In 2002 John Lukacs noted that, nearly forty years after his death, no definitive study of Winston Churchill as a historian had yet been written. (The only systematic look at all of Churchill's historical output is the inadequate Sword and Pen: A Survey of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, published over three decades ago by Manfred Weidhorn.) The reluctance to tackle such a project is understandable. Histories authored by Churchill are complicated by the fact that they all double as autobiography and/or family history, recounting either the story of his own exploits or those of some distinguished ancestor. While not so impetuous as to tackle Churchill's entire career as an historian, David Reynolds does take on the ambitious task of examining the distorting influences that produced the former prime minister's idiosyncratic six-volume history of the Second World War between 1946 and 1954. Weaving his narrative around Churchill's project to sculpt his own historical image, Reynolds repeats in his text more than once the phrase that provided the prime minister comfort when engaged in any wartime controversy, “I shall leave it to history, but remember that I shall be one of the historians” (xix).

Reynolds aims to provide a two-tiered analysis, juxtaposing the wartime events covered in each volume against the postwar concerns that arose while that particular volume was actually being written, the latter presumably dictating the manner in which the past was recalled. Reynolds's book is divided into six main sections, each dissecting the composition of a single volume of The Second World War, and each carrying two set of dates. For example, section 1 is entitled “The Gathering Storm, 1919–1940, 1946–1948.” Using four hundred files recently opened to researchers, it was possible for Reynolds to determine precisely how every individual chapter was pieced together, what was left out, what was altered, what was included and then deleted, and, in most cases, why.

The influences that shaped Churchill's memoirs were complex and many. Reynolds is thorough in demonstrating the effects of other early interpretations of the war years in sharpening Churchill's instincts for self-defense, particularly unsympathetic narratives by Americans Harry Butcher, Ralph Ingersoll, and Elliott Roosevelt, son of the late president. Stretching the boundaries of the “vindicator clause” that allowed former ministers limited access to British government documents in order to defend themselves against printed attacks, Churchill claimed the right to quote in full from his “personal files,” official wartime documents he had carefully labeled “Personal Minutes” and “My Personal Telegrams.” The Cabinet Secretariat generally preferred maximum secrecy and minimum access to government records. Yet Edward Bridges and Norman Brook both provided unprecedented aid to Churchill's historiographical endeavors. The Cabinet Office viewed The Second World War as a substitute for the unwritten official British history of the conflict and therefore as a necessary counter to that swelling tide of American versions that appeared so soon after 1945. Bridges and Brooks did not dispute Churchill's claim that, “I feel I have the right, if I so decide, to tell my tale and I am convinced it would be to the advantage of our country to have it told, as perhaps I alone can tell it” (57).

Nearly all Churchillian histories were products of committees. In the 1930s with Marlborough and The History of the English-Speaking Peoples young assistants had been brought on board to do the archival spade work and to compose background papers on specialized topics. But with The Second World War the cumulative contributions of Churchill's research assistants, the “Syndicate,” were far greater. In part this was a product of the enormity of the project, combined with Churchill's age and his responsibilities as leader of the opposition. Presented with a researcher's essay before the war, Churchill digested the material then regurgitated a version marked by his singular prose style and interpretative prejudices. By contrast, as work progressed on The Second World War and deadlines had to be met, entire sections, often whole chapters, were written by Bill Deakin or Sir Henry Pownall and inserted without alteration. As Reynolds makes clear, the Syndicate influenced the final product in other ways. For example, in Triumph and Tragedy, General Slim's Burma campaign was covered in much greater detail than the great 1944 battles in France versus the Wehrmacht. The simple explanation for the anomaly is the fact that Pownall had served as chief of staff for South East Asia Command between 1943 and 1945. In defense of the contributions of what Jock Colville dubbed the “school of” Churchill, Reynolds quotes the verdict of Syndicate member Denis Kelly, who wondered whether it was ever appropriate to ask a Master Chef, “Did you cook the whole banquet with your own hands?” (502).

Political considerations, foreign and domestic, played a role in shaping the final text. In The Gathering Storm, Churchill made no mention of leaked information about rearmament he had received from foreign office and intelligence sources during the 1930s. The postwar Cabinet Office was worried lest such revelations might appear to sanction contemporary leaks by civil servants in order to undercut their ministers. The issue was made doubly acute by the fact that the 1945–51 Labour government nursed an instinctive distrust of Whitehall. Following Eisenhower's 1952 election victory, Churchill's anxiety to preserve cordial Anglo-American relations led to his decision to forward eight draft chapters for vetting purposes to Walter Bedell Smith, Ike's wartime chief of staff. The wording of a December 1944 telegram was even altered so as to soften prime ministerial criticism of Eisenhower's broad-front strategy.

Cold War imperatives created their own mixture of frankness and distortion. Churchill tried to convince readers of his early recognition of Soviet malignity, yet he did not shrink from including the story of the 1944 percentages agreement with Stalin. MI6 worried that Churchill's verbatim quotation of so many wartime cables might help the Soviets crack current British codes (even though such codes had been changed by 1948). Churchill reluctantly accepted this judgment, so, beginning with volume 2, telegrams printed in the text were sanitized by the Cypher Policy Board via word substitution or modest alterations in word order. Unmentioned in volume 6 was Operation Unthinkable, contingency plans drawn up in 1945 on Churchill's order in case a decision was reached to continue the war versus the Soviets in order to secure a better deal for Poland. Embarrassingly, the plans contemplated arming captured German troops to use against the Red Army.

As Reynolds clearly demonstrates, it was Churchill's sense of guilt along with his understandable desire to defend his wartime decision making that weighed most heavily in the selectivity of his memoirs. The Katyn Forest massacre, the Greek campaign of 1941, the Dieppe raid, the failure to bomb Auschwitz, the complacency regarding Japan, and the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales all received less than full and candid treatment. Since D-Day had been cemented in the postwar public consciousness as the key to final victory, Churchill-the-historian was energetic in covering up the persistence of his skepticism regarding a cross-channel invasion. He devoted a disproportionate amount of space to the debacles in Norway in 1940 and Anzio in 1944, regarding both as strategically sound initiatives mishandled at the operational level, and, like Gallipoli in 1915, opportunities lost.

Reynolds has written a very good book but is not entirely convincing when he claims that his revelations of Churchill's blemishes as a historian only enhance the stature of his subject. It is difficult to separate In Command of History from the revisionist, myth-debunking tradition that began with the appearance in 1959 of Arthur Bryant's The Turn of the Tide. Access to those four hundred files seems to have engendered in Reynolds a determination to utilize every single one. His study glories a bit too much in revealing how the sausage was made and not nearly enough in the remarkably satisfying taste of the finished product. Still, this is an instructive volume that provides the most detailed description available of the later Churchill's authorial technique. Most impressive of all is Reynolds's astute connection of Churchill's historiography to a much grander theme, his battle against mortality. For Winston Churchill, a statesman who accepted that with death came oblivion, “words are the only things that last for ever” (530). His enduring monument is his prose.