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.

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

The speech set a pattern that he would follow throughout the war, offering a sober appraisal of facts, tempered with reason for optimism.

“It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour,” he said. “It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.”

“believe in the Devil if only to account for the existence of Lord Beaverbrook.”

But now, he said: “I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

Here, as in other speeches, Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous.

“We shall go on to the end,” he said, in a crescendo of ferocity and confidence. “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender—”

Kennedy cited a report from an English correspondent in America who had written that all that was needed was “an ‘incident’ to bring the United States in.” Kennedy found this alarming. “If that were all that were needed, desperate people will do desperate things,” he warned.

But this was what Churchill wanted from Lindemann: to challenge the orthodox, the tried-and-true, and thereby spark greater efficiency. The Prof delighted in coming up with ideas that turned conventional beliefs upside down.

“Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”

She reminded him that in the past he had been fond of quoting a French maxim, “On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme,” meaning, essentially, “One leads by calm.”

After a few minutes, Churchill broke the silence, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

Within the Foreign Office, a joke began to circulate: “I always thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joe Kennedy.”

“Tails are up and, after the fifth sleepless night, everyone looks quite different this morning—cheerful and confident. It was a curious bit of mass psychology—the relief of hitting back.”

“It’s not the bombs I’m scared of any more, it’s the weariness,” wrote a female civil servant in her Mass-Observation diary—“trying to work and concentrate with your eyes sticking out of your head like hat-pins, after being up all night. I’d die in my sleep, happily, if only I could sleep.”

Churchill, in the car, said aloud to himself, “There are times when it is equally good to live or to die.”

Never was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness.”

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

“No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it,” Roosevelt said. “There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness.”

He described a world to come that would be founded upon “four essential human freedoms”: speech, worship, and freedom from want and fear.

History is full of lessons about the redemption of Lost Causes.”

As Churchill said later, “If we can’t be safe, let us at least be comfortable.”

“To be stupid about one’s life is—a crime.”