SOURCE: A review of Marlborough: His Life and Times, Vol. IV, in American Historical Review, Vol. 41, No. 2, January 1936, pp. 332-34.

In the following review, Barbour praises Churchill's biography but notes that it is unlikely to endure as a “historical achievement.”

In these volumes [Marlborough: His Life and Times, Volume III, 1702-1704; Volume IV, 1704-1705] Marlborough is seen majestical and triumphant at the climax of his career. Unused letters from the Blenheim archives add something to our knowledge of him as a person, and more to our understanding of the difficulties which gave him more trouble than did the armies of Louis XIV. That the discordant Alliance instead of falling apart, limped along in its inco-ordinate war-making, was the fruit of the duke's inexhaustible patience, “his massive superiority alike over events and men” (III, 233). When all is said, however, he remains fairly inscrutable. “One of the barriers between history...