ABSTRACT
The letter was indicative of the name recognition concerning the heroic Victorian men of action. Foremost among the Victorian influences on the young Churchill was a pervasive sense of historical continuity that stretched beyond the Victorian years. In fact, it was precisely because he lacked the very mental and physical traits that were the quintessential staples of the British public schoolboy and the Victorian man of action that Churchill persevered, forcing him to go against his inner nature. In the 1930s as he researched and wrote his history of Marlborough, Churchill returned again and again to his ancestor's combination of mental, moral, and physical qualities adapted to action which were so lifted above the common run as to seem almost godlike. Instead, Churchill created an imaginary world of action steeped in Victorian visions with such power and coherence and imposed it on the external world with such irresistible force that for a short time it became reality.
