The personal history of a family famous for its role in world history
If her title had been Churchill: A Love Story it would have been as accurate as her chosen one, which suggests a dynastic compilation of the Churchills. Yet although only a few Churchills are worth writing about, love and gossip thicken the fascinating text. Lovell has written about people rather than events; she sticks to this astutely but even in a family-orientated story it is difficult to treat international events as background material.
Churchill’s role in history, from the Boer War to his last parliamentary election in 1959, has been exhaustively covered already, not least by Sir Winston himself. Lovell’s bibliography runs to four closely-printed pages and her notes could act as a social and political gazette of the movers and shakers of the British, American and European landscape over 100 years. Lovell begins with John Churchill, born in 1650 as the elder son of Winston Churchill, MP for Weymouth. Early court intrigues, misalliances and affairs encouraged rather than inhibited his route to fame, ensured first by his marriage to the intrepid Sarah Jennings, and then, following the succession of English kings, queens and wars, by his triumph at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 and his eventual dukedom.
