Churchill was a fragile child, short (5 foot 7) with a 31-inch chest. It is, as he says, about what makes a great leader. Where the book is at its strongest is when Johnson explores Churchill’s character, his traits and afflictions. It was there that Churchill worked with his researchers, “his Nibelung, his elves, the tinkling dwarves in the smithy of Hephaestus.” They were his “personal search engine – his Google.” This machine, not mere bricks and mortar, came from the same mind, says Johnson, that helped invent the tank and the seaplane, and foresaw the atom bomb. The whole house is a gigantic engine for the generation of text.” Churchill’s home at Chartwell, apparently, is not just an English country house on the Kent Weald but “one of the world’s first word processors.
At times, Johnson’s enthusiasm for his subject runs away in hyperbolic Boris style.
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