In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.
They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain's most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars--and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire.
Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions--the jewel in the crown of Britain's overseas empire for 200 years.
Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British--including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two.
Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India's liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, would become the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civil rights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world.
Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpts
Chapter One...
The Churchills and the Raj
And Blenheim's Tower shall triumph O'er Whitehall--anonymous pamphleteer, 1705
On November 30, 1874, another baby boy was born on the other side of the world. This one also first saw light in his grandfather's house, but on a far grander scale--indeed, in the biggest private home in Britain.
Surrounded by three thousand acres of "green lawns and shining water, banks of laurel and fern, groves of oak and cedar, fountains and islands," Blenheim Castle boasted 187 rooms.1 It was in a drafty bedroom on the first floor that Jennie Jerome Churchill gave birth to her first child. "Dark eyes and hair" was how her twenty-five-year-old husband, Randolph Churchill, described the boy to Jennie's mother, and "wonderfully very pretty everybody says."2
The child's baptized name would be Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. If the Gandhis were unknown outside their tiny Indian state, the Churchill name was steeped in history. John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, had been Europe's most acclaimed general and the most powerful man in Britain. His series of victories over France in the first decade of the eighteenth century had made Britain a world-class power. A grateful Queen Anne gave him the royal estate at Woodstock on which to build a palace, which he named after his most famous victory. For Winston Churchill, Blenheim Castle would always symbolize a heritage of glory and a family born to greatness.
Yet the first Duke of Marlborough had been followed by a succession of nonentities. If the power and wealth of England expanded to unimagined heights over the next century, that of the Churchills steadily declined.
The vast fortune that the first duke accumulated in the age of Queen Anne was squandered by his successors. When Randolph's father inherited the title in 1857, the same year the Great Mutiny raged in India, he had been faced, like his father and grandfather before him, by debts of Himalayan proportions and slender means with which to meet them. Randolph's grandfather had already turned Blenheim into a public museum, charging visitors one shilling admission. Randolph's father would have to sell off priceless paintings (including a Raphael and Van Dyck's splendid equestrian portrait of King Charles I, still the largest painting in the National Gallery), the fabulous Marlborough collection of gems, and the eighteen-thousand-volume Sunderland library, in order to make ends meet.3
In the financial squeeze which was beginning to affect nearly all the Victorian aristocracy, the Spencer-Churchills felt the pinch more than most. For Randolph Churchill, the Marlborough legacy was a bankrupt inheritance. In a crucial sense, it was no inheritance at all. His older brother, Lord Blandford, would take over the title, Blenheim, and the remaining estates. What was left for him, and for his heirs, was relatively paltry (although much more than the patrimony of the great majority of Britons), with £4,200 a year and the lease on a house in Mayfair.4
So the new father, twenty-five-year-old Randolph, was going to have to cut his own way into the world, just as his son would. And both would choose the same way: politics.
Randolph was the family rebel, a natural contrarian and malcontent. Beneath his pale bulging eyes, large exquisite mustache, and cool aristocratic hauteur was the soul of a headstrong alpha male. As he told his friend Lord Rosebery, "I like to be the boss."5 Young Lord Randolph was determined to make a name for himself as a member of Parliament. All he needed was an issue.
In 1874 an issue was not easy to find. At the time when Winston Churchill was born, British politics...
Reviews
Carlo D'Este, author of Patton: A Genius For War and Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life...
"Gandhi & Churchill is a powerful tale of the monumental clash between two of the giants of the twentieth century. Set against the backdrop of war and conflict, this brilliant dual biography of strong-willed visionaries locked in a struggle each believed in makes for compelling reading. Arthur Herman has written a masterful and superbly well researched account of the lives of two men who have had a profound influence on the world in which we live in today that will long stand as a testament to their legacy."
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, The Hindustan Times, Bernard Schwartz Fellow, Asia Society...
"A fast-paced narrative history...Herman brings to life the twilight of the British Empire and reminds us how the twists and turns of fate helped propel these two men to their places in history. He shows us that there was more common ground between the two than most realize and that the seemingly simple tale of the imperialist and the nationalist is far more nuanced than it seems."
Richard M. Langworth, Editor, Finest Hour...
"Cutting through decades of narrow or shallow reporting, Arthur Herman offers a balanced and elegant account which captures both Churchill's generosity of spirit and Gandhi's greatness of soul. While recognizing their faults, he shows what motivated them and made them great--with impressive research that in Churchill's words leaves "no stone unturned, no cutlet uncooked." The last two chapters, and the author's Conclusion, are alone worth the price of what must become the standard work on the subject."
Wall Street Journal...
"The rivalry between Winston Churchill and Mohandas Gandhi could hardly have been played for higher stakes. The future of British India hung upon the outcome of their 20-year struggle.... As one might expect from the author of To Rule the Waves, a fine history ... Mr. Herman has researched Gandhi & Churchill meticulously and written it fluently."
Publishers Weekly...
"A forceful portrait of the emergence of the postcolonial era in the fateful contrast--and surprising affinities--between two historic figures.... Fascinating."
Washington Post Book World...
"Herman's book focuses on two imposing figures who epitomized the clash .... he has probed beneath the stereotypes... [and] tells their stories stylishly and eloquently."
India Today...
"Herman's storytelling style is engaging, giving new life to stories we have already heard and even forgotten.... Then there are the surprises.... Provocative, intriguing, even controversial."
Commentary ...
"Scruplous, compelling, and unfailingly instructive.... A detailed and richly filigreed account that introduces the Anglo-American reader to many facts and vivid if little-known personalities, both English and Indian."
Booklist...
" Brisk narrative flow.... Showing history eluding Gandhi and Churchill, Herman provocatively presents their efforts to shape it."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch...
"Exhaustively detailed."
About the Author
Arthur Herman is the bestselling author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World, which has sold over 350,000 copies worldwide, and To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, which was nominated for the prestigious Mountbatten Prize in 2005. He is a former professor of history at Georgetown University, Catholic University, and the Smithsonian’s Campus on the Mall.
