LIKE his mother, Jennie Jerome, and his cousin-by-marriage Consuelo Vanderbilt, Winston Churchill's Aunt Lily Hammersley was an American heiress whose fortune, it was hoped, would assist in bailing out the Churchill clan's ever shaky finances. Hurriedly wed and brought to England as the newest Duchess of Marlborough, Lily arrived at Blenheim, the family's vast, dilapidated country seat. "The first thing that confronted her," Mary S. Lovell writes in "The Churchills," was a life-size nude of Lady Colin Campbell, her husband's former mistress and divorce co-respondent, painted by Whistler, "which hung in the duke's dressing room." The canvas soon thereafter disappeared from art history. It is widely assumed that Lily had it burned. If the Churchill family name summons up thoughts of oratory, war-making and politics, be aware that its history is equally replete with sex, real estate and emotional turmoil, all efficiently related in this zippy compilation of Churchill family dish over the centuries. Lovell, whose past biographies have treated the Mitford sisters, among other subjects, is frank about relegating D-Day, Yalta and the like to the background, preferring to concentrate on the family's unending domestic tangles. "The world," she explains, "has always thrived on gossip." The Churchill name had its debut on scandal's stage when John Churchill indulged in a fling with the saucy Restoration minx Barbara Villiers, thus cuckolding the reigning Charles II, who kept her as his mistress. Many Churchill men subsequently earned a reputation as cads, not least because the family's extravagance (and in particular the expense of running Blenheim, named for John Churchill's great 1704 battlefield victory, by then as the Duke of Marlborough) drove them to marry for money rather than love. Not that you'd call most of the Churchill wives long-suffering: not the discreetly arsonical Aunt Lily, and much less Winston's femme fatale mother, Jennie, who married Lord Randolph Churchill, younger son of the seventh duke. Jennie's social brilliance as much as her money - her family's holdings included at one point a 25 percent share in The New York Times - fueled Randolph's political career. When that career flamed out in (probably syphilitic) madness and early death, she kept running with the sort of fast London set in which white kid gloves were discarded after a single use and lovers might not be kept for much longer. Her taste for younger men wound up giving young Winston a stepfather his own age. In reaction to such memories or otherwise, he forged a notably stable marriage with his own Clementine. Money problems were a constant, Winston himself having shipped off to the Boer War with, Lovell reports, "a huge quantity of luggage, including 72 cases containing fine French wines" and other potables. At the better sort of country house gatherings, each female guest was expected to change clothes several times daily and each evening gown "must not have been seen before." Yet this display often yielded scant actual fun. Lovell writes that certain young women were "so bored and so cold while staying at Blenheim that they hiked into Woodstock village to send themselves telegrams urging an immediate return home." Meticulously detailed on figures like the ever fascinating Churchill daughter-in-law Pamela Harriman, Lovell softens her focus when it comes to the great man himself. Drink and depression remain mostly offstage. Nor does she probe how the clan's absentee approach to child rearing might have related to the unhappy adult life of three of Winston and Clementine's four grown children. Lovell steers even farther clear of the revisionist literature on both the left and the libertarian right that paints Churchill as a warmonger and political opportunist. Give her due credit, though, for expertly organizing her material at an entertaining pace while dropping every imaginable name as her characters "drive down to Ascot in summer frocks and feathered hats." The book is eminently readable, but the mini-series might be even more entertaining. Many Churchill men were cads, but most of their wives weren't exactly long-suffering. Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America."

Although the central character here may be Winston Churchill, British biographer Lovell (A Rage To Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton) essentially offers a popular biography of several members of the 19th- and 20th-century Churchill family, with less coverage beforehand on the earlier Churchills, such as the original Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Lovell tends to be drawn to strong female characters, and her new book is no exception; she devotes significant attention to American heiresses Jennie Jerome (Winston Churchill's mother) and Consuelo Vanderbilt (his cousin by marriage). Lovell's writing style will keep general readers wanting more, and although the information on Churchill relatives is sometimes scandalous, her treatment of Winston Churchill himself is worshipful. All in all, Lovell delves into the personal rather than the political. Ending her coverage more or less with Winston's and then his wife Clementine's death, she uses mainly published sources to describe a remarkable family that was also quite ordinary in its dysfunction and foibles. VERDICT For a more political look at Winston Churchill, readers should turn to Geoffrey Best's Churchill: A Study in Greatness. Lovell's book is recommended to general readers, especially lovers of accessible historical biography, rather than Churchill specialists.-Maria Bagshaw, Ecolab, St. Paul (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Popular biographer Lovell (The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family, 2001) descends upon the private lives of the denizens of Blenheim Palace, seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. Two reckless Randolphs in the Churchill family frame her narrative, the father of Britain's WWII leader and his son, Randolph, off-line for the ducal title, who marries American money in the form of Jennie Jerome, whose fulsome romantic life has filled many a biography, as indeed have the lives of almost every figure Lovell introduces. More bucks enter Lovell's drama when Winston's cousin, the ninth duke, contracts a remunerative but disastrous marriage with a Vanderbilt. Marital discord presides over Lovell's chronicle, ever prodding scandal-savoring readers on to the next drunken row and divorce. Among these social storms, Winston's partnership with Clementine Hozier stands out as an affectionate anomaly. Not that their children learned by example. Randolph fils drinks, gambles, and alienates his wife (the future Pamela Harriman). His equals in unhappiness are his sisters in their serial matches. Famous lives ever fascinate, and does Lovell ever deliver.--Taylor, Gilber. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Lovell's previous biographical subjects, including Jane Digby and the Mitford sisters, connecting the upper classes of England and their long lists of lovers, mistresses, and scandals to the descendents of the Dukes of Marlborough, can now be seen as little more than preambles to her latest epic work. Preserving Blenheim, John Churchill's Oxfordshire palace built by a "grateful nation" has been the primary goal of the succeeding dukes over its 300-year history. But the Churchills were the first to take advantage of the "dollar princesses" by wedding American heiresses to preserve the immense and very expensive estate. Jenny Jerome did bring capital to her love match with Randolph, but his nephew, Sunny, the ninth duke, hit the jackpot with Consuelo Vanderbilt and her vast fortune. Alas, money and love don't always go hand in hand; few of the Ducal marriages were happy. While Lovell deals with each of the generations from the first Duke of Marlborough through present day, her focus is on Jennie Jerome Churchill and her son, Winston, thanks in part to the plentiful journals they kept. These subjects have been sufficient fodder for numerous biographies but Lovell (The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family) deftly sorts through the existing facts to create a well-researched and gossipy book. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.