The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

by William Manchester

multifarious

Sir Ian Jacob

larder.

casuistry.

obtuse

acumen

squalid.”

unflagging

“twaddler

quietude

painterly

luminous

opéra bouffe.

When a cabinet minister called Germans “sheep,” Churchill snarled, “Carnivorous sheep.” In two words he captured the essence of his foes better than Baldwin or Chamberlain could in two hours of speechifying.

“This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction.”

Churchill, like Samuel Johnson and Shakespeare, could string together phrases that resonated with Glasgow pub patrons, Welsh coal miners, and Cockney laundresses, as well as with the Harold Nicolsons and Lady Astors.

trebuchet,

nihilist

flapdoodle

“Not compressing thought into a reasonable space is sheer laziness.”

exulted

equable

sangfroid

bailey;

welds

fatuously

dilettanti

purblind

world...

banal.

debacle

eyrie

votaries—“the

Bracken,

Lindemann

Desmond M...

“pusillanimity

Inevitably politics determined his cabinet choices. He had to form a government with all parties represented, and he hadn’t much time.

Reith,

Churchill fired Reith on May 12

The War Cabinet—“the only ones,” he said, “who had the right to have their heads cut off on Tower Hill if we did not win”—comprised five men: himself, Chamberlain, Attlee, Halifax, and Greenwood.22

poilus

Pétain,

poilu’s

aerie

Erwin Rommel.

Edward Spears

poilus,

amalgam

rodomontades