Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of
Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, named the five best books on love and marriage for
Opinion Journal.
Number five on her list:
Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage by Mary Soames
Shy, beautiful, insecure, 23-year old Clementine Hozier married a force of nature named Winston Churchill. In this sympathetic but unsentimental biography of her mother, Mary Soames chronicles a marriage that was, from the very start, overwhelming in its emotional and social demands, consuming in its political ambitions, extravagantly impractical in money matters, and burdened by frequent separations. Yet it was the daunting circumstances of her marriage that led Clementine to shed her shyness and to develop her own capacity for politics and public life. During the war, she became an admired public figure, tirelessly raising money for aid to the Russians and for hostels, maternity homes and bomb shelters, all the while remaining fiercely protective of her husband and family. Despite her fragile beauty, she was made of steel or, as Winston would have it, of stone. '"I reproach myself for many shortcomings," he once wrote to her. "You are a rock & I depend on you & rest on you."
Read about
Whitehead's top four titles.
--Marshal Zeringue
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