Churchill's Second World War

Every year I tend to make grandiose reading plans after school finishes and I get nearly unlimited reading time for a few months. Last year I wanted to read all of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - an idea that lasted all of five chapters into an abridged version. This year I've selected a rather more achievable goal, namely reading all six volumes of Winston Churchill's The Second World War.

So far I've grabbed the first two volumes - The Gathering Storm and Their Finest Hour - from George Strange's Bookmart (awfully nice little used bookstore if you ever go to Brandon, Manitoba). I've been making my way through the first volume for about two weeks now, reading one or two chapters every day or so and its certainly been a treat. Churchill really, really knew how to write and had a certain genius when describing all the individual actors involved in the conflict. Of Hitler he describes a wealth of "lying effrontery." Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov is said to have had "verbal adroitness and imperturbable demeanour." The kind of pleasurable language that gets me well used to ringing up dictionary.com whenever the author rather frequently uses a term I'm not used to.

Currently I've only just made it into the war and as Churchill has shown the years leading up to the start of the war has been an almost unheard of Shakespearean tragedy - the incompetence of both the British and French governments has been shown many times before and possibly in a better factual manner, but this account by Churchill has such moral force behind it that it can still render the reader befuddled at how inexplicably vain and misguided some of the figures are, particularly Neville Chamberlain.

With anticipatory glee I think I'll get myself back into this volume sooner rather than later. I know how the entire story will play out, but I'd rather like it if Sir Winston told me.