Books, Arts & Manners: What Is That Gentleman For?

The Grand Original: Portraits of Randolph Churchill by His Friends Edited by Kay Halle

Houghton, 320 pp., $7.95 By all the ordinary standards of this world Randolph Churchill was a failure —and worse than just a failure. As Malcolm Muggeridge puts it, many people would say that Sir Winston Churchill “belongs to history, and will be remembered as long as the English-speaking peoples, etc., etc.; whereas his son has been, in politics a nonstarter, in letters, no more than a privateer journalist, in society, a turbulent nuisance—an embarrassment to his friends, a gift to his enemies, and a brawling bore to neutralist or uncommitted associates.”

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Anthony Lejeune

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The Grand Original: Portraits of Randolph Churchill by His Friends Edited by Kay Halle

Houghton, 320 pp., $7.95 By all the ordinary standards of this world Randolph Churchill was a failure —and worse than just a failure. As Malcolm Muggeridge puts it, many people would say that Sir Winston Churchill “belongs to history, and will be remembered as long as the English-speaking peoples, etc., etc.; whereas his son has been, in politics a nonstarter, in letters, no more than a privateer journalist, in society, a turbulent nuisance—an embarrassment to his friends, a gift to his enemies, and a brawling bore to neutralist or uncommitted associates.”