Books: Great Ancestor

MARLBOROUGH: HIS LIFE AND TIMES,Vol. VI—Winston S. Churchill—Scribner ($2.75).

The Rt. Hon, Winston Spencer Churchill, a Cabinet Minister at 34, writer, painter, orator, jack-of-all-talents, is an unfortunate man. Too brilliant a politician to become a first-rate writer, he has been too brilliant a writer, in a country which puts a premium on imposing mediocrity, to become Prime Minister.

Despite the burden of versatility, Churchill has succeeded in writing one impressive work: a six-volume biography of his famous Whig ancestor, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, the English Napoleon. The last volume, published last week, is perhaps the most interesting, is also the volume in which Author Churchill had to wage his stoutest defense.

It is a brilliant defense, resounding with rich invective against Marlborough’s Tory enemies: Harley, St. John, Queen Anne, Dean Swift. But it adds up to something less than Author Churchill intended. What he proves, chiefly, is that Marlborough was merely no worse than his enemies. They signed a pussyfoot treaty at Utrecht but probably prevented a revolution of the war-weary English masses. They drove Marlborough to exile, but he revenged himself with interest when he returned to riches and honors at Queen Anne’s death. They hatched the great South Sea Bubble swindle, but Marlborough forced the Government to build fabulously costly Blenheim Palace as his reward for being a “good Englishman.” For the modern reader, main interest in Author Churchill’s six volumes is likely to centre less on Marlborough’s dubious innocence than on the spirited picture of diplomatic skulduggery which distinguished the whole cast of characters.