparkles with interest and excitement. It is the portrait of an exceedingly – perhaps enviably – clever young officer doing just about as he pleased in a way which would be simply impossible today-and in a way which makes one wonder how the British Army of those days could possibly have hung together as a serious institution.” -H. C. Lodge, ‘Books‘