Blog
- Was Jennie a bad mother? if so did she become a better mother?
Did she only become interested in WSC when he grew more interesting? Can any parent be truly disinterested in their children’s future?
- Can you justify her anti-suffrage stance?
- What did Winston inherit from his Mother and Jerome genes or from his father and Marlborough genes? Did he at any stage exploit his American inheritance merely for political gain?
- Was Winston manipulative as a child?
- Why do you think he wrote about his mother in the way that he did as a distant mother in MY Early LIFE?
- Do you think Winston’s brother Jack got a raw deal because he was not demanding enough?
- Was Jennie extravagant, selfish and privileged or did she do the best she could with the fist History dealt her?
- Ethics of biography… what right does the biographer have to pry into medical records? Does patient confidentiality extend beyond the grave?
- Do you like Jennie more or less than you thought you would before reading this? Is the book fair to Randolph or does the biographer take a position?
- What would you like to know more about? And do you think Jennie developed as a character?
- How important was the historical background for Jennie’s story? eg The American Civil War, the Siege of Paris, the Boer War and World War 1?
- What if…. Jennie had lived fifty years later?