The Splendid and the Vile

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this book on my cell phone in Japan using an interlibrary loan in my home state of New Hampshire, in the US. Interestingly, the book's main resolving chord was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, which lead a tit for tat set of war declarations culminating in Roosevelt declaring war on Germany. This was the act which Churchill had been muttering about, making impassioned speeches for, and lobbying various American visitors dining at his country houses for, for the bulk of the book. I originally thought 'Splendid and Vile' would mean that we would read about Churchill at his best and worst in the book, but this was not the case. THere is nothing vile to see in anything about Churchill, only splendiferousness. The reference is to a journal entry where another character looks out on gleaming airplanes in the beautiful moonlit night lit below by bombs and fires and declares the scene to be splendidly beautiful, and yet at the same time evidence of the degree of vileness to which humans can fall. I was reminded a bit of the contrast between the beautiful and artistic rendition of evil flying war machines in Studio Gibli movies. The book draws mostly on journals and portrays the real life vicissitudes of the characters that wrote them, during one of the most splendid, and indeed vile, moments in human history, during the blitzkrieg from 1939-41 in London.



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