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

by Erik Larson

cheap and sensational looking, which I felt was appropriate to the new Government.”

Lmao burnnn

“an angry Japanese genie.”

Lmao what an image of Churchill

“Gimme,”

Lmao Churchill, the finest orator of our time everyone

Now and then Churchill gazed adoringly at the cat and murmured, “Cat, darling.”

Lmao same energy as “who’s a good baby”

“He had the gramophone turned on,” wrote Brooke, “and, in the many-colored dressing-gown, with a sandwich in one hand and water-cress in the other, he trotted round and round the hall, giving occasional little skips to the tune of the gramophone.” At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.”

WILD MAN CHURCHILL

meaconing”—the

I love this word. Mock beacon. It’s so stupid. It’s great.

While at Scapa Flow, Churchill planned to test-fire a prototype, and the prospect delighted him—until a senior Admiralty official traveling with the group interjected that each firing cost about £100 (roughly $6,400 today). As Peake watched, “The smile faded from the PM’s lips and the corners of his mouth turned down like a baby.” “What, not fire it?” Churchill asked. Clementine cut in: “Yes, darling, you may fire it just once.” “Yes, that’s right,” Churchill said, “I’ll fire it just once. Only once. That couldn’t be bad.” Wrote Peake, “Nobody had the heart to say that it would be bad, and he was soon beaming again.” As they all would discover the next day, it would indeed be bad.

Lmao