The Splendid and the Vile

 

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

585 pp. Crown

 

Erik Larson has written another historical page-turner.  As in Dead Wake, about the Lusitania’s last voyage, and In the Garden of Beasts, about early Nazi Germany, Larson expertly weaves multiple threads to tell his story.

The Splendid and the Vile starts the day Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, 10 May 1940, and ends one year later.  Churchill’s ascension coincided with the German attack on France; the first anniversary with Rudolph Hess’s flight to Scotland and the end of the Blitz.

This is not military, political, or analytical history.  It is, rather, the very human story of people in war.

The book focuses mostly on Churchill and the people around him, making extensive use of memoirs and diaries.  We read again the stories of Churchill’s eccentricities: working in bed past noon with his staff gathered about, elaborate dressing gowns, prancing around the room to recorded music, keeping guests up until 2 in the morning.  We also read of his refusal to give up, and how he motivated Britain to endure the Blitz and keep fighting, despite repeated reversals in the field.

But we also learn of the people around him.  His 18-year-old daughter Mary kept a diary, in which we see a somewhat self-absorbed young woman growing up under the pressure of wartime.  Private secretary Jock Colville’s diary shows us balancing his personal and professional lives.  And then there is Pamela, wife of Churchill’s dissolute only son, Randolph.  Only 20 at the time, her busy year included bearing the requisite male heir, begging Winston for money to pay off her husband’s gambling debts, and initiating a torrid affair with Averell Harriman, the American envoy.

Larson weaves in descriptions of what life was like in London during the Blitz.  During the day, it was surprisingly normal, with shoppers flocking to stores, even if it meant navigating debris to get there.  At night, some sheltered in tube stations, but most sheltered at home, often in crude structures.  Night life continued, too, resulting in occasional mass casualty events.  Larson provides context for Eileen Alexander’s fretting about the loosening of moral codes during the war: apparently many found getting bombed aphrodisiacal. 

The narrative pops over to Germany, tracking the activities of Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Rudolph Hess.  In the case of Göring and Goebbels, it’s mostly to provide context for the blitz.  Both are surprised by British resilience.  Göring doubles down on his promise to destroy England from the air, while Goebbels tries to figure out how to present it in official propaganda.  Hess’s story covers preparations for his solo flight.

This retired engineer’s only complaint about the book (besides its ending too soon) was Larson’s lack of follow-through on a technical subject.  He goes into considerable detail on how the Germans guided their bombers with radio beacons, and on how Frederick Lindemann pushed the British to figure out how they were doing it.  But then Larson mostly drops the story, noting only briefly at a couple of points that the British were occasionally successful in “bending the beam.”

This minor quibble did not detract from my enjoyment of the book.  Larson’s story-telling skills take us back to that time, and that is more than enough.  Recommended.