John Spencer-Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill's paternal grandmother and the mother of Randolph Churchill, the 7th Duchess of Marlborough, has been a slight figure in many other people's biographies yet her own story as a member of a remarkable family has never been fully told, until now. Frances Anne Emily Vane-Tempest-Stewart's family background, as well as her own life, is steeped in great historical names and occasions. She was the eldest daughter of the 3rd Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry, two well-known, glamorous individuals: her father was a military hero, second in command to Wellington in the Napoleonic wars, and her mother one of the wealthiest women in England. Her godfather was the Duke of Wellington, her uncle Lord Castlereagh, British Foreign Secretary, Queen Victoria was a lifelong personal friend and contemporary and her political circle included both Disraeli and Gladstone. Tsar Alexander I of Russia was a mysterious, romantic figure among the shadows of her childhood. Frances' arrival at Blenheim Palace in 1843 as the bride of John Winston, 7th Marquess of Blandford resulted in the great ancestral seat's regeneration as a family home, as a social and political focus for the life of the nation and for the neighbourhood of Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Frances the Duchess gave loyal support not only to her husband but also her younger son, Randolph, in his political career, and became a stable and abiding influence on her famous grandson, Winston Churchill, shaping his character, ambitions and later achievements. Her own crowning achievement, fully and dramatically told in this book, is her humanity, leadership and skill, through her Famine Relief Committtee, in averting the effects of the Irish potato famine of 1879, which threatened to repeat the wholesale loss of life of the famine of the 1840s, when she was Vicereine of Ireland. Margaret Elizabeth Forster has found new, original material and unpublished family photographs from the Marlborough personal archives to recount this absorbing, remarkable biography and to restore a most gracious woman to her proper place at Blenheim.

In this detailed and highly entertaining book the author tells of the extraordinary military achievements of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough who successfully conducted twenty-six successful formal sieges during the height of the War of the Spanish Succession. Rivalled by none, this astonishing record has – until now – been eclipsed by the Duke’s great victories in open battle. For the first time a thoroughly researched account of these extensive and bitterly fought campaigns is provided, putting the sieges in the context of the Duke’s wider campaigns and war aims, and giving the reader a thought-provoking analysis of his achievements in siege warfare, which parallel his victories in open battle. The scientific approach developed for use in siege warfare in the early 18th century is fully explored along with an extensive assessment of the methods of the engineer genius, Sebastien le Prestre, Marshal Vauban, who was given the task of defending France’s northern border by King Louis XIV. This fascinating book also includes detailed contemporary plans of Vauban’s fortresses, captured by Marlborough.

This is a detailed analysis of the Duke of Marlborough as a commander set in the context of the military realities of the eighteenth century.