The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit

This paperback will be of interest to those wishing to understand the special relationship that exists between the British and Americans since the end of the second world war.I found it an interesting page-turner. I learned quite a bit about the personnel chemistry of number of the leaders in maintaining, or not, the trans-Atlantic bond.

I don't think this is a very good book. The basic tenet is that Britain still sees itself as a major player on the field of international politics, and thinks it maintains a special relationship with the United States, and that British leaders all try to recreate the Churchillian myth. Be that as it may, the book just doesn't deliver the goods.It's a long, rambling, and slightly incoherent list of gossipy anecdotes and vast generalisations. "Thatcher had little patience for foreigners, except for Americans". "Thatcher didn't like Helmut Kohl". "Johnson didn't trust Harold Wilson". George W. Bush "loved John Major's wife".That's bad and utterly devoid of interest, but the book contains numerous unforgivable gaffes. The Cuban missile crisis suddenly becomes the Bay of Pigs crisis, and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing allegedly was François Mitterand's successor as French president. I couldn't quite believe what I read, and concluded that it must have been a material error, until I saw the statement repeated a few pages later.That did it for me. How can one take a book seriously after such colossal goof-ups?Not worth the money.