The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (English Edition) -

Erik Larson

Crown

2020

546 páginas

18h 12m

ISBN-13: 9780385348713

Português Brasileiro

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz

On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Resenhas (1)

4 (Muito bom)

O esplêndidio e o vil

Como é viver em meio a ataques aéreos diários durante a guerra, nunca sabendo o que de pior está por vir? É essa pergunta que Eric Larson se propõe a explorar em The Splendid and the Vile. Utilizando-se de cartas, diários, textos oficiais e midiáticos, o autor reconstrói o ambiente cotidiano que vigorava entre a família Churchill, seus amigos mais próximos e altos funcionários do governo, além da população londrina em geral, durante o primeiro ano de Winston como Primeiro Ministro – período que os massivos ataques da Blitz alemã castigavam a capital inglesa.

Apesar de começar a ler desprevenidamente (achava que o livro trataria mais das decisões políticas que semearam o momento histórico), foi de fato bem interessante conhecer um pouco dos sentimentos vividos por aqueles se viam acossados por tamanha tragédia - entre o esplendor das relações humanas e a vileza da guerra. Como escreve o autor: I seek “a more intimate account that delves into how Churchill and his circle went about surviving on a daily basis: the dark moments and the light, the romantic entanglements and debacles, the sorrows and laughter, and the odd episodes that reveal how life was really lived under Hitler’s tempest of steel.”

O autor chega a um bom resultado com um ótimo trabalho de pesquisa historiográfica e uma escrita bem precisa. No entanto, algumas das informações parecem extrapolar até mesmo o nível da curiosidade, tornando o texto em alguns pontos um pouco moroso de se ler.