Splendid And The Vile

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City delivers a startlingly vivid portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz.

On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing over 30,000 Britons and destroying 2 million homes. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--that she was willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinksmanship, but it is also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of the Churchill's country house, Chequers, and their "full-moon home," Ditchley, where they go when the bombing threat is highest. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, including recently declassified files and personal diaries that have only now become available, Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family--his wife, Clementine; their daughters, Sarah, Diana, and the youngest, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela Harriman; and the cadre of close advisors who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his brilliant private secretary, John Colville.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when--in the face of unrelenting horror--Churchill's eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country together.