‘John Wheeler-Bennett was never a household name”, Victoria Schofield reminds us in this new biography, “but he knew virtually everyone who was.” He certainly did. Beginning with President Woodrow Wilson, whom he interviewed when a boy of twenty, he went on to, among others, Chiang Kai-shek, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Leon Trotsky, Winston Churchill, President F.D. Roosevelt and most of his relations, President John F Kennedy, and almost every major figure on the diplomatic, political, journalistic and military scene in Europe and the United States.‘
Michael Howard, TLS, 26 October 2012
Excerpt:
John Wheeler-Bennett was never a household name but, in the mid-twentieth century, he knew virtually everyone who was. ‘The list of those present at his Memorial Service,’ observed his nephew Rick, ‘is testimony to the circles in which he operated from Royalty downwards.’ Since he had not needed to earn his living, from an early age he had been free to choose to become a historian. ‘The rewards of our calling are rich and golden,’ he had said shortly before his death. Despite intermittent poor health, hard work and the discipline of his reach accorded him high status a s a member of the intellectual establishment. ‘He was brilliantly intelligent, an enterprising journalist, a courageous adenturer, a gifted writer, one of the best-informed people in Europe, well-connected and wonderful company,’ wrote historian Sir Michale Howard. As Harold Macmillan acknowledged, Wheeler-Bennett may have been ‘an amateur for he was self-taught; but, in accuracy and imagination, and also power of writing, he ranked very high among the professionals.’
Chapter 11: Memories, p. 281.
Links
Amazon [linked to search results page]
