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Churchill the middlebrow

A major study of the literary Churchill
by
June–July 2014, no. 362

The Literary Churchill: Author, reader, actor by Jonathan Rose

Yale University Press (Inbooks), $49.95 hb, 528 pp

Churchill the middlebrow

A major study of the literary Churchill
by
June–July 2014, no. 362

On the rear jacket of this fascinating and important book is a picture of Winston Churchill at his desk at Chartwell, his house in Kent, just a few months before the outbreak of World War II. Apparently caught in the moment of literary creation, cigar in mouth and concentrating on his papers, the photo credit – to a Picture Post photographer – leads to the obvious suspicion that this was actually a staged shot. For Churchill, his country home was not merely a place of repose but a writing factory, the output of which would earn him the large sums of money necessary for its upkeep. At the same time, his image as a man of letters served to advertise the product as well as to suggest the existence of a non-political ‘hinterland’ of the kind appropriate to a statesman of fertile brain and broad views.

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