On the Way to Greatness

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL: YOUNG STATESMAN by Randolph S. Churchill. 763 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $10.

It is hard to imagine that Winston Churchill was ever young. This second volume of Randolph Churchill's five-part biography of his father presents the apprentice statesman, exuberantly flexing the first sinews of power. The book spans only 14 years, opening in 1901 with a brash Churchill of 26 taking his seat on the Tory back bench, and closes on the figure of the First Lord of the Admiralty.

Through that distant and serene period, Churchill moved with the insistent and often rude force of a man in a hurry to reach command. "We are all worms," he told Violet Asquith, the Prime Minister's daughter, "but I do believe I am a glowworm."

The natural place to glow was the House of Commons, where, as his biographer observes, Churchill's bulldozing ascent soon earned him respect and enmity in equal measure: "When he was a backbencher, Churchill had spoken as if he were an Under-Secretary; as Under-Secretary, as if a member of the Cabinet; and when he reached the Cabinet, he was apt to speak as if he were Prime Minister." It is only fair to add that as Prime Minister, he was likely to speak as if he were God.

In 1904, he broke with the Tories over tariffs--Churchill was a free trader--and bolted to the Liberal opposition. The following year, the Liberals were in power. They regarded their new convert with mixed feelings; no one knew whom Winnie would attack next--the Tories, his own Prime Minister or the King. "Winston thinks with his mouth," wrote Asquith testily.

As in the first volume, the biographer is a model of self-effacement, letting the subject tell his own story, largely through documents, memoranda and correspondence, much of it published for the first time. Not once does Randolph Churchill succumb to the temptation to polish off the rough edges of a man who was mostly rough edges. The result is a fascinating, faithful likeness of a man on the way to greatness.

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