Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer. [Lord Randolph Churchill.] 2v. **$9. Macmillan.
The fact that Mr. Winston Churchill is not of the party in the interests of which his father ran his brief political career insures for this work non-partisan treatment. It deals with Lord Churchill’s public rather than his private life, and is in the main a record of ten brief years of an effective career. During this period Lord Churchill became leader of the House of Commons and chief exponent of the so-called Tory democracy, attempted the reform of the Conservative party from within and in the end broke with all his former leaders and colleagues. “The atmosphere is from start to finish severely political.” (Acad.)
“Mr. Morley himself did not show more candour in writing the life of Mr. Gladstone than Mr. Winston Churchill has shown in dealing with the career of his father.”
+ + Acad. 70: 5. Ja. 6, ’06. 1220w.
“It will have to be carefully studied by all who would be well versed in the political history of England, especially party history, from the Reform act of 1867 to the end of the Unionist administration of 1886–1892.” Edward Porritt.
+ + Am. Hist. R. 11: 675. Ap. ’06. 790w.
“In the work before us there are many fine passages, and we find it almost as a whole both vivid and dignified in narration, and here and there even noble.”
+ + Ath. 1906, 1: 7. Ja. 6. 4340w.
“Mr. Winston Churchill makes the reader feel the tragedy of his father’s life,—a tragedy equally dramatic whether, as he contends, it was due to a conscientious struggle for principles that could not be carried out, or whether, like the tragedies of romance, it was the fatal result of defects of character.” A. Lawrence Lowell.