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

by Erik Larson

“You see, Mr. President,” Churchill said, “I have nothing to hide.”

four more years of war, and for a time the darkness seemed impenetrable.

end of 1942, the momentum of the war began to shift in the Allies’ favor.

British forces defeated Rommel in a series of desert battles known collectively as the Battle of El Alamein. The U.S. Navy bested Japan at Midway. And Hitler’s Russian campaign slogged to a halt in mud, ice, and blood. By 1944, after the Allied invasions of Italy

Mary,

the country mouse, became an anti-aircraft gunner assigned to the heavy-gun battery in Hyde

Pamela with

other men, including, at one point, broadcaster

Edward R. Murrow. “I mean, when you are v...

Pamela married Leland Hayward, the producer and talent agent who co-produced the original Broadway version of The Sound of Music;

Eight weeks later they married, in a private ceremony at a church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, attended

TWO MONTHS LATER, in an episode of breathtaking irony, the British public voted the Conservative Party out of power, forcing Churchill’s resignation.

Honestly, how did the Churchills and their circle cope?

mapping my narrative, using the so-called Vonnegut curve, a

vertical axis represents the continuum from good fortune to bad, with good at the top, bad at the bottom. The horizontal axis represents the passage of time. One of the story types that Vonnegut isolated was “Man in a Hole,” in which the hero experiences great fortune, then deep misfortune, before climbing back up to achieve even greater success. It struck me that this was a pretty good representation of Churchill’s first year as prime minister.

to my terrible handwriting.

Written in longhand,

fact-checker,