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

by Erik Larson

French endurance was the cornerstone of British defensive strategy. That France might fall was beyond imagining.

Coveting power for power’s sake was a “base” pursuit, he wrote, adding, “But power in a national crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing.”

Churchill was particularly insistent that ministers compose memoranda with brevity and limit their length to one page or less. “It is slothful not to compress your thoughts,” he said.

“His memory,” wrote John Colville, “was not just comprehensive; in recording past slights it was elephantine.”

as the guns fired; and the myriad stars, real and artificial, in the firmament. Never was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness.”

The odds that any one person would die on any one night were slim, but the odds that someone, somewhere in London would die were 100 percent. Safety was a product of luck alone. One young boy, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, a fireman or pilot or such, answered: “Alive.”

Early in the war, the zoo had killed its poisonous snakes and spiders, anticipating that if their enclosures were destroyed, these creatures would pose a significantly greater hazard than, say, a fugitive koala bear.

“An airplane carrying Hitler, Göring and Goebbels crashes. All three are killed. Who is saved?” Answer: “The German People.”

Tears, she wrote, had no value.

“The pubs were all full of happy, drunken people singing ‘Tipperary’ and the latest Army song which goes ‘Cheer up my lads, fuck ’em all.’

And at that instant, in a singular moment of meteorological synchronicity, the sun broke through the clouds.