'In this fascinating account of the turbulent Churchill
father-and-son relationship, Josh Ireland shows how central Winston
and Randolph were to each other's lives' Andrew Roberts Few fathers
and sons can ever have been so close as Winston Churchill and his
only son Randolph. Both showed flamboyant impatience, reckless
bravery, and generosity of spirit. The glorious and handsome
Randolph was a giver and devourer of pleasure, a man who exploded
into rooms, trailing whisky tumblers and reciting verbatim whole
passages of classic literature. But while Randolph inherited many
of his fathers' talents, he also inherited all of his flaws.
Randolph was his father only more so: fiercer, louder, more out of
control. Hence father and son would be so very close, and so liable
to explode at each other. Winston's closest ally during the
wilderness years of the 1930s, Randolph would himself become a war
hero, serving with the SAS in the desert and Marshal Tito's
guerrillas in Yugoslavia, a friend of press barons and American
presidents alike, and a journalist with a 'genius for uncovering
secrets', able to secure audiences with everyone from Kaiser
Wilhelm to General Franco and Guy Burgess. But Randolph's political
career never amounted to anything. As much as he idolised Winston
and never lost faith in his father during the long, solitary years
of Winston's decline, he was never able to escape from the shadow
cast by Britain's great hero. In his own eyes, and most woundingly
of all his father's, his life was a failure. Winston, ever consumed
by his own sense of destiny, allowed his own ambitions to take
priority over Randolph's. The world, big as it was, only had space
for one Churchill. Instead of the glory he believed was his
birthright, Randolph died young, his body rotted by resentment and
drink, before he could complete his father's biography. A revealing
new perspective on the Churchill myth, this intimate story reveals
the lesser-seen Winston Churchill: reading Peter Rabbit books to
his children, admonishing Eton schoolmasters and using decanters
and wine glasses to re-fight the Battle of Jutland at the table.
Amid a cast of personalities who defined an era - PG Wodehouse,
Nancy Astor, The Mitfords, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lord
Beaverbrook, William Randolph Hearst, Oswald Mosley, Graham Greene,
Duff and Diana Cooper, the Kennedys, Charlie Chaplin, and Lloyd
George - Churchill & Son is the lost story of a timeless
father-son relationship.
General
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