“A” for Failure

By the standards of contemporary academic historiography, this first volume of Churchill’s history would undoubtedly fail every test. But by its very existence it gives the lie to those standards. It has literally nothing that could get its writer past any Ph.D. examining board in the land. There is no sign of new research—no sign of any research—no concentration upon social and economic factors, no “use of the new techniques of the social sciences.” It is just a story, but what a magnificent story it is. Greater histories of England have been written, but none, I think, approaches this one in verve, in its surging power of narration, in its creation of compelling images of individual men in historic action.

The implicit theme of this old-fashioned historian is that history is made by individual men. I say implicit, because the explicit theme is “this Island Race”—its birth and growth. And perhaps it is wrong to call this understanding of the individual in history a theme, in any case. It is not so much that as an omnipresent, underlying assumption, so much a part of his view of the world and of history that he could not write in any other terms. He cannot even speculate about the very prehistoric beginnings of his story without creating individual images:

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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By the standards of contemporary academic historiography, this first volume of Churchill’s history would undoubtedly fail every test. But by its very existence it gives the lie to those standards. It has literally nothing that could get its writer past any Ph.D. examining board in the land. There is no sign of new research—no sign of any research—no concentration upon social and economic factors, no “use of the new techniques of the social sciences.” It is just a story, but what a magnificent story it is. Greater histories of England have been written, but none, I think, approaches this one in verve, in its surging power of narration, in its creation of compelling images of individual men in historic action.

The implicit theme of this old-fashioned historian is that history is made by individual men. I say implicit, because the explicit theme is “this Island Race”—its birth and growth. And perhaps it is wrong to call this understanding of the individual in history a theme, in any case. It is not so much that as an omnipresent, underlying assumption, so much a part of his view of the world and of history that he could not write in any other terms. He cannot even speculate about the very prehistoric beginnings of his story without creating individual images: