A few years ago I was asked by the Evening Standard if I would write an article about someone whom I saw as a hero or as a villain. I offered, semi-humorously, to write one about "Winston Churchill - World Hero/Irish Villain". My offer was turned down. The suggestion had been semi-humorous because, despite Churchill's role at the time of our War of Independence, and regardless of his later discontent about Irish neutrality during the second World War, he has not always been seen negatively by Irish nationalists.
Indeed, in 1912, he was something of an Irish nationalist hero when, as a member of the Liberal Government of the day, with typical courage he turned up in Belfast, accompanied by his wife, Clementine, to speak together with John Redmond and Joseph Devlin at a public meeting in favour of Home Rule. Because unionists had occupied the Ulster Hall where the meeting had been planned to take place, it had to be held in a tent at the Celtic Football Club in the Lower Falls.
That episode is fairly well-known. However, what has been almost totally forgotten both in Britain and in Ireland is what he had to say about Ireland as leader of the Conservative opposition, in his Commons address on the King's Speech on October 28th, 1948, shortly after the announcement of the Irish declaration of a republic.
Churchill's remarks were naturally cast in the context of an Irish relationship with what he insistently described as the British Empire. However, having regretted the Irish decision he went on to say that "Because of its long, terrible and tragic history, Ireland seems to me to have always had an entirely different position from other parts of the world - I mustn't say the British Empire!" And he added: "I have watched with contentment and pleasure the orderly Christian society, with a grace and culture of its own, and a flash of sport thrown in, which this quarter of century has seen built up in Southern Ireland, in spite of many gloomy predictions".
Speaking of a dream he still cherished, he declared: "I shall always hope that one day there will be a united Ireland but at the same time that Ulster, the Northern Counties, will never be compelled against their will to enter a Dublin Parliament. They should be courted. They should not be raped . . . I personally would regard such an event as a blessing for the whole of the British Empire and also for the civilised world".
In his biography, Roy Jenkins does not refer to these warm and friendly remarks of Churchill's about a country the neutrality of which he had resented deeply during the war just ended. Roy Jenkins may not have recalled them - or he may simply not have had room for them in a book that had to encompass the whole of one of the most extraordinary - and longest - political careers in modern history.
Roy Jenkins's book is a tour de force - and not just because, in his own words, he is the first octogenarian to have written a life of Churchill. He is a master of style, with, moreover, a distinguished political career that for seven years marginally overlapped that of his subject: between them they span the whole of the period from the reign of Queen Victoria to the era of bin Laden.
I would challenge only one statement in this book, viz that a German invasion of Britain during the second World War would have been the first since 1066. Perhaps we in Ireland remember too much of our history: but the British, even historians as distinguished as Roy Jenkins, are prone to forget theirs.
For, leaving aside Scottish and Welsh incursions by land, there were, in fact, more than 25 armed landings in Britain between the 11th and 15th centuries. And while some of these were primarily invasions by domestic claimants to the English throne, quite a number of the incursions were by French, or occasionally Spanish, forces. For example, between 1215 and 1217 much of England was occupied by a French army, whose leader, the Dauphin Louis, had been invited to become King of England, and was warmly welcomed by the people of London. So much for that.
The debt that all Europe owes to Churchill is, of course, immense. Everything written in the past half-century about the second World War shows that had he not become prime minister in 1940, an alternative leader - most probably Edward Wood, Earl Halifax - would have made peace with Germany.
It was, indeed, with difficulty, and only by pretending momentarily to listen to Halifax's arguments, that in May 1940 Churchill defeated the defeatists. His problem was that if Chamberlain had joined Halifax on this issue - they were the two Conservative members of the five-man War Cabinet - in supporting peace feelers via Mussolini, who was not yet in the war, Churchill might not have been able to hold his political ground on the issue of continuing the struggle against the Nazis.
During the three days - May 26th to 28th, 1940 - as the evacuation of British and French troops from Dunkirk was getting under way, there were nine War Cabinet meetings, four of them devoted to this crucial issue.
The inconclusive second-last of these meetings was adjourned for an hour to enable Churchill to address 25 other ministers of cabinet rank. He ended by telling the group: "Whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight out, and if at the last the long story is to end, it were better that it should end, not through surrender, but only when we are rolling senseless on the ground". The meeting erupted in support for him.
Immensely heartened by that response, he returned to the War Cabinet. "Churchill's mood", writes Roy Jenkins, "was now that il faut en finir . . . He began by telling the War Cabinet bluntly of the quality of the nominally lesser ministers. They had expressed the greatest satisfaction when he had told them that there was no chance of our giving up the struggle."
And when Halifax sought to mend his hand by suggesting that Roosevelt rather than Mussolini should be asked to try mediation, Churchill unhesitatingly shot that suggestion down in flames also. Thus was the die cast - for all of us in Europe.
What is striking about this episode is the fact that it was Churchill, who had always seemed to be the arch-imperialist, who rejected the siren voices of appeasers and defeatists, mainly in the ranks of the Conservative Party - men who would have abandoned the European continent in the hope that Hitler in return would do a deal under which Britain would keep its empire.
Are those in the Conservative Party who today oppose the euro so passionately perhaps some kind of late echo of those whom Churchill faced down in May 1940? They too look elsewhere for their inspiration: not now to their lost empire but, nostalgically, to the colony that first threw off British rule - the United States of America, rather than to their own continent.
Those who, like myself, remember the dark and terrifying days of 1940 will not easily forget that magnificent voice or the rolling periods with which Churchill kept our hopes alive - against all common sense and reason.
I, for one, am grateful to Roy Jenkins for so vividly bringing it all back to mind. There have been more comprehensive, and in terms of research undertaken, more scholarly works on this subject.
But none that will give its readers so much pleasure.
Garret FitzGerald is a former taoiseach