Churchill: A Graphic Biography

England’s best-known prime minister, already the subject of more than a thousand books, would have surely enjoyed the latest: Churchill: A Graphic Biography. This comic-book of a different sort is a rare treat translated from the French series Ils ont fait l’Histoire with text by Vince Delmas and engaging illustrations by three artists.

Known for less-than-stellar accomplishments as a schoolboy, Churchill turned to politics after penning five books about his battlefield experience on three continents as the Nineteenth Century advanced into the Twentieth.

He was appointed Lord of the Admiralty, a vitally important office, for which he was alternately admired and resented, dismissed then reappointed. His provocative approach to the challenges of World War I included shocking the establishment by demanding that reconnaissance planes be armed and urging the production of more weaponry.

In the following years he served as a member of parliament for a northern constituency and held several governmental posts. When Hitler took center stage in the early 1930s, Churchill predicted the catastrophe that became World War II and warning which fell initially on willfully deaf ears. In 1940, as the war gathered momentum, he was elected Prime Minister, fulfilling an ambition he had declared as a teenager.

Churchill met repeated resistance from the military and political personnel of the early 1940s as they tried to repress their leader’s proposals. Many of their names are long forgotten. Without a chronology or introduction, the book presupposes prior knowledge of the period, serving to reinforce and remind rather than teach the history.