SOURCE: A review of Marlborough: His Life and Times, Vol. II, in London Mercury, Vol. 31, No. 181, November 1934, pp. 73-74.

In the following review, Haynes offers high praise for Churchill's ability to write a factually accurate and intellectually stimulating biography.

Mr. Churchill's second volume [Marlborough: His Life and Times, Vol. II] is quite up to the standard of the first volume, and it derives an exceptional advantage from the recent discovery of Marlborough's private letters to Godolphin and his wife. Marlborough's efficiency is perhaps his most striking characteristic. Most men with his energy (e.g., Napoleon) are like motor-cars with an engine that is too big for the body; but Marlborough seems never to have lost his balance in affairs and otherwise only when agitated about Sarah. The first pages of the volume about Queen Anne are indeed vivid and brilliant. Queen Anne has unfortunately been dead in most...