[In the following review, Barbour asserts that while Churchill's biography of Marlborough cannot be considered a great historical accomplishment, it is enjoyable and highly readable.]

Now that this biography has reached its penultimate volume [Marlborough: His Life and Times, Volume V, 1705-1708], its merits and shortcomings may be weighed with greater presumption of fairness than when the work was in its earlier stages. There is still to come the severest test of objectivity, the story of Marlborough's fall from power and the peace with France, but even in this volume, with Marlborough triumphing at Ramillies and Oudenarde, objectivity does not seem to be Mr. Churchill's peculiar virtue. It is, perhaps, something of which he holds no high opinion. Accuracy by all means, but not the mildew of indifference or the dessication of history into sociological or chemical formulas. For Mr. Churchill history is the great man in action, nobly surpassing himself. “How vain”, he exclaims, “are those writers in so many lands who suppose that the great minds of the world in their supreme activities are twisted or swayed by sordid or even personal aims. These, indeed, may clog their footsteps along the miry road of life; but soaring on the wings of victory all fall away” (p. 171). Admiration of Marlborough and indignation at his detractors determine the tone of this work. They are a team of emotions difficult to restrain to a moderate pace. More than once in this, as in the earlier volumes, they get out of hand, as when Mr. Churchill observes: “Although no scholar, and for all his comical spelling, he wrote a rugged, forceful English worthy of the Shakespeare on which his education was mainly founded” (p. 7); or when he refers to Marlborough as “the greatest man alive” (p. 218); or when he attributes the end of French hegemony to “one man and three battles” (p. 538), forgetting the long toil and indomitable patience of the architect of the Grand Alliance, William III. For blind admiration Mr. Churchill is too intelligent, but to the reviewer it seems that most of the admissions damaging to Marlborough fall in the preface, the text being largely reserved to his glories. Yet Marlborough, more than most heroes, needs to be seen realistically and not forever in bronze on a high horse. Nowhere in this volume does one find criticism as just and searching as Trevelyan's: “He had the qualities which William lacked for he could not only plan, but win a world war; but he was to fail where William had succeeded, for he could not make a world peace. Indeed, he can scarcely be said to have tried.” On the answer to the question of whether Marlborough tried will depend, it is probable, the ultimate verdict of history—not on Marlborough's greatness but on the quality of that greatness: Was he a supremely successful general, organizer, diplomat, and minister, or was he besides, like Washington, a wise, self-abnegating, and heroic statesman? Mr. Churchill has deferred his answer to this question to his final volume, and one should not anticipate it, but to the civilian mind an ominous exhilaration over war flames in Mr. Churchill's text, as if war existed for its own sake, and peace must give sureties for good behavior. On what other grounds could Queen Anne's aversion to the war party in parliament in 1708 be denounced as “utterly wrong”? And from what other soil could spring Mr. Churchill's conviction that her “personal interventions hampered the prosecution of the war, and delayed and eventually frustrated a victorious peace” (p. 464)? Evidently Utrecht was not sufficiently victorious, and Mr. Churchill would have preferred a peace dictated in the Hall of the Mirrors. Why else would he maintain that “Queen Anne had now [1708] become her own worst enemy” (p. 540)?

The years 1705-1708 are famous in the annals of England. Mr. Churchill has little of importance to add, in matters of fact, to what has already been established by Coxe, Taylor, and Trevelyan. As in the earlier volumes it is his fresh point of view, his light touch, his zest and wit, the ease with which he moves to and fro between war and politics of the eighteenth and those of the twentieth century, which distinguish Mr. Churchill's narrative and delight the reader. His remark that after the Regency Bill “the Tories lay like beetles on their backs” (p. 35) is the best description of political impotence since Disraeli likened her majesty's government to “a row of extinct volcanoes”. As memorable is a pithy comment on the exodus of Charles XII from history: “The Russian excursion had removed that formidable irrelevancy from the scene” (p. 540). For these and other reasons readers will not repine that Marlborough will come to six volumes instead of the five originally contemplated by the author.