Friday May 21, 2004
Manchester's
triology on Churchill to be
completed
Palm Beach Post Staff
Reports
WEST PALM BEACH --
After suffering two
strokes, William Manchester
declared in 2001 that he was unable to
write the long-awaited third and final
volume in his acclaimed biography of
Winston Churchill, The Last
Lion.
David
Irving comments:
GLAD to hear of this. My own
third volume, "Churchill's War",
vol. iii: "The Sundered Dream",
will appear at the end of 2005,
so perhaps these two authors will
want to dip into its pages to top
up their own. Mine is the product
of forty years' work, virtually
single-handed.
Somehow
fitting, though, that the life of
one of the world's most
ghost-written writers, --
Churchill employed armies of
ghost-writers -- should now be
finished off by a
ghost-writer.
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And the thought of handing off the task
to another author was simply
untenable.
"Nobody else
can write it," the literary great said
at the time. "Nobody has my style.
Nobody could put it in context like I
can. I'm the only person who can write
that book."
But now the 82-year-old Manchester,
whose other titles include The Death of
a President (about the John F. Kennedy
assassination) and Goodbye,
Darkness (a World War II memoir), has
found help to complete the Herculean
task.
Paul Reid, a feature writer at
The Palm Beach Post who's profiled
Manchester several times, has been tapped
for the assignment. The book is expected
to be published in 2007, according to
Little, Brown and Company, Manchester's
publisher.
"Paul Reid is a gifted writer,
first-rate, and we're lucky to have him,"
Manchester said in a statement. For his
part, Reid, 54, expressed both joy and
humility at his selection.
Manchester "has been a hero of mine for
40 years," Reid said. "I told him I won't
let him down." This unlikely partnership
between a world-renowned writer and
historian and a Florida journalist
developed through stories Reid has written
since 1996 about Manchester, who lives in
Connecticut, and a close-knit group of
military comrades who served with him in
World War II.
"We'd talk about the (Boston) Red Sox,"
said Reid, who grew up in the Boston area
and shares a love with Manchester for the
perennially suffering baseball team.
Completing the biography is one of the
most talked-about projects in the literary
world. The first two volumes sold a
combined 750,000 copies. The anticipated
third volume -- and Manchester's inability
to complete it because of his failing
health -- have been the subject of
stories
in The New York Times and
elsewhere.
Little, Brown officials have said they
receive several calls a month from eager
readers about the status of the book,
which is slated to focus on Churchill's
World War II years and his life
thereafter.
Manchester, who's been described as
being severely weakened by the strokes,
was urged to consider other writers to
help him finish the project, but he
resisted the idea. The only possibility he
would allow was former New York
Times columnist Russell Baker,
who once worked with Manchester at the
Baltimore Sun. But Baker turned it
down, Manchester said in 2001, because he
too "doesn't have the energy."
Michael Pietsch, publisher with
Little, Brown, says the company wasn't
necessarily looking for someone with a
historian's credentials, especially since
Manchester has already completed the
research and written about a quarter of
the lengthy manuscript. Rather, "the
quality of the writing has always been a
paramount concern," he said.
After reviewing Reid's work on a sample
chapter, Pietsch said "it reads seamlessly
with the work Manchester had already
completed." Reid says he will try to keep
Manchester's style.
"I'm trying to write in a narrative
voice reminiscent of Bill Manchester," he
said. "I can't imitate him. He's Bill
Manchester because he's Bill Manchester, a
true literary lion."
Reid came to The Post in 1996 after
selling a steam-valve manufacturing
business he owned and managed in
Newtonville, Mass. He also was a regular
contributor of opinion columns at The
Boston Globe. He was named 1998 Cox
Newspapers writer of the year and won the
1998 Paul Hansell award, given by the
Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, for
reporting and writing. He graduated from
Harvard University in 1990 with a degree
in history.
Reid, who is also The Post's restaurant
critic, will continue to write reviews in
Friday's TGIF section.
Our
Churchill index-
Ailing
Churchill Biographer* Says He Can't
Finish Trilogy (*William
Manchester, that is)
|
write to David
Irving