April 15, 2015

Finest Hour 123, Summer 2004

Page 44

Churchill at War: His ‘Finest Hours’ in Photographs, by Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, 160 pp., illus., published at £16.99, member price $24. Order from Churchill Stores, c/o Churchill Centre.

Nobody can produce Churchill photo documentaries like the official biographer. In this outstanding compilation commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, Sir Martin concentrates in six chapters on the six most memorable years of Churchill’s life: the Second World War. The book is not published in the United States but CC members can obtain it through Churchill Stores.

The great strength of this book is the collection of over 150 photos from the Imperial War Museum archives, coupled with Gilbert’s expert captions, supported by the usual authoritative text. We begin on 10 May 1940, Churchill’s first day as Prime Minister, and wind our way through the ups and downs of the conflict to July 1945, when he returned home to hear the disastrous results of the General Election which found him in opposition and Clement Attlee Prime Minister. In a most poignant photograph taken after he’d heard the news, the disappointment is written all over his face, while his wife is smiling broadly over what she had told him was “a blessing in disguise.” We all know WSC’s instant rejoinder: “At the moment it appears quite effectively disguised.”

While there are many photographs that will be familiar to graduate Churchillophiles, there are many more that have probably never been published before, some of the most arresting coming in the early chapters, 1940 and 1941, when Britain stood alone. We see him inspecting “Boche Buster,” one of Britain’s largest heavy guns, just before Hitler attacked Russia; a month later he watches a mock battle in which live ammunition is fired, and the fastidious author even informs us where he got his binoculars.

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All the great wartime travels are thoroughly represented, from the Atlantic Charter meeting in August 1941 to Potsdam in July 1945. Many of the photos here are intimate and unrehearsed, which adds authenticity and life to the story Gilbert weaves.

This book ranks with Mary Soames’s Family Album and Gilbert’s Churchill: A Photographic Portrait as indispensable to the Churchill library.
—RML