BIOGRAPHY TRAVESTIED
course Mark Goulden is concerned with accuracy—he is abroad, of he would otherwise be able to say so himself, but he preferred to leave, it to the author of My Darling Clementine (who unfor- tunately is also abroad) to answer Randolph Churchill in detail.
Mr. Churchill based his scathing criticism of the book on a list of 'errors' (a few of which had inci- dentally already been altered in the second edition), the majority of which (assuming Mr. Churchill to be correct about them) were extremely trivial. Only a few might be matters of substance, and what clearly annoyed Mr. Goulden was that they were paraded (about thirty of them, described as 'the most glaring') as though their existence in a popular biography of over 400 pages rendered the entire book worthless.
Mr. Churchill described My Darling Clementine and The Yankee Marlborough as 'meretricious, inaccurate, implausible, intrusive and impertinent.' These last two adjectives are significant. Can it be that Mr. Churchill regards his family as his own private preserve, as if they were not in the public eye, and resents that anyone but himself should write about them?
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