WINSTON AND THE CHURCHILL DYNASTY - The Uncensored Story, by John Pearson (Pan, $119).
ASURE-FIRE method for a would-be serious biographer to shoot himself in the foot, is to slap on a red ''The Uncensored Story'' stamp, setting the scene for a trashy, muck-raking exercise.
It is soon obvious John Pearson intends something more serious than the condensed soap-opera of unhappy families into which this biography of Winston Churchill disintegrates.
The intention is sound enough: most biographies have laid a heavy emphasis on the military, political and historical aspects of his career while blocking out a perspective of the emotional shipwreck of the Marlborough dynasty which careens through the generations.
Of the four Churchill children, only the youngest, Mary Soames, survives and flourishes.
Diana, the eldest, killed herself at the age of 54, two years before her father died, while Sarah, who had been Churchill's breezy, rebellious favourite, died an alcoholic at 67, still clinging with infinite pathos to the family wreckage: ''I don't mind going, because I know papa is waiting''.