I have a fondness for ornate, old-fashioned pen-portrait essays like those to be found in Great Contemporaries by Winston Churchill. A great benefit of the book is that Churchill knew many of the historical and political figures he discusses personally, and so such essays can be coloured by interesting anecdote and personal insight.

Articles on his contemporaries from British politics naturally form the bulk of the book (former prime ministers and the like). At first glance, these look less interesting, but the personal side of things Churchill is able to give provides them with some uniqueness and colour. However, it does also mean Churchill ends up writing more like a politician than an essayist – safely, diplomatically, and with an eye on posterity for himself.

There's a lot of magnanimity in the book, not only for Churchill's domestic allies and opponents, but also, surprisingly, for the likes of Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler. Churchill excuses the Kaiser much of the blame for the start of World War One and, writing in 1935, credits Hitler for Germany's revival and suggests that, while the outlook is bleak and the character sinister, he may yet prove to be an asset to his country and the world.

Of course, we now know that not to be the case, but the excessive political even-handedness of the pieces does limit their interest today (an entertaining condemnation of Trotsky is an outlier in the book), for Churchill is not necessarily giving us his full views. He writes well, even if he overdoes it sometimes with the lofty prose we know from his wartime speeches (an essay on King George V lays it on very thick), but nor is he at the level of bold mythologising we can find in William Bolitho's Twelve Against the Gods – a gold standard for this sort of thing.

Ultimately, Great Contemporaries is a dated book that could have retained a stature if it had not so effectively restrained itself. By enabling Churchill's caution, diplomacy and indulgence, rather than allowing his boldness, humour and energy to flourish, the book maintains itself for modern readers largely as a curiosity (particularly for that Hitler essay) rather than a commentary. ( )

Here are 30 essays about famous men that Churchill knew, or knew about. Most were written in 1935 and this does give some added interest; so, for example, he begins the essay on Hitler with

"Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."

Even in 1935, this seems kind to A.H. and there is considerable apology elsewhere in these essays: the Kaiser was misled because he had so many yes-men around him, "It is too soon to measure the military stature of Foch" [15 years after the armistice!], how Haig's "strength of will and character" permitted him to weather the various stresses to which he was exposed and that we will long continue to debate whether the "slaughters on a gigantic scale" were sometimes "needless and fruitless."
Ultimately, I conclude, that many of these essays are not entirely about the great contemporary in the title, but about Churchill himself, e.g. Would the massive disaster of Gallipoli taint his future greatness? and so forth.

The essays of most interest are those about the political figures of the late 19th century with whom W.C. started his political career and who knew his father, The Earl of Rosebery, Joseph Chamberlain, Herbert Asquith and John Morley. These are figures about whom most of us will know very little unless we have specifically studied them, and Churchill's insights, even if prejudiced this way or that, give the impression of providing valuable inside information. [This is based on a Kindle edition that is not listed in the Goodreads database.] ( )

This is a collection of articles by Winston Churchill written in the 1930s about important, or at least well-known, men he had (usually) known --there are a few he had not met, notably FDR, whom of course he met later. They can be divided roughly into British politicians with whom he had served, often in the same cabinet, and about whom he could give personal anecdotes, military and foreign personages whom he knew less well, if at all, and few miscellaneous characters such as Chaplin and Kipling and George Bernard Shaw. The British statesmen generally belonged to a somewhat older generation, and are usually treated respectfully, with the partial exception of Lord Curzon. (the others are Lord Rosebery, Joseph Chamberlain, John Morley, Asquith, F. E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead -- a much more positive impression than one gets from Chesterton's brilliant satirical poem -- Balfour, Philip Snowden, George V, Parnell, and Edward VIII (with no discussion of Churchill's support for Edward during the abdication crisis)). The military men include Sir John French, Hindenburg, Lawrence of Arabia, Foch, Haig, Lord Fisher (in a rather negative review of a biography by one of Fisher's supporters) , Baden-Powell, and Kitchener. Clemenceau as a war leader, though not military, falls into this group.So, in a sense, does the Ex-Kaiser, in a surprisingly sympathetic article suggesting that Wilhelm' s failings were due chiefly to his upbringing and position, and clearly feeling Germany (by the time this was written, under Nazi rule), could do, and had done, worse. The article on Hitler is curious, given Churchill's later eloquent denunciations of him --it recognizes that Hitler came to power by brutal means, but also salutes his success in restoring German power and suggests Hitler still has the choice of avoiding war and being a successful ruler --this reads almost as if it is aimed at persuading Hitler himself to make that choice, though I doubt Hitler ever saw it, or would have been impressed by it if he had. An article ion Alfonso XIII of Spain is much more favorable than most accounts I have seen, partly due to the king's fondness for sports like polo which Churchill felt were healthy. Again, the fact that Spain had fallen into civil war after Alfonso's abdication may have influenced it.The most frankly negative pieces are on those on the left --he admits the writing abilities of Shaw and H.G. Wells, but despises their politics, and is even more hostile to Trotsky, by then an exile seeking asylum in the west, which Churchill clearly felt he did not deserve, On the other hand, he writes respectfully of the Russian anarchist and terrorist Boris Savinkov, who had organized assassination against the Czarist regime, but later had worked with Churchill in trying to oppose the Bolsheviks, though he later had been lured back to Russia and destroyed. Apparently he is unaware of Chaplin's leftist politics, as his article is devoted to Chaplain's acting skills --though "talkies" had come in by this time, Churchill suggests there was still a place for silent movies, especially in countries where viewers did not know English.Kipling he naturally admired, as they shared a love for the British Empire in India and (at this point) opposition to changes that would give the Indian people more power.If he was aware that Kipling had plotted violent resistance to the Liberal government's Irish policy just before World War One --a government of which Churchill was a leading member -- he does not mention it. The view he expresses on Ireland (in his Parnell article) is that it is a good thing that there are no longer so many Irish members of the British parliament to disrupt it. His view of FDR is generally sympathetic, recognizing that FDR is dealing with a great economic crisis. I was surprised that one of his few criticisms is that income tax returns in the US had been made public. He was also doubtful that raising the position of American labor unions to the position already won by British unions would have good results, though he admitted British unions had generally behaved better than those elsewhere. As a former (very traditional) Chancellor of the Exchequer, he opposed deficit spending. Overall, these articles provide interesting views from a knowledgeable, if sometimes prejudiced observer, who, in particular with British statesmen, wrote from a position of helpful personal experience. ( )

This is a companion volume to Churchill's "Thoughts and Adventures" (see separate review).

This volume is a collection of 25 essays about British and World statesmen, leaders and writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all of them Churchill's contemporaries. They include Balfour, Chamberlain, Rosebery, Morley, Asquith, Curzon, as well as King George V, Roosevelt, the ex-Kaiser and Hitler, George Bernard Shaw, Lawrence of Arabia, Trotsky and Hidenburg.

Each essay is self-contained, but together they form a picture of the political and historical scene from the closing years of the 19th century to the mid-1930's.

The volume also contains a photograph of each subject and, in addition, letters written to the author by Asquith and Lawrence are reproduced at appropriate points in the text. ( )

This began as a set of newspaper features that WSC fell back on as a money maker in between longer projects. He did have the advantages of knowing many of these people personally, from his aristocratic and political careers. the prose is workman like though ornate to the modern taste. Churchill was out of the cabinet at the time of publication, and some of these peces are illuminating from that point of view. ( )

2958 Great Contemporaries, by The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill, C.H., M.P. (read 18 Feb 1997) This 1937 book consists of 21 Macaulay-imitating essays on figures contemporary to Churchill. They aren't as good as Macaulay's but I enjoyed them, and his essay on Hitler, while it calls Hitler evil and condemns him, has some suggestion he might turn out better! I believe this book was worth reading. ( )