The Reckoning, by Anthony Eden. Houghton Mifflin, $8.50 Malcolm Muggeridge once dreamed that he was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor: editing Anthony Eden’s memoirs. The reviewer has an easier, and shorter, task but he must admit that, compared with Churchill’s and de Gaulle’s war chronicles, The Reckoning (as the two earlier volumes) makes dry reading. One misses the historical sweep, the thinker’s meditations, and particularly the portraits of famous contemporaries that illuminate truly great historical records.
Eden’s style flows easily enough, but not above the level of a very competent and conscientious high civil servant’s day-by-day notations. The book is devoid even of the humor that under statement provides. The only passages where humanity steals in are quotes from Churchill. And, if the volume has a hero, it is the Prime Minister: criticized, contradicted, found exasperating—but always sincerely and loyally admired.
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