‘The Splendid and the Vile’ — Churchill and Family On Surviving the Blitz

The Second World War has more books written about it than any other historical event. With such a vast amount of material available, what more could be written? What new insights could possibly be gleaned from stories told over and over again by thousands of authors?

Plenty, if you’re Erik Larson, the author of a number of fascinating works of historical research and gripping storytelling (“The Devil In The White City,” “Isaac’s Storm,” “In the Garden of Beasts”). In his latest book, he turns his attention to the Battle of Britain.

Larson’s goal here is not to retell the story of British heroism in the air, the impact of the Battle of Britain on the direction of the war, or the political and diplomatic implications of the British resistance to Hitler’s onslaught, though the reader will find insights on all of these. What Larson does so effectively is to bring the experience of being bombed to a personal level through the diaries and recollections of dozens of people, both ordinary and well-placed.

Reading this book in 2024, I could not escape the many parallels between the experiences of the British people in that time and those of the Ukrainian people now.

What is it like to live under the constant threat of random explosions rained down by an unseen enemy? How does one carry on daily life, combining the necessities of work and home with the extraordinary demands of war, without falling apart? There are many insights into the human condition that can be found here, and most of them are inspiring.

First, of course, there is Winston Churchill, and the parallels between him and Volodymyr Zelenskyy become more interesting the closer one looks. Both were initially underestimated, both vowed never to surrender to a seemingly unstoppable enemy, and both have become heroic symbols of resistance to aggression worldwide. But on a more personal level, how did they, together with their families, weather the storm? In Larson’s story, we see the love and determination that kept the Churchills together as they faced personal travails that would have been challenging even without the backdrop of war.

Beyond the leaders, though, one has to admire everyday people who suffer such attacks on their homes, workplaces and communities, and somehow carry on. We see this in the wonderful details of Larson’s story, from the lives of government officials, secretaries, pilots, and many others.

Churchill’s daughter Mary, a teenager at the time, was out club-hopping with friends in London when one of their destinations became inaccessible due to bomb debris and emergency crews.

They simply turned and found another club, and even after they discovered that the club they’d been heading toward had suffered a direct hit with many casualties, they kept on partying until daybreak. Years later, Mary admitted that such behavior appeared unseemly in retrospect, but at the time it seemed the only thing to do.

Similarly, everyday Ukrainians, with their access to the internet and social media, learn to cope. An ordinary Ukrainian woman who documents some of her soapmaking on YouTube will share recipes and techniques in one video, then apologize in the next one about the delay in her postings caused by the war. And she goes on. And her people go on, just as Churchill’s did. They live, they work, they celebrate, they love and laugh whenever they can, just as in peacetime.

As Larson’s book kept reminding me of Ukraine, I found myself ruminating daily over the effect of catastrophes such as war on the human psyche. How do we do it? How do we maintain any semblance of normal life in the face of bombings — or hurricanes, or wildfires, or floods? Just yesterday, I saw a group of people standing in the charred ruins of their home in California, singing beautiful music. This was their statement of the same inner strength that we only discover when we face disaster. We keep going.

I believe that most of us have this inner strength. We see it in the survivors of disasters who have lost everything, and in the people suffering through wars. In the former, the knowledge that the disaster itself has passed helps us to gather that courage for what comes next; in the latter, outrage at the enemy helps to channel that courage into energy.

When an admirer told Churchill he’d given his people courage, the prime minister replied, “I never gave them courage. I was able to focus theirs.”

You can read about the Battle of Britain and wonder if you would be able to hold up under similar circumstances. But from what I see in this world, it’s quite likely you could, and you would.