Churchilliana

WINSTON CHURCHILL (433 pp.)--Robert Lewis Taylor--Doubleday ($4.50).

To biographical mountain climbers, the figure of Winston Churchill rears up as formidably as Mt. Everest. One reason is that the last word on Churchill is usually by Churchill. Wisely hugging the foothills of anecdote, Robert Lewis Taylor, the New Yorker profiler, has put together a crisp, readable "informal study of greatness." Unable to wangle a single interview with the "old man in a hurry," he nonetheless brings the old showman onstage for every star turn of his dramatic life.

There is Churchill, "the naughtiest little boy in the whole world," whose instructors could only keep him quiet by racing him around full tilt all through recesses. There is Churchill, the young subaltern in India, flashing a wicked polo style "like a man thrashing at a cobra with a riding crop." There is Churchill, the captured war correspondent, breaking out of a Boer prison camp with four chocolate bars, and trekking 300 miles to the British lines and the world's headlines. There is Churchill the Conservative and Churchill the Liberal, and Churchill the World War I battalion commander who bought up one French town's "entire seasonal production of peach and apricot brandy." Above all, there is Churchill the phrasemaker, who could beat even Bernard Shaw to the verbal draw. Before an opening night, Shaw once sent Churchill a pair of tickets with a note saying: "Come to my play and bring a friend, if you have a friend." Churchill sent back the tickets with the message: "I'm busy for the opening, but I'll come on the second night, if there is a second night."

A few years ago, the bricklayer, painter, historian and world statesman who has mastered every wheel of fortune but roulette, was asked by a U.S. reporter: "If you had it all to do over, would you change anything, Mr. Churchill?" A nostalgic look flitted over the great man's face. "Yes," he said. "I wish I had played the black instead of the red at Cannes and Monte Carlo."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.