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The bond between fathers and sons is a powerful one. The love and adoration they feel for each other are undeniable, and sons often want to walk in their father’s footsteps. Living in the shadow of a famous father, however, can be hard. In the case of Winston Churchill and his only son, Randolph, the relationship was equal parts loving and difficult. Expectations were impossibly high, and disappointments were inevitable. As it turned out, Randolph supplied the latter in spades.
Churchill & Son, by Josh Ireland. Dutton, 464 pp., $34.
Josh Ireland’s
Churchill & Son is a masterful examination of this complex father-son dynamic. Ireland sees in Winston a father “obsessed with his son” but also “consumed by his own sense of destiny, his belief that fate had singled him out for a higher purpose.” In Randolph, he observes a doting son “whose loyalty to his father was so extreme that it came to hinder almost every aspect of his existence.” And while the Churchill men regularly tried to make their differences complement each other, they often seemed to go together like oil and water.