Indecent assault on Churchill

Nicholson Baker, an American novelist of limited stature, has taken it upon himself to cut down the titanic figure of Sir Winston Churchill. This might revive the author's fortunes.

His new book is Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II and the End of Civilisation (Simon and Schuster). It is not a novel, but a novel approach to writing history in 'vignettes' arranged to convince the jury of guilt. The crime is RAF bombing.

Baker's claim to fame is his 1992 novel Vox, about telephone sex and masturbation, variously described as 'an erotic classic' and 'overly wordy'.

According to a rave review in Sunday's New York Times, however, Human Smoke is created not as a "new way of amusing himself" but rather "because of a passionate view of how the war against Germany was conducted by Britain under Winston Churchill".

The Victorians believed that masturbation led to blindness. Has Baker's "amusing himself" proved them right?

Here is Baker on Churchill's champagne and brandy: "He wasn't an alcoholic, someone said later - no alcoholic could drink that much." That fleshes out a portrait of the Bulldog as "impetuous, childish, bloodthirsty, fearless, insomniac, bullying" etc etc. But the character is nothing to the crimes: Baker finds a 1920 Churchill memo on using bombs against rebels in Iraq: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."

By 1941, reports Baker, The Great Man is found writing: "One of our great aims is the delivery on German towns of the largest possible quantity of bombs per night." And soon after: "It is time that the Germans should be made to suffer in their own homeland and cities."

There is nothing new in this: Brits have been revisiting the wisdom and morality of the Bomber Command offensive for years. But it is new to blame Sir Winston for the suffering of the Jews. According to Baker, targeting German cities prompted the Nazis to seize Jewish homes for bombed-out Aryans, so hastening their way to the death camps.

The Times review might be right in suggesting that this sort of stuff could "infuriate those who believe that Churchill was a hero in the war". Or even those who do not.

Baker seems a nice enough fellow, growing a white Hemingway beard and trying to scratch a living from his typewriter like the rest of us. But he believes that wicked Roosevelt was goading Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor so he could join Churchill on the Dark Side to "defeat" Germany. He is another victim of the American determination to teach history as propaganda: Germany was defeated not by America but by Russia on the Eastern Front. That was carnage. Baker should stay away from his keyboard until he has read, say, Anthony Beevor's Berlin: The Downfall 1945.

But what is the New York Times's excuse? They gave Baker the front page of their weekly Book Review under the headline 'Their Vilest Hour'. Perhaps they have grown tired of old Winnie since he was hijacked by President Bush and his dreadful Pretender, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But do not blame Churchill for that. ·