Kentish landings

To Kent, where on a twenty-mile stretch of coastline you can find the locations of not one but four sites commemorating famous landings in England, all of which have played a key role in shaping the world in which we live today.

The first one is in the woods near Dover Castle, that fortress atop the White Cliffs that overlooks the UK’s busiest port. The castle, said to be England’s largest, has for centuries existed with the purpose of preventing hostile forces from landing on our shores; it was used by the military until the 1980s, and not for nothing has it been called the ‘Key to England’! Dover, of course, was part of the Medieval confederation known as the Cinque Ports, established to ensure that men and ships were available to defend that part of our coast that was closest to Europe in the event of an invasion. Dover is of course older – its status as the gateway to Britain goes back to Roman times, when it was called Portus Dubris and was the principal means by which Roman troops and traders arrived in the province of Britannia.

Anyway, somewhere in the woods just to the east of the castle is the concrete outline of an old aeroplane. This commemorates the first (and historically the most recent) of our landing-spots, the place where Louis Blériot landed in July 1909, having completed the first flight over the English Channel. Actually, it wasn’t the first flight, for a Frenchman and an American had crossed the Channel in a hot-air balloon in 1785, but it was the first flight in an aeroplane. This was just six years after the Wright brothers had done the first powered flight, and public interest in who would be the first to fly across the Channel was high thanks to the Daily Mail which had in 1908 offered a prize of £500 to anyone who could complete the feat. When 1908 ended with the money unclaimed, the paper upped the prize to £1000. Apparently the paper’s owner reckoned that one the Wright brothers – Wilbur – would be the first, but in the event he had already amassed a fortune from prize money from duration and altitude flights, as well as from sales contracts, and thought the cash on offer to be not worth the risk. Several days before Blériot took off, a rival had attempted the crossing, only to become not the first person to fly an aeroplane across the Channel but the first person to a crash-land an aeroplane on water (he survived).

Blériot flew without a compass, planning instead to take his course from a French destroyer which was sailing across the Channel as his escort, however he hit low cloud and the wind blew him off course; when he did land, it was a crash-landing which damaged his craft’s undercarriage and propeller. But he had successfully flown across the Channel all the same, even though the Mail’s correspondent didn’t witness the landing (he’d been expecting Blériot to land on the beach, and on being told that the intrepid aviator had actually landed above the cliffs near the castle he quickly got hold of a motor-car and headed up there). Louis Blériot’s place in history was assured, and today he is commemorated by the concrete outline of his aeroplane – his own design, called the Blériot XI – on the spot where he landed, which is a few minutes’ walk through the trees from Upper Road (just off the A258); there were no trees there when he landed, which just goes to show how landscapes can change over time.

Along the coast in a northerly direction there are castles – Walmer, which to this day is the home of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (now entirely ceremonial but the position does still come with a castle!), and Deal, built as a defensive fortification by Henry VIII (it’s got round walls, thus eliminating the corners of square keeps which were the most vulnerable points once cannons started to be used, and has three levels from which cannons faced out to sea). Between the two is a plaque commemorating the oldest of our landing-sites, that of Julius Caesar in 55 BC.

This is the event that is often said to mark the beginning of British history – although the Romans and others had certainly traded with Britain before (the Phoenicians are known to have bought tin from the West Country for centuries before 55 BC), the British Isles were very much on the edge of the known world and Julius Caesar’s visit was the first time anyone had come over in a military capacity. He’d just conquered Gaul, and his invasion of Britain was, according to Winston Churchill in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, “an integral part of his task of subjugating the Northern barbarians to the rule and system of Rome.” Caesar, who suspected the Britons of having aided their fellow-Celts the Gauls in their struggle against Rome, regarded the people of the south-eastern corner of the island (modern-day Kent) as being the most civilised on said island on account of their being the closest to mainland Europe.  Not that that was saying much, for they were nevertheless “a tougher and coarser branch of the Celtic tribes whom he was subduing in Gaul” (Churchill again), and he appears to have regarded their pre-battle preparations, which consisted of taking their clothes off and painting themselves blue, with some distaste (he was even less keen on their priests, the Druids, who he’d heard performed human sacrifices).

Caesar judged Dover to be unsuitable for a landing (those blue-painted warriors standing on top of the cliffs must have been off-putting), so he opted to land on the beach between Walmer and Deal instead. His troops were able to fight off the natives and establish a beach-head but they were beset by bad weather and the tides, not something they’d ever had to worry about in the Mediterranean. Unable to advance further inland, he returned to Europe after a couple of weeks. He was back a year later, better prepared and with a larger force, and this time he was able to advance inland and indulge in a bit of dividing and conquering by setting one of the British tribes against another, but when he heard of a revolt in Gaul Caesar left once again, never to return. The Roman conquest of Britain would not happen until 43 AD, when Emperor Claudius sent Vespasian over with an army (which, interestingly, included elephants) to subjugate the Britons and establish a new Roman colony, Britannia.

Further along the coast, beyond Sandwich but not quite as far as Ramsgate, is Pegwell Bay, once the location of a major hoverport from where big vehicle-carrying hovercraft departed for Calais. The hovercraft have long gone (the hoverport closed in 1982), but there is one very large piece of evidence that points to an older sea-crossing. Back in 1949, a group of intrepid Danes sailed a life-size replica of a Viking longship from Denmark to Kent. They actually landed at Broadstairs, but the ship, called the Hugin, was put on display at Pegwell Bay to commemorate a landing which took place at Ebbsfleet, a hamlet at the head of Pegwell Bay marking the eastern end of the channel which once separated the Isle of Thanet from the Kentish mainland, in the year 449. This arrival would have a profound effect on the course of our history; indeed, the island of Britain would never be the same again.

Although a Viking longship commemorates this landing, those who landed weren’t Vikings. The arrivals of 449 were two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, warriors apparently invited over as mercenaries by a warlord known as King Vortigern. They brought with them a motley crew of Angles, Saxons and Jutes who hailed from what’s now Denmark and northern Germany; in due course, more of them followed. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Venerable Bede records that they “were granted lands in the eastern part of the island on the condition that they protected the country: nevertheless, their real intention was to subdue it.” This they did, becoming the ancestors of the English, for as Bede continues: “From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent and the Isle of Wight … From the Saxons … came the East, South and West Saxons. And from the Angles … are descended the East and Middle Angles, the Mercians, all the Northumbrian stock … and the other English peoples.” A plaque close to the Hugin thus commemorates this landing as the ‘beginning of English history’.

Not far inland, there is commemorated an arrival of a more spiritual kind which also changed Britain for ever.  Over a century after the arrival of Hengist and Horsa, the Anglo-Saxons (as they became known) had come to dominate much of the island of Britain, establishing several kingdoms – an arrangement known to historians as the Heptarchy. By the 590s, the kingdom of Kent was ruled by one Ethelbert (sometimes referred to as Æthelberht), who according to Bede was a descendant of the afore-mentioned Hengist. In the year 597, a missionary arrived from Rome. Christianity had come to Britain before, when the Romans had converted to it, but the Anglo-Saxons had arrived after the Romans had left and were very much a pagan people.

That changed with the arrival on the Isle of Thanet of St Augustine, the missionary sent by Pope Gregory to convert the heathen Anglo-Saxons to the true faith, starting with the ones in Kent since they were the closest to Europe (like Caesar before him, Gregory appears to have regarded the people who lived in Kent as the most civilised in Britain, probably for the same reason). Ethelbert, who according to Bede “had already heard of the Christian religion, having a Christian wife of the Frankish royal house called Bertha, whom he had received from her parents on condition that she should have freedom to hold and practice her faith unhindered”, went out to meet him. He listened to Augustine preach a sermon, following which he allowed him to establish a base in Canterbury (which is why to this day the most senior Anglican clergyman is the archbishop of that fine city). He even converted to Christianity himself, which gave Augustine “greater freedom to preach and to build and restore churches everywhere”; thus did the English become a Christian people. The spot where Augustine preached his first sermon on English soil is, therefore, of great historical importance, and it is today commemorated by a cross – St Augustine’s Cross, the last of our Kentish landing commemorations.

The Capital Ring: Greenford to South Kenton

That part of the Capital Ring which runs from Greenford to South Kenton is described (in Colin Simpson’s very helpful walking-guide The Capital Ring) as “one of the hilliest parts … a substantial amount is on uneven ground or grass which may be muddy or wet after heavy rain”. Although it wasn’t raining on the day Dad and I set out to Greenford to continue our walk along London’s circular footpath, we both reckoned that hiking-boots were a good idea. A wise move. As for hills, I could see the first one, Horsenden Hill, from the platform at Greenford station.

From there, we passed a retail park before entering the Paradise Fields Wetlands, a nature reserve on land that used to be a golf course. I’d brought my binoculars with me but I didn’t see much from a viewing-platform – a solitary moorhen, a few crows and little else. Before long we rejoined the Grand Union Canal, this time following the branch that goes to Paddington to (eventually) become the Regent’s Canal. 

Moorhens, coots and mallards were seen on the canal, which we followed as far as a road bridge, passing under it before climbing up to it in order to cross over the canal.

Then the first climb of the day began, along grassy footpaths and a series of steps to reach the summit of Horsenden Hill, marked by a trig point some 260 feet above sea level (not the highest point on the Capital Ring, that honour going to the vicinity of Severndroog Castle on the Woolwich-Falconwood part, or even the highest point of the day which was still to come). 

It’s said that on a clear day you can see Windsor Castle to the west, but I couldn’t.

We descended through a wood, almost being sent the wrong way because one of the many direction signs (adorned by the walk’s logo which depicts what is nowadays called the Elizabeth Tower – it was never called Big Ben, which is the nickname of the largest bell inside it – surrounded by arrows) had been knocked over; I restored it as best I could by resting it against a nearby tree with the arrows pointing in the right direction. There followed a walk through suburbia, crossing the A4090 to reach Sudbury Hill station. We turned off the main road, and subsequently turned off that road onto a track that took us sharply uphill before spilling us out into the A4005 on which we continued the climb. At this point the signs, usually green, turned black to be more in keeping with the locale.

We were now in a rather posh part of town, Harrow-on-the-Hill, and we were following the London Road right into the heart of the old village which is dominated by Harrow School, one of the top public schools in the country (old boys include Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Byron); we saw a few of the boys by sadly none of them were wearing straw hats. The hill, topped by the spire of St Mary’s church, is 350 feet high and is a prominent landmark that can be seen for miles around. At the village green we had hoped to be able to pop into an old pub called the King’s Head – said to have been one of many places where Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn – but today the pub has closed down, although the sign still hangs on a gallows-like structure. 

There was also a street called Church Hill which I’d like to think was named in honour of the wartime PM but I presume it predates him as it does indeed lead up to the afore-mentioned church which stands at the top of the hill (although the spire is obscured by one of the school buildings if you look up from the High Street).

We descended from Harrow-on-the-Hill via Football Lane – named not for the view of Wembley Stadium but because it leads steeply down to the school’s playing-fields, which we crossed to get to the Watford Road. 

It was here that we took a look back up the hill before encountering a stile which, believe it or not, is the only one on the Capital Ring.

Next up was a muddy part which made me glad I’d worn my boots. 

The path ran between Northwick Park Hospital and a golf course – there is, I recall, a good Churchill quote about golf; not the ‘good wallk spoilt’ one (which has been attributed to, among others, William Gladstone and Mark Twain) but his description of it as “a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose”. There were high nets to protect us walkers (and the cars parked outside the hospital, of course) from errant balls. We didn’t seen any golfers but we did see a mixed flock of thrushes on one of the greens which included redwings and fieldfares as well as song thrushes.

From there it was but a short walk through Northwick Park (the park, not the hospital) to South Kenton station. It is my hope that the next part of the Capital Ring will be the last; Dad only has to go six miles from South Kenton to Hendon (where he started), while I have a further three miles in order to get back to where I started at East Finchley, almost two years ago. It is a circle that has taken me to many parts of Greater London that I would not have otherwise visited, and it is to close soon.

Cocktail hour, part three

For cocktail ideas, we have recently turned to a colourful book called Vintage Cocktails which, in addition to being ring-bound which makes it easier to put on a book-holder, has hit upon the novel idea of keeping the ingredients and instructions as brief as possible, as well as helpfully providing a full colour picture of said cocktail so that us amateur mixers have an idea of what the finished result should look like.

In anticipation of some seasonal cocktails, we’ve prepared in advance to the extent of mixing together a sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water) which is stored in the fridge. We’ve also bought some vermouth with which to make martinis. But what sort? Good question! Gin or vodka, shaken or stirred, dry or dirty? That last one involves adding some of the brine from the olive-jar, and that is Allison’s preference. Stirring rather than shaking is, it turns out, the preferred way of mixing a martini; evidently Ian Fleming was being a bit of a contrarian when he had James Bond ask for them ‘shaken not stirred’ (Bond makes an appearance in Vintage Cocktails too, for the Vesper martini – the one from Casino Royale – is in there, although it’s not the exact recipe that’s given in said novel).

Anyway, it so happens that if you require a dirty martini, the way to go about it is to rinse a small amount of vermouth around the glass before mixing the other ingredients – gin or vodka, plus the olive brine – with ice and then adding them to the glass; strong stuff (although not as strong as some, for Winston Churchill’s idea of a martini was to show a bottle of gin to a bottle of vermouth, and then drink the gin; thus, a Churchill martini is just neat gin served with vermouth being present in the same room). Moving along, the dry martini consists of equal parts vodka (or gin) and vermouth, stirred together. A compromise – the dirty dry martini (with vodka, rather than gin) – has been developed here.

I rather fancied a whisky-based cocktail instead, so I flipped through Vintage Cocktails to see what I could find. A few, such as the Manhattan, the old fashioned and the Rob Roy, involve Angostura bitters which is not (yet) something with which I’ve seen fit to grace our drinks cabinet although it’s probably only a matter of time. A rusty nail – which I have long regarded as my ideal, go-to cocktail – was out too, because we don’t have any Drambuie. Then I happened across whisky sour.

It’s not really something I’ve come across before. Bourbon is the preferred whisky for this, and we don’t have that either (when it comes to the hard stuff, I’m more of a Scotch drinker), but Vintage Cocktails says that you can use rye instead, and as this is an Anglo-Canadian household we do have a bottle of that (and not just any rye whisky, but Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye; nothing but the best, here). And I’d already made some sugar syrup, so why not?

The Vintage Cocktails recipe for whisky sour called for 2 oz whisky, 1 oz sugar syrup and ¾ oz lemon juice, shaken with ice, strained into a tumbler and garnished with an orange slice (I used a lemon one instead, since I had to juice one of those anyway). A slight variation on this can be found in Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book; the man behind The Ipcress File simplifies it, with the juice of half a lemon and a teaspoon of sugar being added to 2 oz whisky and shaken with ice. What with having already made up some sugar syrup, I stuck with Vintage Cocktails for this one.

Needless to say, I enjoyed the result!

Secrets under the streets of London

Secret London. Underground London (other than the Tube). Sounds exciting, right? I’ve been looking into the secret bunkers that exist below our city’s streets – stuff from the Second World War (it was never just the Cabinet War Rooms) and the Cold War. Quite a few of them are under Whitehall as one might expect, but there are some that involve Tube stations and a few out in the suburbs. I had no idea there was one in Mill Hill! Anyway, the resulting article is now available to read on Londonist…

http://londonist.com/2016/05/london-s-secret-bunkers

Boris on Churchill

It was with a strange combination of anticipation and trepidation that I picked up a copy of Boris Johnson's latest book, The Churchill Factor, which the Mayor of London has written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the wartime leader who was declared to be the Greatest Briton in a BBC poll several years ago. Anticipation because it sounded like a good read; trepidation because I wasn't entirely sure if there was a need for a new book about Winston Churchill.

More books have been written about Winston Churchill than any other British Prime Minister (some by the man himself, who once quipped that he knew that history would be kind to him because he intended to write it), from multi-volume biographies to compendia of his speeches and one-liners. So why another? We do all know how this story goes, right?

A.J.P. Taylor once described Churchill as "the saviour of his country". But, great historian though he obviously was, A.J.P. Taylor wrote those words just 34 years after the fate of Britain hung in the balance in the summer of 1940. It is now 75 years since that summer, and with the passing of time and the dwindling number of Second World War veterans, memories of Britain's finest hour (to borrow a Churchillian phrase) are fading. Perhaps there is a need for the story to be retold, for someone to keep the fire going.

But does this metaphorical fire need more fuel? Places that were intimately associated with Churchill, like the Cabinet War Rooms (which has actually been renamed the Churchill War Rooms) and Chartwell (his country home in Kent) are both receiving ever-higher numbers of visitors each year, and in the case of the latter I bet they're not going for the architecture or the view over the Weald. That tells me that Churchill still has some sort of pull, that people who were born long after the war (or even long after he died) still want to remember what he did.

Going back to A.J.P. Taylor (do bear with me on this), he added that while memories were fading even as he wrote of Churchill as his country's saviour, he was hardly an unbiased observer. "Was Churchill's policy mistaken and his victory barren?" he asked. "Future generations may give a confident answer. One of the present generation cannot speak with detachment." Well, future generations are definitely having a go at answering that question, although I'm not so sure about detachment; when it comes to Winston Churchill, we are still in his shadow, and it is arguable that Taylor was understating the case; he was the saviour of more than his country. 

The latest person to have a go at writing about Winston Churchill is one of our more colourful contemporary politicians, one of very few who are recognisable by their first name alone and one of those who has somehow managed to carry on writing books while holding public office. That last point is of course something that his subject knew all about, although any thoughts of a comparison are obviously wide of the mark, or at least they should be; no-one comes close to emulating Churchill, a fact that the author apparently recognises with characteristic self-deprecation: "For those of us who have tried feebly to do just some of the things he did," Boris writes, "it can be a little crushing". No doubt Roy Jenkins, a war veteran who had (like Churchill) served as both Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, must have felt the same as he worked on his scholarly and much-acclaimed 2001 biography of the great man. 

By contrast, Boris's study of Churchill - as it takes a thematic rather than a chronological approach, one can't really call it a biography (for that, please refer to either Martin Gilbert - the single-volume version should suffice - or the afore-mentioned Roy Jenkins) - is written in very much the same vein as previous books like The Dream of Rome and Johnson's Life of London (both of which I'd enjoyed); much like Boris himself, his books are breezy and informal in tone, and wear their learning lightly.

He kicks off by outlining what he wants to do; after referring to one of those dubious surveys that says that young people today think of Churchill as the dog in the insurance advert, and acknowledging how he might not be the best-qualified person to have a go at telling the Churchill story ("I am not a professional historian, and as a politician I am not worthy to loose the latchet of his shoes..."), he argues that "we cannot take his reputation for granted ... I worry that we at in danger - through sheer vagueness - of forgetting the scale of what he did." Explanation/apologia done, off he goes with his take on Churchill.

This, by the way, is not the first time Boris has written about Churchill - there was a chapter on him in Johnson's Life of London and some of the points that were made in that book get a much more comprehensive outing here.

We start at the crucial point in Churchill's career; arguably the crucial point in British history: late May 1940. France is on the verge of collapse and the Dunkirk evacuation is under way. Churchill has been PM for a matter of weeks. The War Cabinet meets to discuss peace feelers sent out by Hitler, via his ally Mussolini; the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, is in favour of some sort of negotiated settlement. Fighting on - alone - is an option fraught with danger which will result in the deaths of thousands. But to the PM, agreeing to negotiate with Nazi Germany is tantamount to surrendering, and that will never do. Halifax is duly outflanked; Britain will continue with the war. It is hard to see this decision being reached had anyone other than Churchill, who had consistently opposed appeasement in the Thirties, been in charge. "He had," Boris summarises, "the vast and almost reckless moral courage to see that fighting on would be appalling, but that surrender would be even worse. He was right."

The appeal of the man has a lot to do with his wartime tenure as Prime Minister but there was more to him than politics alone (although, let's face it, over six decades in the House of Commons and a grand total - by my reckoning - of 27 years as a Cabinet minister including two spells as PM is more politics than most politicians have ever and will ever manage, and that's before you take into consideration the fact that he wrote his own speeches); he also had a prodigious literary output (more published words than Shakespeare and Dickens put together), got shot at on four different continents (three of those while wearing uniform), drew the map of the modern Middle East, knocked out over 500 paintings, had a go at flying at a time when it was considered an insanely dangerous pastime and he even managed to turn his hand to bricklaying - all while maintaining a booze and cigar intake that would floor most of us. 

Churchill's achievements are laid out for all to see - as well as the Second World War, there are also such things as devising the tank (the prototypes were developed by the Navy when he was First Lord of the Admiralty), creating the RAF (partly - one of its forbears, the Royal Naval Air Service, came into being on his watch) and laying the foundations of both the welfare state (with David Lloyd George, prior to the First World War) and the NHS (it was he who hired Beveridge to write his famous report).

The lows are chronicled as well as the highs - space is found for his role in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign (following which he ended up leading a battalion on the Western Front), his role in the Chanak crisis (which brought down the Lloyd George government), his at-times hysterical stance on India and his support for Edward VIII in the Abdication crisis, following which most people reckoned he was finished. Even the attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir gets several pages ("butchery, but it was necessary"). The conclusion Boris draws from these is that Churchill "had so many enterprises and initiatives that it is no surprise he had setbacks" before noting that, unlike most, he tried to change events - and his refusal to go with the flow was the cause not only of his cock-ups but also his triumphs.

There's even a chapter on Churchill and Europe which, given who the author is, can only be seen through the prism of present-day politics. Both Europhiles and Eurosceptics are as fond of quoting Churchill as they are irritated by the fact that the other side is also doing so. Boris looks over where the quotes come from (he seems to like looking into the various Churchill anecdotes, and is quite disappointed when his favourite ones turn out to have been mis-attributed), and he concludes that Churchill's outlook was remarkably consistent, seeing Britain as playing three distinct roles - European power, imperial power and member of the English-speaking world (that last bit explains the pro-American outlook that resulted in the Atlantic Charter); Boris comments that "the promiscuous internationalism of the approach seems ever more sensible today" - provided you substitute the bit about the Empire for something about the Commonwealth.

If it wasn't already obvious, Boris is a bit of a fan. He's also not averse to inserting himself into the narrative; he describes going to Blenheim Palace (where he gets to see the room in which Churchill was born), visits Chartwell at least twice and in one where's-he-going-with-this moment he cycles out to an East London cemetery in the rain while wearing a suit - a typically Boris self-deprecating moment, but there is a purpose to it. He's there to visit the grave of Mrs Everest - Churchill's nanny - and the reason is to provide evidence of the man's humanity; after she left the family's service, he (then a cadet at Sandhurst) supported her financially, and when she died he paid for the funeral and the gravestone. 

He also looks at what made the man 'tick' and turns his attention to his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the man who "really moulded him - first by treating him abominably and then by dying prematurely". As well as inadvertently installing in his son a desire to succeed, Churchill senior (who was in turn inspired by Disraeli) was also responsible for much of his son's political outlook, most notably a somewhat lax approach to party loyalty, a taste for self-projection and a formula that he called 'Tory Democracy', a rather vague notion of being above the left/right distinctions - "Randolph campaigned for servants to be entitled to compensation for industrial accidents, and in the same spirit Winston is the author of important social reforms: bringing the pension age down to sixty-five, setting up Labour Exchanges ... while always remaining, on the whole, a steady defender of free markets." 

Boris comes across as a bit of a Disraeli fan too, describing a recent biography of the Victorian PM as "finger-wagging" and "unfair". In one easy-to-overlook passage, he notes that as well as social reform, "Disraeli and the Churchills also have in common the journalism (and in Winston's case, the novel), the love of show, the rhetorical flourishes, the sense of history ...  the slight air of camp and the inveterate opportunism." Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

There are a few typos; for example, fairly early on, Boris refers to the Second World War as having started on 1st September 1939, and later on HMS Belfast is described as a battle-cruiser armed with 12-inch guns, whereas it is in fact a cruiser armed with 6-inchers; I am usually of the opinion that such mistakes, while excusable for a first draft, should have been corrected by the time publication comes around (and should definitely have been corrected for the paperback). That they have not been is the joint responsibility of the author and his editor.

Boris finds that Churchill's character is somewhat akin to what we might see as characteristics of the (his?) ideal Briton: "Broadly humorous but occasionally bellicose; irreverent but traditionalist; steadfast but sentimental; rejoicing in language and wordplay of all kinds; keen to a fault on drink and food". But he has a more universal appeal: "He means something ... to a huge spread of humanity. He is there as a role model for anyone who wasn't much good at school ... He speaks for all those who have worried about living up to the expectations of their parents, anyone who has felt that they are a failure, anyone who has struggled with depression ... anyone who feels they must battle on against the odds." 

Boris goes on to describe Churchill as "the resounding human rebuttal to all Marxist historians who think history is the story of vast and impersonal forces." What Winston Churchill showed was that one person can make all the difference; he was perhaps the ultimate example of just how much of a difference one person can make.

To conclude, what we have here is a book that entertains as well as providing a narrative that interweaves the various strands of Churchill's long and impressive life, with (perhaps inevitably) a few bits about the author as well. These would irritate people who don't like Boris, in the unlikely event of their reading this book. 

Apparently his next book is going to be about William Shakespeare (who it so happens also got a chapter in the London book). He may be over-reaching himself here - there's hardly anything new that can be said on that subject, and there has already been one outwardly light and informal (but actually highly informative) study on Shakespeare that confounded the scholars in recent times - by Bill Bryson. Whether the Boris Factor can top that remains to be seen, but that won't stop him from trying.