God & Churchill

Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale Momentum, 2015. 268 pp. (Paperback).

I wonder how many books have been written on Winston Churchill. Quite a few — I looked on the Internet and gave up on trying to count them all. Why would anyone want to write another one? I guess if you are Churchill’s great-grandson you might feel you have something to add to the volumes already written. I am not a student of Churchill but my guess is that the approach in this book does reveal new information about the prime minister — or at least presents it in a different way.

This book, which was co-authored by journalist and pastor Wallace Henley, is described as a “spiritual biography,” designed to explore the role Churchill’s beliefs played “in his leadership and on the world stage” with emphasis on World War II. Sandys believed his great-grandfather had a sense of divine destiny from an early age and set out to find whether the prime minister’s references to God and his spiritual beliefs were sincere or just “political platitudes.”

There was an overwhelming amount of evidence pulled from Churchill’s writing and speeches and from reports of others, all pointing to a consistency of belief and corresponding actions. No attempt was made to paint Churchill as a saint but the picture is pretty convincing.
The book was a good read, well written and interesting. I think history buffs will love it and nonhistory buffs are likely to enjoy it as well.

Reviewed by Martine Bates Fairbanks, Ed.D.