Garden Walls

 

It’s just a little wall separating my front lawn from the north woodsy garden. It's actually a demarcation line, dividing mowing from the more interesting paths and wildflowers. Inspired,  I built it after reading Volume II of William Manchester’s astoundingly entertaining THE LAST LION trilogy. Volu
me III (Defender of the Realm) has been completed by another writer following Manchester’s death in 2004. I just finished that one and reviewed it on Troutbirder II.

Manchester was among the very best of the "popular" writers of history and historical fiction, who have made the past fun to read about and thus accessible to everyone. Others include Steven Ambrose, Shelby Foote, Doris Kearns, David McCullough, Steven Pressfield, Rick Atkinson, Sharon Kay Penman, and among the earliest Bruce Catton. Often besmirched by some historians for their lack of footnotes and other signs of "ex
pertise," they and others like them, brought history to the forefront of American literature.

Here Churchill is standing, somewhat begrimed, in the garden of his modest estate Chartwell. These are the wilderness years. Few are listening to his urgent warnings about the danger posed to Great Britain by Hitler and the Nazis. Manchester succeeds in page after page of intimate details to bring this great and eccentric man to life. Shovel by shovel, brick by brick he builds garden walls and ponders the saving of Western Civilization. Not being in a position to accomplish the second, I thought I could at least try to build the first.

The walls and gardens at Chartwell

"It would be impossible to find somebody writing narrative popular biographies that doesn't have a debt to William Manchester," said biographer Douglas Brinkley. "He understood that there's nothing wrong with writing history as being a page-turner,"

All right. I'll admit Churchills wall was a little bigger than mine but then so was his garden.....