The Book of Three The Chronicles of Prydain, Book 1 by Lloyd Alexander.Next episode: Marian and Lissa will read and discuss two fantasy books written for youth, which Marian read in her youth and Lissa has not read. Could this book, The Splendid and the Vile, or the original speeches by Churchill, or some of the letters or diaries– be something for a sacred reading/discussion? What would we each want to choose as a sacred text?.Reading about other people improves our ability to understand and cooperate with others and ultimately to understand ourselves.

We are both currently reading The Power of Ritual: How to Create Meaning and Connection in Everything You Do by Casper ter Kuile and bringing some of the sacred reading suggestions into our discussion here. Why did it take each of us so long to read this book?.What can we learn as writers from this book? How does this story turn reality into an exciting/interesting narrative that follows the “rules” of fiction?.Does this make you want to keep a detailed diary? How will personal text messages or emails be treated in future memoirs and historical record?.How real is real, even when exhaustively researched?.Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports–some released only recently–Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally–and willing to fight to the end. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium.

The vile and the splendid