exceed bullying father ...

Sixty years after his death, here is yet another book on the old lion (Winston Churchill died Jan. 24, 1965). The author, very friendly Frédéric Ferney, warns: "This book is not a biography." Known for his literary programs on television or radio, there Ferney offers "an incomplete story" as he says himself. No claim on the part of its author, then. It comes in fact of a narrative in which Ferney tells his story of a fashion must-politician. Cécrit in a style rather alert and very easy to access, and the tone is far from being taken seriously. The book reads well with some pleasure. Ferney is also understood that some have wanted to pay tribute to his father (to whom he dedicated it "You will be a missed my son") but this very personal reading of the history of Winston Churchill intended, I t seems it, to make us understand that beyond the disappearance of the father, the son can overcome many difficulties and succeed in life ... More explicitly the question is: is it possible to succeed at shadow of a father who has testified so little affection towards his son? Worse, when the same father proved almost tyrannical? (Lord Randolph proved very distant towards Winston he kept bully also, which is far from a purely anecdotal), how to manage his life or lack, how to overcome destiny or fatality? Lord Randolph, politician to the sulphurous reputation, Conservative MP, therefore did not spare his son: "You will be a dud! A good for nothing! You will never succeed in life. " This kind of judgment can hurt and leave an indelible mark. So little testimony of love. If little encouragement! There was plenty of despair for breakfast Winston. Yet the rest is history ...

If deep psychological and emotional injuries, it is also unexpected rebounds ... Paradoxically, today, where everything is smoothed or irenic say, at a time when our children are kings, not to say overprotected, it is good to remember, without any nostalgia, that the education of Mouflets the late nineteenth century (until the mid-twentieth), it was not soft ... But it is as we became "a man": overcoming his sufferings, that Boris Cyrulnik developed with his famous concept of "resilience" (reborn from suffering and become "self"). Here is the life of a being that exceed this lack, this unbearable pain, personal and hidden, and which will become, thanks to it or in spite of it, a man who is still regarded today as a man except Winston Churchill assume the way it was! A beautiful lesson of life on the whole, although the statesman he became was not free of defects to demonstrate incredible excesses (his demagogic side, his lack of doubt, etc .. .). Frédéric Ferney thus manages to make us endearing British bulldog big cigar, who slept little and read a lot. In reading these pages, I felt an author who sought to understand an author who did not consider the object of his study. Wearing a well-known humanist culture, Ferney, taking account of the mental suffering caused Churchill furthermore by a family shame (Lord Randolph died of syphilis ...).

The question arises in Ferney watermark could not be more clear: How does one become a great man? What is a successful life? The question can make us smile today. She bluntly ready to smile, actually. A great man, as if he had just learned from history the great men (political, literary, etc.). Well, why not ... But the anonymous multitude of the voiceless, those without degrees, those who try to take their lives, who are trying to emancipate themselves daily hegemonies and tyrannical laws, these laws who continue to operate their faculties and despise their lifestyles, seem so distant from many of our contemporary concerns. In short, far from being a eulogy of man status (which supported a time imperialism of the Crown, remember), not nearly as "essential" reading of the book shows the limits of Ferney the scope of such a story, except to say without doubt that a great man is an ordinary man, with its history, its past, its internal struggles, etc. If the reading is pleasant and mild, interest is therefore limited from my point of view, and the work will address primarily for history lovers and young people. Also, the author focuses on the early events of the life of Churchill from 1874 to 1916. Little information between 1918 and 1945 (excluding put the first chapter opens with the Blitz 1940-41). Are some passages tasty nonetheless. An entertaining read, without the fuss. Other books on this major figure of the twentieth century politics are much more serious. A sort of short introduction, in short, that will delight students and parents. Verdict: It says least, one can find the second hand book ...