Churchill a Kind of Hamlet

Adam Gopnik examines Churchill’s legacy and finds him the greatest modern instance of the romantic-conservative temperament in power. Comparing biographies on the legendary U.K. wartime leader, Gopnik notes differences in the historial revisionism and that in his own land, Churchill is “revered but quarantined”. “What is most impressive about his legacy…is that he is one of the rare charismatic moderns who seem to have never toyed with extra-parliamentary movements or anti-liberal ideals.” Churchill was, “a kind of Hamlet in reverse, a man who was called on, late in life, to do the one thing he was uniquely able to do, and did it.”