Taming The Last Lion

A few years ago I finally read the first volume of Manchester’s epic, “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory”. For anyone who wants a superb biography this is it. One of the things I truly enjoyed was Manchester spent almost the first two hundred pages not on the subject of the book but on the world he was born into. You get a taste of how the British Empire dominated the globe unlike anything since Rome and before the American empire. It covers things such as why we have Greenwich Village as the separating line of the world…because it could be nowhere else but England. Britain was the center of the globe is so many ways, economically, militarily, politically. At the time of his birth, almost one fifth of the population of England worked as some form of domestic servant to the upper class (butler, maid, etc). And you begin to get a taste of the world Churchill was born into and the world Churchill would defend to his end.

I finished the second volume “Alone” which ends as Churchill has succeeded Chamberlain as the Prime Minister and the Battle of Britain was just beginning. In this you get a look at a man never afraid of moving forward despite his advance being tempted by failure, failure that would have broken lesser men. Now I’ve often said “Damn you Manchester, you died before you finished volume three and now I don’t know how the story ends!”…until now.

Taming 'The Last Lion' - CharlotteObserver.com

Paul Reid of Tryon, who has been working on the Churchill book since 2004, gets inquiries from all over the world about when it'll be done. Reid plans to turn in the final pages by month's end.


...Paul Reid is a former Florida newspaper reporter who moved to the N.C. mountains a few years
ago. He's also the most highly anticipated author you've never heard of.


Since 2004, Reid has been writing the third and final volume of "The Last Lion," the late William Manchester's majestic biography of British statesman Winston Churchill


For legions of Churchill devotees and Manchester fans, the book can't be published soon enough. Readers regularly contact Reid, some from as far away as England and Pakistan, to ask about his progress.


Now he can give them good news. He's nearly finished. Most of the manuscript is in the hands of his editor at Little, Brown and Co. Reid plans to turn in the final pages by month's end.


There's no publication date yet. But typically, once the author delivers the book, it takes about a year to publication

I would say I have my Christmas present for 2011...but I will be one of the fools at Barnes and Noble at 700am in the cold for this book.

Reid took on the book at Manchester's request as his health was failing. He died in 2004 at age 82, just months after they decided to collaborate.


"I told Bill, and I meant it ... that I wouldn't let him down," Reid says. "If he wanted me to do this, I would do it. And it would be done well."


…Reid lacked Churchillian credentials, but Manchester, a former newspaperman himself, wanted a writer with a reporting background. And he trusted Reid.


…Reid never sought the job. In fact, in one newspaper story he wrote, he quoted Manchester saying he could never turn over the book to another writer.


"It's like a mother giving away her child to be raised by another," Manchester told him.


But gradually, he changed his mind. In fall 2003, the two had just watched the Red Sox lose a playoff game.


Manchester was confined to bed, so they had watched the game in the bedroom of the author's Connecticut home. The two were lamenting their team's fortunes, Reid recalls, when Manchester asked him to retrieve a large plaid suitcase from the next room.


The suitcase contained hundreds of pages of Manchester's research and several reference books.


Manchester told his friend to take the research and write 25 pages on the Blitz, the Nazi bombing of Britain.


"I said, 'Why?'"


"He said, 'I want you to finish the book.'"

Kinda get the literary version of Moses charging Joshuah to lead the Tribes of Israel...or FDR picking Ike to lead the invasion of Normandy...

Reid wrote the chapter, keeping in mind Manchester's advice to "think of it as one feature story after another."


Manchester liked it. So did his agent.


…When he died, Manchester had written the first few chapters of the third volume. He had also chosen a subtitle: "Defender of the Realm."


…...Reid has written almost 400,000 words, telling Churchill's story from the beginning of the Blitz in September 1940 until Churchill is voted out of the office in July 1945, after the war's end. He has also begun his next project: a book about his friendship with Manchester and how he came to finish "The Last Lion."

Hope the does another one...the years following the war until his passing in 1965. On that subject, he was the last non royal to get a state funeral but England is planning on one in the foreseeable future (Yes D, she's still around!): Margaret Thatcher.

I cannot think of another book I've waited for so much and I think I will be taking a couple of days off at a library...sorry Beth and girls, but there are things a man must do : )