THEIR FINEST OUR

Winston Churchill has had many biographers (including himself), but no writer captured him with as many trumpets Jts as William Manchester, who died in 2004. He divided Churchill's life into three parts, but after the first two volumes of The Last Lion came out in the 1980s, Manchester suffered two strokes and announced that he could not complete the last book. He asked a friend of his, Paul Reid, to finish. One could be forgiven for thinking that disappointment would result, since Reid, for many years a writer for The Palm Beach Post, had never written a book of narrative history. So much for assumptions. Thanks to a deep interest in World War II and an ability to decipher Manchester's cuneiform-like notes, Reid has produced a third Last Lion (subtitled Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965; Little, Brown) that is both magisterial and humane. Cue the trumpets.

JIM KELLY