The Fan Who Finished William Manchester’s Churchill Biography

After one of the longest waits in publishing history — more than 20 years — the third and final volume of William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, “The Last Lion,” is finally about to arrive in bookstores. Manchester, who died in 2004, will not be among those eagerly awaiting its reception. The man with the most at stake is the co-author of record, and in fact the actual author: Paul Reid, who had never written a book before and whose specialty before he met Manchester was features for The Palm Beach Post. The story of how Reid, 63, was plucked from anonymity and thrust into the spotlight is not a simple understudy-replaces-star saga, and it’s safe to say that Reid could not have imagined what a mixed blessing he would experience after accepting Manchester’s invitation to co-write the third volume of Churchill’s biography. Now he has emerged from the project in a kind of literary shell shock, knowing that if the book is a success, most of the praise will go to Manchester, and if it flops, blame will fall on him.

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It took Paul Reid, the co-author of the third book of Manchester’s Churchill trilogy, two years just to figure out his research notes.

Manchester would have been a hard act to follow for even a much more seasoned writer. Back in the late 1970s, he began his biography of Churchill for what would end up being a $1 million advance. Then a writer in residence at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., Manchester was the author of more than a dozen major works, including “The Death of a President,” the landmark 1967 study of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and biographies of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (“American Caesar”) and H. L. Mencken (“Disturber of the Peace”). He was also an outsize personality, known for writing sessions that lasted as long as 50 hours and for turning out books at a metronomic clip.

Each Churchill volume took Manchester four years to write, but the second was much more difficult for him. Unknown to Manchester’s friends, admirers and, perhaps most important, his publisher, Little, Brown & Company, he had begun to struggle with writer’s block. For years, it had been what he feared most, telling at least one intimate, “I’ve been lucky so far.” Then, in March 1985, Manchester confessed in a note his son found among his papers: “For the first time in my life, I have a writer’s block. It is a real crisis. In the past three weeks, I have written exactly four pages. It is very painful.”

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Sir Winston Churchill’s rhetorical triumphs were eloquently moving—bending the arc of history as nobody did before him—but they were also no less meticulously crafted than any stanza fellow Pulitzer Prize recipient Robert Frost penned. Frequently employing internal repetition and rhymes, Churchill, like Frost, was a poetic giant—and, happily for the survival of democracy, he applied this faculty in pursuit of the public welfare, rather than in a habitat of guarded isolation.

A riveting exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum celebrates the former prime minister’s “Power of Words.” Instead of profiling the man—the focus of countless biographies—it probes the making of his prose, featuring 65 documents, artifacts and recordings on loan from the Churchill Archives Center at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, and from Churchill’s house in Kent, England. Such memorabilia include a D-Day telegram from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Churchill, a letter from presidential adviser Bernard Baruch offering sanctuary to Churchill’s grandchildren, and a note on Buckingham Palace letterhead by King George VI beginning “My dear Winston,” displaying a degree of familiarity all but unheard of from royalty addressing a commoner.

There have been numerous other exhibitions commemorating the life of Churchill, but none focused specifically on the architecture and origins of his oratory, and none on its hallmarks: an unshakable delivery, an immense power of persuasion, and a Shakespearean wit and vocabulary. Moreover, this is the first public exhibition of the document collection from the Churchill Archives Center, according to its director, Allen Packwood. Among its treasures are dozens of original drafts of speeches, including a 1897 unpublished manuscript Churchill wrote on the art of rhetoric.

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Now rich and powerful bastards of the upper classes will know that they can’t get away with oppressing the youth of the UK!

Not after they have bravely and eloquently written “fuck the cuts” on everything in London (including each other) and pissed on a statue of Winston Churchill!

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But they may have incited the yank forces of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Rielly by burning down a state Christmas tree. This incitement will re-energize those two - just yesterday they were left stunned and confused as President Obama lit the US national Christmas Tree, said “Merry Christmas” more than twice and failed to bow to any foreign leaders in the process. Now the dynamic duo repelling the “War on Christmas” can take their battle to the UK. No doubt more urine will be desperately needed.

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