Rainbow 93 - William Manchester

William Manchester was an American historian who penned three popular volumes about Pres. John F. Kennedy. Manchester was a friend and confidant of the president and in 1962 published Portrait of a President: John F. Kennedy in Profile, an account of Kennedy's first year in office. Two years later Jacqueline Kennedy commissioned him to write a book about the president's assassination, but she then sought to block the publication of The Death of a President (1967) over concerns that it revealed private family matters. The public quarrel was resolved when Manchester removed several passages. His third book on President Kennedy, One Brief Shining Moment (1983), looked fondly back on the era of “Camelot.” In Baltimore, Md., Manchester served as foreign correspondent for the Evening Sun before pursuing historical writing. His books The Arms of Krupp, 1587–1968 (1968), which examined the powerful German family, and American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (1978) were immensely popular. Goodbye, Darkness (1980), which recounted his personal experiences in the Pacific during World War II, was widely praised for its gripping depiction of combat. Manchester was able to complete only two volumes of The Last Lion (1983 and 1988), his biographical trilogy of Winston Churchill.

Source
Encyclopedia Britannica

William Manchester met Winston Churchill aboard the Queen Mary on January 24, 1953, when, as a young foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, he found himself in the stateroom adjacent to the prime minister's suite. A mutual friend introduced them. Churchill was intrigued by Manchester's assignment: the Middle East and India. In the late 1890's he himself had carried out similar assignments as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post.

The difference was that in his youth the British Empire had reached high noon. Manchester's dispatches, on the other hand, would describe the imperial twilight of England's supremacy as the world's sole superpower.

Thus the twin themes of The Last Lion: the life of Churchill and the death of the Empire he cherished. In this, the first volume of Manchester's two-volume biography, the Churchill story is one of high adventure, bitter defeats, and the inner strength of the towering Englishman whose watchword was: "Never give in. Never, never, never, never give in."

Alone is the second volume in William Manchester's projected three-volume biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion, the first volume of which was critically acclaimed.

In Alone, Manchester challenges the assumption that Churchill's finest hour was as a wartime leader. During the years 1932-1940, he was tested as few men are. Pursued by creditors-at one point he had to put up his home for sale-he remained solvent only by writing an extraordinary number of books and magazine articles. He was disowned by his own party, dismissed by the BBC and Fleet Street and the social and political establishments as a warmonger, and twice nearly lost his seat in Parliament. Churchill stood almost alone against Nazi aggression and the British and French pusillanimous policy of appeasement.

Manchester has such control over a huge and moving narrative, such illumination of character, and such a steady acceptance of the contrariness of a remarkable man...that he can claim the considerable achievement of having assembled enough powerful evidence to support Isaiah Berlin's judgment of Churchill as "the largest human being of our time."
-Alistair Cooke in The New Yorker

Source
Hachette Book Group

adams@rainbow93.com