Churchill: An Illustrated Life by Brenda Ralph Lewis was so much more than I had expected. My interest was primarily the photographs, I was not, in honesty, expecting anything beyond a basic overview of his life. Yet the biography itself is a very good one and is worth reading even if the book had the normal allotment of pictures most biographies have.

I don't want to overstate and perhaps set a reader up for disappointment. This is not an exhaustive biography, but with a life as rich and full as Churchill's such a biography would be massive. Lewis goes into enough detail about his entire life rather than focus too much on the WWII period that this serves as an excellent biography for someone who has not read anything beyond a Wikipedia entry. I've read many of his books as well as several biographies and while I don't know what, if anything, was new here it was very interesting and reminded me of things I had long forgotten.

And the photographs were everything I had hoped for. Many rather iconic images as well as some I don't recall seeing before. Coupled with the biography it made the entire reading experience a joy.

While I did not pull down any of my Churchill related volumes, either his own multi-volume works or even Manchester's quite good biography, I couldn't resist going back and revisiting a book from a couple years ago that went very well with this one. Clementine Churchill: A Life in Pictures by Sonia Purnell.

I would recommend this to anyone who either wants to learn about Churchill's life or who wants to revisit his life without reading a large tome. Lewis presents Churchill with his many flaws and his very well documented strengths, all in a very fair way. Or, like me, come for the photographs and stay for the biography.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

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