Books: Family Album

THE CHURCHILLS (430 pp.)—A. L. Rowse—Harper ($7.50).

Britain's A. L. Rowse is to history what C. S. Forester is to fiction. Rowse heroes—Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Winston Churchill—all carry the inimitable Horatio Hornblower stamp and are portrayed by Rowse in the way Sir Winston was advised by Lady Lavery to paint: "Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and white, frantic flourish on the palette . . . large, fierce strokes and slashes ... on the absolutely cowering canvas." In the second of his two volumes on the Spencer-Churchill families...