The Last Lion: Visions of Glory

by William Manchester

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In a word: broad

In a sentence: Winston’s early life until 1932 illuminating his personality, beliefs, flaws, and the cataclysmic events that surround him.

Synopsis: Visions of Glory is the first in a trilogy of sweeping biographies of the life of Sir Winston Churchill. This, the first book, spans from before Churchill’s birth until the beginnings of the Nazi Party in Germany, the time period from 1874-1932. It encompasses events such as his childhood and early military and Parliamentary careers, the Anglo-Boer War, WWI, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Indian Independence Movement, and the Black and Tan War. Manchester paints a consistently vivid picture of political contentions, international climates, gradually shifting national mindsets, and in-depth personalities of figures influential to Winston’s life and the 20th century.

Reactions: This biography is certainly a marathon, not a sprint. This first book alone costs nearly 900 pages of detailed political arguments, tooth grinding bureaucracy, and Winston’s tragically neglected early years of life. However, Manchester makes up for what is often rather dense subject-matter with the most eloquent and vivid language I have ever experienced outside of fiction. Winston is a 3D image, hunched, glaring, and stuttering, he practically shouts out of the page, and the reader is hit head on by the force of his loud personality. In addition to his masterful use of language, Manchester should also be commended on his capacity to depict his subject from all angles. Although Winston is a brilliant mind and Manchester is one of the quickest to defend all his endeavors, he also makes particular effort to confront Winston’s bullheadedness, romantic whimsy, and racist tendencies, which oftentimes led to his disfavor, shortsightedness, and political downfall.

I found this biography delicious, due in large part to its subject’s over the top character which makes me only regret my incapacity to attend a dinner party with him. Despite his more aggressive often narcissistic characteristics, Winston is a little boy who likes to play toy soldiers, and finds unsurpassable joy in a good tussle and supreme depression in being ignored. He carries the text on his shoulders alone through the more torturous parts of his own history such as the years of political quagmire that made up WWI. After a brief intermission, I am thrilled to still have two more books worth of Winston to go.

Read if: you have the interest in and stamina for a deep dive into one of the greatest lives of the 20th century.