History: Books about Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt have chopped down a lot of trees. The seemingly endless fascination with the second World War maintains a publishing phenomenon that shows no sign of waning, writes Eoin McVey.
Yet, you have to wonder if another book about Churchill and Roosevelt can really add to the sum of knowledge with all that has been written about them and given that David Stafford's well-received book on the very same relationship was published just five years ago.
However, this is certainly a book which was worth writing and is worth reading. The author, Jon Meacham, has managed to access new archives such as letters from Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who was Roosevelt's mistress, and Pamela Churchill, who was nearly everybody's mistress. The colourful Mrs Churchill ended her days as US Ambassador to France, dying of a heart attack in the embassy swimming pool. Meacham has also managed to interview those few Roosevelt and Churchill intimates who are still alive, but his style is what makes the book so appealing. As managing editor of Newsweek he writes with freshness and concision. The book covers comprehensively the main issues between the two men, but it is also filled with interesting quotes and entertaining anecdotes; it's a book that is easy to read and hard to put down.
The relationship between the two men did not get off to an auspicious start. They first met in 1918 in London towards the end of the first World War. Roosevelt worked for the Department of the Navy and Churchill, eight years older, was Minister for Munitions. Churchill was vain, pig-headed and irreversibly opinionated. Roosevelt, then, was confident and tended towards arrogance - "the kind of person who you would invite to the dance but not to the dinner". He was articulate but also a good listener. Churchill loved to talk and hated to listen. They did not meet again for over 20 years but Roosevelt always remembered the meeting with distaste. Churchill, perhaps because he never stopped talking, didn't remember the meeting at all.
In fairness to Churchill, he courted Roosevelt assiduously once the latter reached the White House, even though another war was still at worst far away and at best quite avoidable. Once the war started, Churchill knew he had an ally in Roosevelt despite the neutrality of the United States, but he was an ally who could only go so far. A Gallup poll, published two months after Germany invaded Poland, indicated that while 62 per cent of Americans wanted to do all that was possible to help Britain and France fight their war, no less than 95 per cent wanted the US to stay neutral no matter what.
Roosevelt was also less than confident that Britain would win the war or indeed that Churchill was the right leader. Churchill was regarded by many in Washington as "a drunken sot" and third-rate. But Roosevelt was a democrat and had great antipathy for fascism. In addition, unlike popular isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh, he had to weigh up US interests in a wider, long-term context. What could not be allowed to happen was for Germany and Japan to win their respective wars and then proceed to control the oceans that the US depended on so much.
For more than two years, until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour (big mistake) and Germany declared war on the US (bigger mistake), Roosevelt could not bring his country's troops into the fight against fascism, but he could supply invaluable ships, aircraft and guns and fight the war by proxy. In simple terms, Churchill was not just the best proxy and bulwark against fascism, he was the only one.
The author charts the highs and lows of the ensuing relationship with an eye for detail and emphasis on the important. It was an unequal relationship from the outset; Roosevelt had the monumental US defence industries at his beck and call. In industrial terms Britain was a minnow and Churchill was absolutely desperate. No lover, Churchill liked to say, was ever courted with as much determination as he courted Roosevelt.
The relationship had its ups and downs but the men, underneath all the dialogue, were greatly attracted to each other. There were times when Churchill irritated his friend - usually by talking too much - and there were occasions when Roosevelt disappointed Churchill, usually by not doing all that was asked of him. There was a huge amount of correspondence, the majority written by Churchill, and over a hundred days spent together.
The relationship did deteriorate somewhat once it became clear that the war would be won and discussion centred less on the winning of the war than on the world after the war. Roosevelt had to balance the urgings of Churchill with the need to keep Stalin on side. Not knowing if the Manhattan Project would ever deliver up a usable atomic bomb, it was thought the war in the east would drag on until 1947, with horrendous casualties. Roosevelt badly needed Stalin to join the fight against Japan.
That pragmatism, rather than his failing health, meant that Roosevelt made concessions to Stalin at Yalta in 1945, concessions which Churchill agreed to with reluctance.
And then there was the reality of the situation. Poland, the invasion of which stirred Britain into declaring war, was occupied by the Red Army even before the conference began. While Stalin, as the author points out, made vague promises about free elections, he also remarked that "everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise."
Churchill of course was somewhat encumbered in his arguments that freed nations should be able to have the government of their choice; he was quite reluctant to extend this commitment of self-determination to British colonies. On this, the great imperialist and Roosevelt could never agree.
The author goes to great lengths to throw some light on the personal lives of the two men throughout their friendship, the better to illustrate the pressures that they were under. He writes about Roosevelt's fondness for flattery (receiving not giving), his desire for attention, and his troubled relationship with Eleanor. Churchill was more happily married, though how Clementine put up with him is anyone's guess. His offspring posed problems, especially his oaf of a son Randolph who was briefly married to Pamela.
After they separated, Churchill continued to invite Pamela and son Winston junior to Chequers, and this caused Randolph to fly into a temper. (Pamela, incidentally, referred to Winston junior in correspondence as "the child"). The author, with very little evidence, suggests that what annoyed Randolph so much was his suspicion that his father may have encouraged Pamela's affair with Averell Harriman, Roosevelt's special envoy. Churchill may have courted Roosevelt unashamedly but this pushes it a bit far. Churchill did, however, have just as terrible a relationship with Randolph as he himself had with his own father.
If you are not familiar with the second World War, you may find some names and events in the book irritating because they are not always explained properly; it does presume upon a little knowledge of the context. However, even if you have never read a book about either man, there is much to enjoy in this well-sourced, digestible work.
Eoin McVey is a managing editor of The Irish Times
Franklin and Winston: A Portrait of a Friendship By Jon Meacham Granta, 490pp. £25