The Last Titans: How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World

In this incisive dual biography, historian Vinen (1968) paints British prime minister Winston Churchill and French general Charles de Gaulle as having moved along opposite trajectories. As Churchill grew into the indomitable leader who rallied Britain to persevere against the Nazis, de Gaulle’s wartime exploits were less glorious. Exiled to London and often sidelined by the Allies, he managed, through clandestine intrigues and a carefully cultivated aura of destiny, to position himself as France’s leader. The relative statuses of Churchill and de Gaulle changed drastically in postwar decades, however. Churchill’s second stint as prime minister in the 1950s was a study in fecklessness and physical decrepitude, in Vinen’s telling, while de Gaulle’s presidential term from 1958 to 1969 was a triumph: he presided over an economic boom; turned France into a modern, efficient technocracy; and faced down military revolts and assassination attempts to grant Algeria its independence. Vinen’s colorful portraits note resonances between the two leaders: both were conservatives and unreconstructed racists with theatrical streaks who grappled with imperial decline. But he depicts de Gaulle as the more perceptive and realistic statesman, ushering France into a less ambitious but prosperous and independent new dispensation while Churchill wallowed in nostalgia. The result is a fresh and illuminating reconsideration of two statesmen who helped build the modern world. (Mar.)