On August 4, 1940, an unassuming American journalist named Varian Fry made his way to Marseilles, France, carrying in his pockets the names of approximately two hundred artists and intellectuals all enemies of the new Nazi regime. The Splendid and the Vile takes listeners out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together. In Defiance of Hitler by Carla Killough McClafferty Book PDF Summary.

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 brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest and, of course, 10 Downing Street in London.ĭrawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports – some released only recently – 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 youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle”, to whom he turns in the hardest moments. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally – and willing to fight to the end. For the next 12 months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2020 BY The Washington Post The number one New York Times best-selling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz.

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