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

by Erik Larson

Colville was summoned often to the telephone, and each time set out to find Churchill—“searching for Winston among the roses,” as he put it in his diary. The French, he told Churchill, were moving ever closer to capitulating. Churchill said, “Tell them…that if they let us have their fleet we shall never forget, but that if they surrender without consulting us we shall never forgive. We shall blacken their name for a thousand years!”