Books in Brief: Blenheim

Blenheim, by David Green (Scribner’s, 162 pp., illus., $10).

It is not the least of the ironies connected with the first Duke of Marlborough that probably more people today are aware of his Blenheim Palace than of the great military victory it was named after. And yet the Battle of Blenheim, if not quite as important as claimed in Winston Churchill’s biography of his illustrious ancestor (“The destruction of the Armada preserved the life of Britain,” he trumpeted. “Blenheim opened to her the gateways of the modern world”), was definitely the first real body blow to Louis XIV’s previously successful attempts to establish French hegemony over most of Europe. It also put Britain back on the map as a military power after a generation of comparative drift under devious Stuart monarchs and niggardly Parliaments unwilling to fund a strong professional army. David Green, who lives near Blenheim Palace and has written several widely acclaimed biographies set in the Marlborough era (Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Queen Anne, etc.), tells not only the story of the battle itself, but that of the campaign and its aftermath. He even gives us a survey of the battlefield today, along with a short history of Blenheim Palace-as imposing a white elephant as ever a grateful nation erected to a military hero. Although hardly one of Mr. Green’s major works, Blenheim is a clear, knowledgeable, and dramatic account of an important but currently rather neglected historical turning point, capturing the spirit and the color of early eighteenth-century warfare. ARAM BAKSHIAN JR.

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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Blenheim, by David Green (Scribner’s, 162 pp., illus., $10).

It is not the least of the ironies connected with the first Duke of Marlborough that probably more people today are aware of his Blenheim Palace than of the great military victory it was named after. And yet the Battle of Blenheim, if not quite as important as claimed in Winston Churchill’s biography of his illustrious ancestor (“The destruction of the Armada preserved the life of Britain,” he trumpeted. “Blenheim opened to her the gateways of the modern world”), was definitely the first real body blow to Louis XIV’s previously successful attempts to establish French hegemony over most of Europe. It also put Britain back on the map as a military power after a generation of comparative drift under devious Stuart monarchs and niggardly Parliaments unwilling to fund a strong professional army. David Green, who lives near Blenheim Palace and has written several widely acclaimed biographies set in the Marlborough era (Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Queen Anne, etc.), tells not only the story of the battle itself, but that of the campaign and its aftermath. He even gives us a survey of the battlefield today, along with a short history of Blenheim Palace-as imposing a white elephant as ever a grateful nation erected to a military hero. Although hardly one of Mr. Green’s major works, Blenheim is a clear, knowledgeable, and dramatic account of an important but currently rather neglected historical turning point, capturing the spirit and the color of early eighteenth-century warfare. ARAM BAKSHIAN JR.