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By Richard Aldous

• Nov. 13, 2018

CHURCHILL Walking With Destiny By Andrew Roberts Illustrated. 1,105 pp. Viking. $40.

In April 1955, on the final weekend before he left office for the last time, Winston Churchill had the vast canvas of Peter Paul Rubens’s “The Lion and the Mouse” taken down from the Great Hall at the prime ministerial retreat of Chequers. He had always found the depiction of the mouse too indistinct, so he retrieved his paint brushes and set about “improving” on the work of Rubens by making the hazy rodent clearer. “If that is not courage,” Lord Mountbatten, the First Sea Lord, said later, “I do not know what is.”

Lack of courage was never Churchill’s problem. As a young man he was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery fighting alongside the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier , and subsequently he took part in the last significant cavalry charge in British history at the Battle of Omdurman in central Sudan . In middle age he served in the trenches of World War I, during which time a German high-explosive shell came in through the roof of his dugout and blew his mess orderly’s head clean off. Later, as prime minister during World War II, and by now in his mid-60s, he thought nothing of visiting bomb sites during the Blitz or crossing the treacherous waters of the Atlantic to see President Roosevelt despite the very real chance of being torpedoed by German U-boats.

Churchill had political courage too, not least as one of the few to oppose the appeasement of Hitler. Many had thought him a warmonger and even a traitor. “I have always felt,” said that scion of the Establishment, Lord Ponsonby, at the time of the Munich debate in 1938, “that in a crisis he is one of the first people who ought to be interned.” Instead, when the moment of supreme crisis came in 1940, the British people turned to him for leadership. Here was his ultimate projection of courage: that Britain would “never surrender.”

If courage was not the issue, lack of judgment often was. Famous military disasters attached to his name, including Antwerp in 1914 , the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) in 1915 and Narvik in 1940 . So too did political controversies, like turning up in person to instruct the police during a violent street battle with anarchists, defying John Maynard Keynes in returning Britain to the gold standard or rashly supporting Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. His views on race and empire were anachronistic even for those times. The carpet bombing of German cities during World War II; the “naughty document” that handed over Romania and Bulgaria to Stalin; comparing the Labour Party to the Gestapo — the list of Churchillian controversies goes on. Each raised questions about his temperament and character. His drinking habits also attracted comment.

Such is the challenge facing any biographer of Churchill: how to weigh in the balance a life filled with so much triumph and disaster, adulation and contempt. The historian Andrew Roberts’s insight about Churchill’s relation to fate in “Churchill: Walking With Destiny” comes directly from the subject himself. “I felt as if I were walking with destiny,” Churchill wrote of that moment in May 1940 when he achieved the highest office. But the story Roberts tells is more sophisticated and in the end more satisfying. “For although he was indeed walking with destiny in May 1940, it was a destiny that he had consciously spent a lifetime shaping,” Roberts writes, adding that Churchill learned from his mistakes, and “put those lessons to use during civilization’s most testing hour.” Experience and reflection on painful failures, while less glamorous than a fate written in the stars, turn out to be the key ingredients in Churchill’s ultimate success.

He did not get off to a particularly happy start. His erratic and narcissistic father, Lord Randolph Churchill, saw the boy as “among the second rate and third rate,” predicting that his life would “degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence.” His American mother, Jennie, was often not much kinder, sending letters to him at Harrow that must have arrived like a Howler in a Harry Potter novel. Parental judgments became an obvious spur to fame and attention. “Few,” Roberts writes, “have set out with more coldblooded deliberation to become first a hero and then a Great Man.”

After stints in Cuba, India and Sudan, Churchill achieved instant fame during the Boer War after a daring escape from a South African P.O.W. camp in 1899. That renown propelled him into Parliament, where he soon added notoriety to his reputation by crossing the floor of the House of Commons, abandoning the Conservative Party for the Liberals. Thereafter, wrote his friend Violet, daughter of the future prime minister H. H. Asquith, he was viewed as “a rat, a turncoat, an arriviste and, worst crime of all, one who had certainly arrived.” “We are all worms,” Churchill told her. “But I do believe that I am a glowworm.”

And glow he did, becoming in 1908, at 33, the youngest cabinet member in 40 years and subsequently the youngest home secretary since Peel in 1822. As First Lord of the Admiralty he was credited with making the navy ready for war — his single most important achievement in government before 1940. Even when disaster befell him, Churchill always managed to bounce back. A new prime minister, David Lloyd George, returned him to the wartime cabinet despite the catastrophe of the Dardanelles. When the Liberal Party disintegrated after the rise of Labour, Churchill conveniently “re-ratted” back to the Conservatives, where Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put him unhappily in charge of the nation’s finances.

By the late 1930s, out of office and despised for his opposition to appeasement, Churchill seemed finished once and for all. But he was ready. “The Dardanelles catastrophe taught him not to overrule the Chiefs of Staff,” Roberts writes, “the General Strike and Tonypandy taught him to leave industrial relations during the Second World War to Labour’s Ernest Bevin; the Gold Standard disaster taught him to reflate and keep as much liquidity in the financial system as the exigencies of wartime would allow.”

Less well known is that Churchill also learned from his successes. Cryptographical breakthroughs at the Admiralty during World War I led him to back Alan Turing and the Ultra decrypters in the second war; the anti-U-boat campaign of 1917 instructed him about the convoy system; his earlier advocacy of the tank encouraged him to support the development of new weaponry. Research for a life of Marlborough (a book that Leo Strauss called the greatest historical work of the 20th century) taught Churchill the value of international alliances in wartime.

If Churchill’s entire life was a preparation for 1940, “the man and the moment only just coincided.” He was 65 years old when he became prime minister and had only just re-entered front-line politics after a decade out of office. It would be like Tony Blair returning to 10 Downing Street today, ready to put lessons learned during the Iraq war to work. Had Hitler delayed by a few years, Roberts suggests, Churchill would surely have been away from front-rank politics too long to “make himself the one indispensable figure.”

Experience certainly did not make success inevitable. In France, Marshal Pétain, revered as the “Lion of Verdun” for his glorious career in World War I, made all the wrong decisions as prime minister from June 1940 onward, equating peace with occupation and collaboration.

Churchill was the anti-Pétain, but what was it that made him “indispensable”? Hope, certainly, and an ability to communicate resolve with both clarity and force. Recordings of wartime speeches can still provoke goose bumps. In the end, Roberts sums up Churchill’s overriding achievement in a single sentence: It was “not that he stopped a German invasion … but that he stopped the British government from making a peace.”

That turned out to be the whole ballgame. After the Battle of Britain was won and, first, the Russians and, then, the Americans came into the war, Churchill knew that “time and patience will give certain victory.” But it also meant a gradual relegation to second if not third place. Britain had entered the war as the most prestigious of the world’s great powers. By its conclusion, having lost about a quarter of its national wealth in fighting the war, Britain had become the fraction in the Big Two and a Half, and was effectively bust. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Roberts tells this story with great authority and not a little panache. He writes elegantly, with enjoyable flashes of tartness, and is in complete command both of his sources and the vast historiography. For a book of a thousand pages, there are surprisingly no longueurs . Roberts is admiring of Churchill, but not uncritically so. Often he lays out the various debates before the reader so that we can draw different conclusions to his own. Essentially a conservative realist, he sees political and military controversies through the lens of the art of the possible. Only once does he really bristle, when Churchill says of Stalin in 1945, “I like that man.” “Where was the Churchill of 1931,” he laments, “who had denounced Stalin’s ‘morning’s budget of death warrants’?”

Some may find Roberts’s emphasis on politics and war old-fashioned, indistinguishable, say, from the approach taken almost half a century ago by Henry Pelling. He is out of step with much of the best British history being written today, where the likes of Dominic Sandbrook, Or Rosenboim and John Bew have successfully blended cultural and intellectual history with the study of high politics. But it would be foolish to say Roberts made the wrong choice. He is Thucydidean in viewing decisions about war and politics, politics and war as the crux of the matter. A life defined by politics here rightly gets a political life. All told, it must surely be the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written.

Richard Aldous, the author of “Reagan and Thatcher” and “Schlesinger,” teaches at Bard.

Winston Churchill

(1874-1965)

Who Was Winston Churchill?

Early years.

Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.

From an early age, young Churchill displayed the traits of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a British statesman from an established English family, and his mother, Jeanette "Jennie" Jerome, an independent-minded New York socialite.

Churchill grew up in Dublin, Ireland, where his father was employed by his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer-Churchill.

Churchill proved to be an independent and rebellious student; after performing poorly at his first two schools, Churchill in April 1888 began attending Harrow School, a boarding school near London. Within weeks of his enrollment, he joined the Harrow Rifle Corps, putting him on a path to a military career.

At first, it didn't seem the military was a good choice for Churchill; it took him three tries to pass the exam for the British Royal Military College. However, once there, he fared well and graduated 20th in his class of 130.

Up to this time, his relationship with both his mother and father was distant, though he adored them both. While at school, Churchill wrote emotional letters to his mother, begging her to come see him, but she seldom came.

His father died when he was 21, and it was said that Churchill knew him more by reputation than by any close relationship they shared.

Military Career

Churchill enjoyed a brief but eventful career in the British Army at a zenith of British military power. He joined the Fourth Queen's Own Hussars in 1895 and served in the Indian northwest frontier and the Sudan, where he saw action in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

While in the Army, he wrote military reports for the Pioneer Mail and the Daily Telegraph , and two books on his experiences, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899).

In 1899, Churchill left the Army and worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post , a conservative daily newspaper. While reporting on the Boer War in South Africa, he was taken prisoner by the Boers during a scouting expedition.

He made headlines when he escaped, traveling almost 300 miles to Portuguese territory in Mozambique. Upon his return to Britain, he wrote about his experiences in the book London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900).

Parliament and Cabinet

In 1900, Churchill became a member of the British Parliament in the Conservative Party for Oldham, a town in Manchester. Following his father into politics, he also followed his father's sense of independence, becoming a supporter of social reform.

Unconvinced that the Conservative Party was committed to social justice, Churchill switched to the Liberal Party in 1904. He was elected a member of Parliament in 1908 and was appointed to the prime minister's cabinet as president of the Board of Trade.

As president of the Board of Trade, Churchill joined newly appointed Chancellor David Lloyd George in opposing the expansion of the British Navy. He introduced several reforms for the prison system, introduced the first minimum wage and helped set up labor exchanges and unemployment insurance.

Churchill also assisted in the passing of the People's Budget, which introduced taxes on the wealthy to pay for new social welfare programs. The budget passed in the House of Commons in 1909 and was initially defeated in the House of Lords before being passed in 1910.

In January 1911, Churchill showed his tougher side when he made a controversial visit to a police siege in London, with two alleged robbers holed up in a building.

Churchill's degree of participation is still in some dispute: Some accounts have him going to the scene only to see for himself what was going on; others state that he allegedly gave directions to police on how to best storm the building.

What is known is that the house caught fire during the siege and Churchill prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing the flames, stating that he thought it better to "let the house burn down," rather than risk lives rescuing the occupants. The bodies of the two robbers were later found inside the charred ruins.

Wife and Children

In 1908, Winston Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier after a short courtship.

The couple had five children together: Diana, Randolph, Sarah, Marigold (who died as a toddler of tonsillitis) and Mary.

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First Lord of the Admiralty

Named First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill helped modernize the British Navy, ordering that new warships be built with oil-fired instead of coal-fired engines.

He was one of the first to promote military aircraft and set up the Royal Navy Air Service. He was so enthusiastic about aviation that he took flying lessons himself to understand firsthand its military potential.

Churchill also drafted a controversial piece of legislation to amend the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, mandating sterilization of the feeble-minded. The bill, which mandated only the remedy of confinement in institutions, eventually passed in both houses of Parliament.

World War I

Churchill remained in his post as First Lord of the Admiralty through the start of World War I , but was forced out for his part in the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli . He resigned from the government toward the end of 1915.

For a brief period, Churchill rejoined the British Army, commanding a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front and seeing action in "no man's land."

In 1917, he was appointed minister of munitions for the final year of the war, overseeing the production of tanks, airplanes and munitions.

After World War I

From 1919 to 1922, Churchill served as minister of war and air and colonial secretary under Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

As colonial secretary, Churchill was embroiled in another controversy when he ordered air power to be used on rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq, a British territory. At one point, he suggested that poisonous gas be used to put down the rebellion, a proposal that was considered but never enacted.

Fractures in the Liberal Party led to the defeat of Churchill as a member of Parliament in 1922, and he rejoined the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, returning Britain to the gold standard, and took a hard line against a general labor strike that threatened to cripple the British economy.

With the defeat of the Conservative government in 1929, Churchill was out of government. He was perceived as a right-wing extremist, out of touch with the people.

In the 1920s, after his ouster from government, Churchill took up painting. “Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time,” he later wrote.

Churchill went on to create over 500 paintings, typically working en plein air , though also practicing with still lifes and portraits. He claimed that painting helped him with his powers of observation and memory.

Sutherland Portrait

Churchill himself was the subject of a famous - and famously controversial - portrait by renowned artist Graham Sutherland.

Commissioned in 1954 by members of Parliament to mark Churchill's 80th birthday, the portrait was first unveiled in a public ceremony in Westminster Hall, where it met with considerable derision and laughter.

The unflattering modernist painting was reportedly loathed by Churchill and members of his family. Churchill's wife Clementine had the Sutherland portrait secretly destroyed in a bonfire several months after it was delivered to their country estate, Chartwell , in Kent.

'Wilderness Years'

Through the 1930s, known as his "wilderness years," Churchill concentrated on his writing, publishing a memoir and a biography of the First Duke of Marlborough.

During this time, he also began work on his celebrated A History of the English-Speaking Peoples , though it wouldn't be published for another two decades.

As activists in 1930s India clamored for independence from British rule, Churchill cast his lot with opponents of independence. He held particular scorn for Mahatma Gandhi , stating that "it is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer ... striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace ... to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."

• World War II

Although Churchill didn't initially see the threat posed by Adolf Hitler 's rise to power in the 1930s, he gradually became a leading advocate for British rearmament.

By 1938, as Germany began controlling its neighbors, Churchill had become a staunch critic of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement toward the Nazis.

On September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the war cabinet; by April 1940, he became chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee.

Later that month, Germany invaded and occupied Norway, a setback for Chamberlain, who had resisted Churchill's proposal that Britain preempt German aggression by unilaterally occupying vital Norwegian iron mines and seaports.

Prime Minister

On May 10, 1940, Chamberlain resigned and King George VI appointed Churchill as prime minister and minister of defense.

Within hours, the German army began its Western Offensive, invading the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Two days later, German forces entered France. As clouds of war darkened over Europe, Britain stood alone against the onslaught.

Churchill was to serve as prime minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945, leading the country through World War II until Germany’s surrender.

Battle of Britain

Quickly, Churchill formed a coalition cabinet of leaders from the Labor, Liberal and Conservative parties. He placed intelligent and talented men in key positions.

On June 18, 1940, Churchill made one of his iconic speeches to the House of Commons, warning that "the Battle of Britain " was about to begin. Churchill kept resistance to Nazi dominance alive and created the foundation for an alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union.

Churchill had previously cultivated a relationship with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, and by March 1941, he was able to secure vital U.S. aid through the Lend Lease Act , which allowed Britain to order war goods from the United States on credit.

After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Churchill was confident that the Allies would eventually win the war. In the months that followed, Churchill worked closely with Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to forge an Allied war strategy and postwar world.

In a meeting in Tehran (1943), at the Yalta Conference (1945) and the Potsdam Conference (1945), Churchill collaborated with the two leaders to develop a united strategy against the Axis Powers and helped craft the postwar world with the United Nations as its centerpiece.

As the war wound down, Churchill proposed plans for social reforms in Britain but was unable to convince the public. Despite Germany's surrender on May 7, 1945, Churchill was defeated in the general election in July 1945.

'Iron Curtain' Speech

In the six years after Churchill’s defeat, he became the leader of the opposition party and continued to have an impact on world affairs.

In March 1946, while on a visit to the United States, he made his famous "Iron Curtain" speech , warning of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. He also advocated that Britain remain independent from European coalitions.

With the general election of 1951, Churchill returned to government. He became prime minister for the second time in October 1951 and served as minister of defense between October 1951 and March 1952.

Churchill went on to introduce reforms such as the Mines and Quarries Act of 1954, which improved working conditions in mines, and the Housing Repairs and Rent Act of 1955, which established standards for housing.

These domestic reforms were overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises in the colonies of Kenya and Malaya, where Churchill ordered direct military action. While successful in putting down the rebellions, it became clear that Britain was no longer able to sustain its colonial rule.

Nobel Prize

In 1953, Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II .

The same year, he was named the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values," according to the Nobel Prize committee.

Churchill died on January 24, 1965, at age 90, in his London home nine days after suffering a severe stroke. Britain mourned for more than a week.

Churchill had shown signs of fragile health as early as 1941 when he suffered a heart attack while visiting the White House. Two years later, he had a similar attack while battling a bout of pneumonia.

In June 1953, at age 78, he endured a series of strokes at his office. That particular news was kept from the public and Parliament, with the official announcement stating that he had suffered from exhaustion.

Churchill recuperated at home and returned to his work as prime minister in October. However, it was apparent even to the great statesman that he was physically and mentally slowing down, and he retired as prime minister in 1955. Churchill remained a member of Parliament until the general election of 1964 when he did not seek reelection.

There was speculation that Churchill suffered from Alzheimer's disease in his final years, though medical experts pointed to his earlier strokes as the likely cause of reduced mental capacity.

Despite his poor health, Churchill was able to remain active in public life, albeit mostly from the comfort of his homes in Kent and Hyde Park Gate in London.

As with other influential world leaders, Churchill left behind a complicated legacy.

Honored by his countrymen for defeating the dark regime of Hitler and the Nazi Party , he topped the list of greatest Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll, outlasting other luminaries like Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare .

To critics, his steadfast commitment to British imperialism and his withering opposition to independence for India underscored his disdain for other races and cultures.

Churchill Movies and Books

Churchill has been the subject of numerous portrayals on the big and small screen over the years, with actors from Richard Burton to Christian Slater taking a crack at capturing his essence. John Lithgow delivered an acclaimed performance as Churchill in the Netflix series The Crown , winning an Emmy for his work in 2017.

That year also brought the release of two biopics: In June, Brian Cox starred in the titular role of Churchill , about the events leading up to the World War II invasion of Normandy. Gary Oldman took his turn by undergoing an eye-popping physical transformation to become the iconic statesman in Darkest Hour .

Churchill's standing as a towering figure of the 20th century is such that his two major biographies required multiple authors and decades of research between volumes. William Manchester published volume 1 of The Last Lion in 1983 and volume 2 in 1986, but died while working on part 3; it was finally completed by Paul Reid in 2012.

The official biography, Winston S. Churchill , was begun by the former prime minister's son Randolph in the early 1960s; it passed on to Martin Gilbert in 1968, and then into the hands of an American institution, Hillsdale College , some three decades later. In 2015, Hillsdale published volume 18 of the series.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Winston Churchill
• Birth Year: 1874
• Birth date: November 30, 1874
• Birth City: Blenheim Palace, Woodstock
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Winston Churchill was a British military leader and statesman. Twice named prime minister of Great Britain, he helped to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.
• World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Harrow School
• Brunswick School
• Royal Military College (Academy) at Sandhurst
• St. George's School
• Interesting Facts
• Winston Churchill was a prolific writer and author and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
• Churchill was a son of a British statesman father and an American socialite mother.
• In 1963 President JFK bestowed Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship, the first time a president gave such an award to a foreign national.
• Death Year: 1965
• Death date: January 24, 1965
• Death City: Hyde Park Gate, London
• Death Country: England

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Winston Churchill Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/winston-churchill
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 22, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
• I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
• A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
• Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities ... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

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Paul Addison's top 10 books on Churchill

Paul Addison is director of the centre for second world war studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is a former visiting fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the author of Churchill: The Unexpected Hero recently published by Oxford University Press.

1 My Early Life by Winston Churchill

My top 10 have not been arranged in order of merit - but if they had been, this would still be number one. The best source on the making of Winston Churchill is still Churchill himself. Written in late middle age, his autobiography recalled his unhappy childhood and his youthful quest for glory as a soldier and war correspondent. A classic adventure story, it was also a lament for a vanished age of aristocracy and empire.

2. Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (Various)

First published in 1969, this sparkling collection of essays anatomised Churchill's qualities as a statesman (AJP Taylor), politician (Robert Rhodes James), historian (JH Plumb), military strategist (Basil Liddell Hart) and depressive human being (Anthony Storr). Research has moved on since then, but as an analysis of the essential Churchill the book has never been surpassed. It founded the British school of Churchillians who admire him 'warts and all'.

3. In Search of Churchill by Martin Gilbert

Political biography was a gentlemanly affair of delving into one or two archives until Martin Gilbert came on the scene. As Churchill's official biographer he set rigorous new standards of research, working through scores of manuscript collections and travelling far and wide in search of new material. The six volumes of his life are a towering achievement but not many people have the leisure, this side of retirement, to savour all 7,285 pages. In the meantime there could be no better introduction than Gilbert's highly entertaining account of his methods of writing, and his search for buried treasure: eye witnesses whose recollections had never been recorded, and caches of documents that had lain hidden for decades.

4. Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter by Mary Soames

Denis Healey used to say that every politician needs a hinterland - an absorbing outside interest beyond the world of Westminster. Churchill found it in painting. He seldom travelled without his brushes and oils and the moment he set up his easel he was lost to the world. Churchill never claimed to be a great artist but he delighted in the landscapes he saw on his travels, domestic scenes from his home at Chartwell, and portraits of his family and friends. The story of his life as a painter, delightfully told by his daughter Mary Soames, is a revelation of the private self who kept the statesman human.

5. Churchill and Secret Service by David Stafford

Churchill's lifelong fascination with secret intelligence is the theme of this riveting book which covers everything from his first encounter with the 'Great Game' on the north-west frontier to his involvement in the Anglo-American inspired coup that led to the overthrow of Mussadiq in Iran in 1953. Though Stafford is at pains to disprove some of the conspiracy theories which implicate Churchill in episodes like the sinking of the Lusitania or the attack on Pearl Harbor, he shows that Churchill played a crucial part in the development of the intelligence services and was no mean hand with a cloak and dagger.

6. Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and his Legend since 1945 by John Ramsden

Ramsden has added a new dimension to Churchill studies with a richly detailed analysis of the growth of his legend since 1945. His book sets out "to understand how that fame was created, perceived, marketed, spun and in some cases even fabricated." In the course of a fascinating conducted tour of perceptions of Churchill around the English-speaking world, Ramsden identifies the publicists and politicians who constructed the legend and the monuments and memorabilia which celebrated him. Such is his eye for detail that he even remarks on Churchill's unassailable lead in commemorative Toby jugs: 22 different designs compared with two each for Baldwin, Chamberlain and Lloyd George.

7. In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War by David Reynolds

In writing his war memoirs Churchill had two main aims. The first was to make a fortune for himself and his family while protecting it from the taxman. The second was to create a useable past that would vindicate his judgment as a war leader and assist his activities as a postwar statesman. In a masterly feat of sustained scholarly analysis Reynolds explains how Churchill achieved a triumphant success on both counts. In anyone else Churchill's profiteering, manipulation of the documents, and unacknowledged use of ghost writers would look disreputable, but all is forgiven the saviour of his country.

8. Churchill: The End of Glory by John Charmley

The furore over the so-called 'Charmley thesis' - the case for a compromise peace with Hitler in 1940 - has distracted attention from an otherwise perceptive political life grounded in a coherent critique of Churchill's flaws, and a far from ungenerous appreciation of his abilities. Charmley adopts the sceptical view of Churchill held by most of his contemporaries before 1939, and extends it to apply to his conduct of the war - a debatable but stimulating exercise.

9. The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America and the Origins of the Cold War by Fraser J Harbutt

It is no secret that Churchill is revered by many Americans as a philosopher king and role model for leadership. Whereas in Britain we see him as a man of the past, he is admired in the US as a guide to the present and future. Churchill's unique stature on the other side of the Atlantic owes something to his wartime alliance with Roosevelt, but as Fraser Harbutt shows in a powerfully argued book, the decisive factor was the part Churchill played, while he was out of office, in facilitating the entry of the US into the cold war. The tipping point was his 'iron curtain' speech at Fulton in March 1946.

10. Churchill by Roy Jenkins; Churchill: A Study in Greatness by Geoffrey Best

The competition for the title of best one volume life of Churchill is intense and the result, it seems to me, is a tie between Roy Jenkins and Geoffrey Best. Both authors are comprehensive, accurate, and stylish, but in different ways. Jenkins brings to the subject a veteran politician's feel for office and power, a worldly appreciation of Churchill's love of the good life, and an encyclopaedic appetite for detail. His account is richly descriptive but tends to stick to the surface of events. Best is a more reflective and speculative writer with a historian's flair for the insights that lie just beyond the tangible evidence. By different routes both authors come to the same conclusion, or as Best puts it: 'His achievements, taken all in all, justify his title to be known as the greatest Englishman of his age...in this later time we are diminished if, admitting Churchill's failings and failures, we can no longer appreciate his virtues and victories.'

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Winston Churchill

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 7, 2019 | Original: October 27, 2009

Winston Churchill was one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated himself to public service. His legacy is a complicated one: He was an idealist and a pragmatist; an orator and a soldier; an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist; a defender of democracy – especially during World War II – as well as of Britain’s fading empire. But for many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Winston Churchill is simply a hero.

Winston Churchill came from a long line of English aristocrat-politicians. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was descended from the First Duke of Marlborough and was himself a well-known figure in Tory politics in the 1870s and 1880s.

His mother, born Jennie Jerome, was an American heiress whose father was a stock speculator and part-owner of The New York Times. (Rich American girls like Jerome who married European noblemen were known as “dollar princesses.”)

Did you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II.

Churchill was born at the family’s estate near Oxford on November 30, 1874. He was educated at the Harrow prep school, where he performed so poorly that he did not even bother to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, in 1893 young Winston Churchill headed off to military school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Battles and Books

After he left Sandhurst, Churchill traveled all around the British Empire as a soldier and as a journalist. In 1896, he went to India; his first book, published in 1898, was an account of his experiences in India’s Northwest Frontier Province.

In 1899, the London Morning Post sent him to cover the Boer War in South Africa, but he was captured by enemy soldiers almost as soon as he arrived. (News of Churchill’s daring escape through a bathroom window made him a minor celebrity back home in Britain.)

By the time he returned to England in 1900, the 26-year-old Churchill had published five books.

Churchill: “Crossing the Chamber”

That same year, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a Conservative. Four years later, he “crossed the chamber” and became a Liberal.

His work on behalf of progressive social reforms such as an eight-hour workday, a government-mandated minimum wage, a state-run labor exchange for unemployed workers and a system of public health insurance infuriated his Conservative colleagues, who complained that this new Churchill was a traitor to his class.

Churchill and Gallipoli

In 1911, Churchill turned his attention away from domestic politics when he became the First Lord of the Admiralty (akin to the Secretary of the Navy in the U.S.). Noting that Germany was growing more and more bellicose, Churchill began to prepare Great Britain for war: He established the Royal Naval Air Service, modernized the British fleet and helped invent one of the earliest tanks.

Despite Churchill’s prescience and preparation, World War I was a stalemate from the start. In an attempt to shake things up, Churchill proposed a military campaign that soon dissolved into disaster: the 1915 invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.

Churchill hoped that this offensive would drive Turkey out of the war and encourage the Balkan states to join the Allies, but Turkish resistance was much stiffer than he had anticipated. After nine months and 250,000 casualties, the Allies withdrew in disgrace.

After the debacle at Gallipoli, Churchill left the Admiralty.

Churchill Between the Wars

During the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill bounced from government job to government job, and in 1924 he rejoined the Conservatives. Especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again.

Likewise, the British government ignored Churchill’s warnings and did all it could to stay out of Hitler’s way. In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement giving Germany a chunk of Czechoslovakia – “throwing a small state to the wolves,” Churchill scolded – in exchange for a promise of peace.

A year later, however, Hitler broke his promise and invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war. Chamberlain was pushed out of office, and Winston Churchill took his place as prime minister in May 1940.

Churchill: The “British Bulldog”

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister.

“We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

Just as Churchill predicted, the road to victory in World War II was long and difficult: France fell to the Nazis in June 1940. In July, German fighter planes began three months of devastating air raids on Britain herself.

Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide war supplies – ammunition, guns, tanks, planes – to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war.

Though Churchill was one of the chief architects of the Allied victory, war-weary British voters ousted the Conservatives and their prime minister from office just two months after Germany’s surrender in 1945.

The Iron Curtain

The now-former prime minister spent the next several years warning Britons and Americans about the dangers of Soviet expansionism.

In a speech in Fulton, Missouri , in 1946, for example, Churchill declared that an anti-democratic “Iron Curtain,” “a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization,” had descended across Europe. Churchill’s speech was the first time anyone had used that now-common phrase to describe the Communist threat.

In 1951, 77-year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister for the second time. He spent most of this term working (unsuccessfully) to build a sustainable détente between the East and the West. He retired from the post in 1955.

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth made Winston Churchill a knight of the Order of the Garter. He died in 1965, one year after retiring from Parliament.

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Official Biography

• The Churchill Documents
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• Bibliography
• Annotated Bibliography: Works About WSC
• The Churchill Timeline,1874-1977
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Winston S. Churchill

by Randolph S. Churchill and Martin Gilbert

“A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement… rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author

“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

“Confronted with this mighty ocean of narrative, the only possible response is total immersion. The great tidal wave of detail plunges the reader almost involuntarily into Churchill’s life….It is a Churchilliad, and Gilbert is its bard.” —Simon Schama, The New Republic

Volume I, Youth, 1874-1900

This wonderfully readable volume was received with broad praise. Generally positive, though not without criticism, it reflects the theme of the work, “he shall be his own biographer,” but Randolph Churchill adds his own literary style, thoroughly documented with “wonderful grub” provided by his dedicated researchers, including his ultimate successor, Martin Gilbert. The text covers the years from Churchill’s birth in 1874, his education at Harrow and Sandhurst, his early adventures as a war correspondent and sensational escape during the Boer War, his North American lecture tour, and his entry into Parliament. The term “official” does not mean that the biographers were required to stick to an authorized line or avoid certain subjects; rather, that they were allowed unprecedented access to the Churchill archive from which the biography is largely drawn. Buy Now >

Volume II, Young Statesman, 1901-1914

The last volume written by Randolph Churchill traces the story of his father’s entry into Parliament as a Conservative, aged twenty-six. An independent spirit and rebel, Churchill is praised for his maiden speech by the Leader of the Opposition. His lifelong collegiality toward the opposite party is soon in evidence. Finally, in 1904, he breaks with the Conservatives over Free Trade, which he ardently supports. “Crossing the floor” to the Liberals with his usual good timing, Churchill holds increasingly important cabinet positions in the great Liberal governments of 1906-14. The volume details his work as a crusading Home Secretary, his key role in reforming the House of Lords, his advocacy of Irish Home Rule, and his arrival at the Admiralty, where he prepares the Royal Navy for war with Germany. Buy Now >

Volume III, The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Martin Gilbert, appointed official biographer after Randolph’s death in 1968, now begins an almost day by day chronology of Churchill’s life, concentrating on the first perilous years of World War I. We begin with Churchill leading the Admiralty in early battles with the German fleet, moving to the epic failure of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, when Churchill falls from power and is exiled to Belgian trenches as “the escaped scapegoat.” Detailed accounts describe Churchill the warrior, including his efforts to prolong the siege of Antwerp, to develop the expanded use of air power, and to promote his concept for what he calls a “land caterpillar,” soon to be known as the tank. In Flanders, he heads a battalion of Scots Fusiliers—at first unwelcome, later beloved by them all. Buy Now >

Volume IV, World in Torment, 1916-1922

This meticulous account of Churchill’s wide-ranging activities toward the end of World War I and its aftermath displays his persuasive oratory, administrative skill, and masterful leadership. Remarkably, only a few years after the disaster of the Dardanelles, Churchill regains a leading position in British political life. He returns to government as Minister of Munitions, becomes Minister for War and Air, and finally Colonial Secretary. Here we read of his minor role in the Versailles Treaty, his critical work demobilizing the army, and his intervention against the Bolsheviks in Russia. Here too we see his actions over the Chanak Crisis with Turkey, the remaking of the Middle East, and the creation of the Irish Free State, when an Irish patriot wrote: “Tell Winston we could never have done without him.” Buy Now >

Volume V, The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939

Here is a vivid, intimate picture of Churchill’s public and private life between the wars—eighteen years of triumph and tragedy. He becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer and defends the government during the General Strike. Out of office in 1929, he travels North America, enters a ten year sojourn in the political wilderness, but soon reaches his zenith as a writer. He fights the India Bill, champions Edward VIII in the Abdication crisis, and warns of the threat of Hitler. Martin Gilbert reveals the extent to which senior civil servants and officers risked their careers supplying Churchill with secret information about German rearmament. ​Finally, war is declared in September 1939 and Churchill becomes First Lord of the Admiralty ​a quarter century since he last held that post. Buy Now >

Volume VI, Finest Hour, 1939-1941

This precise narrative puts us at Churchill’s shoulder during the most critical years of his life and the world’s, starting with the outbreak of war in September 1939 and ending with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Martin Gilbert unfolds the early events of World War II: Hitler’s supreme triumph on the continent, Britain’s victories in the air, the London Blitz, the U-boat war, Hitler’s attack on Russia, Churchill’s first personal contact with Roosevelt at the Atlantic Charter conference in August 1941, Pearl Harbor, and the forging of the “Grand Alliance.” In Churchill’s crucial meetings with FDR, Gilbert shows not only how each decision was reached, but what influences lay behind it, carefully developing an intimate account of a unique—if not wholly untroubled—relationship between the two great allies. Buy Now >

Volume VII, Road to Victory, 1941-1945

This volume runs from the Japanese attack on Hawaii and British Asia in 1941 through V-E Day and beyond to the end of World War II. From the nadir of the war we observe the turning of “the Hinge of Fate,” the battles of Alamein and Stalingrad, the invasions of North Africa, Italy, and finally France. We are there for the great summit conferences, from Moscow in 1942 (“like carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole”) to Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam. We witness Churchill’s reaction to the waxing of American and Soviet power, the ring closing around Germany, arguments over invasion routes, the death of Hitler, growing concerns about postwar Soviet expansion, the atomic bomb, and the fateful British election that cost the prime minister his job. Buy Now >

Volume VIII, Never Despair, 1945-1965

The final volume covers Churchill’s last twenty years, starting with his role as a scintillating Leader of the Opposition (1945-51). We witness his great speeches of resolve and reconciliation at Fulton, Zurich, and The Hague, his efforts for “a final settlement” with the Soviets, and Eisenhower’s determined resistance. We follow Churchill’s return to the premiership (1951-55), his last efforts to secure permanent peace, his resignation, his final words to his colleagues, his declining years, and his death—seventy years almost to the hour of his father’s passing in 1895. ​​Included is the full text of “The Dream,” Churchill’s ​imagined ​encounter with his father​’s ghost​, ​when​ ​he ​describes ​all that has happened since 1895—​never ​revealing the role ​Winston himself played. Buy Now >

History of the Official Biography

February 1932

Randolph Churchill asks his father for permission to write his biography. Winston says wait.

Winston Churchill writes his son Randolph: “I have reflected carefully on what you said. I think that your biography of Derby is a remarkable work, and I should be happy that you should write my official biography when the time comes.”

October 25, 1962

Martin Gilbert is hired by Randolph Churchill to serve as one of his research assistants.

Randolph Churchill publishes the first narrative volume of the official biography, Winston S. Churchill: Youth, 1874-1900.

Randolph Churchill dies aged only 57.

October 1968

Martin Gilbert is selected to succeed the late Randolph Churchill as the official biographer.

Larry Arnn begins working on the official biography as Sir Martin’s research assistant.

Martin Gilbert publishes the eighth and final narrative volume of the official biography, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945-1965.

The document volumes, which had ceased appearing in 1982 after The Coming of War 1936-1939, resume publication as The Churchill War Papers, thanks to the kind generosity of Wendy Reves.

Martin Gilbert accepts a position with Hillsdale College as the William and Berniece Grewcock Distinguished Fellow.

Hillsdale College becomes the publisher of the official biography and undertakes to return every previous volume to print along with the still-unpublished document volumes covering 1942-1965.

The first Hillsdale editions are published, comprising Volume I, Youth 1874-1900, together with its two document volumes. Henceforth, the document volumes will be numbered sequentially.

After forty-four years as official biographer, Martin Gilbert falls ill and is unable to continue his work.

Hillsdale’s document volumes reach Vol. 17, Testing Times, 1942—the first new set of documents in thirteen years.

February 2015

Sir Martin Gilbert passes away aged 78.

Larry Arnn edits and publishes The Churchill Documents: Volume 18, One Continent Redeemed, January –August 1943 as a continuation of Martin Gilbert’s work.

October 2016

Volume 19, Fateful Question, September 1943 to April 1944, is published. At over 2,700 pages, it is the longest volume to date.

February 2018

Volume 20, Normandy and Beyond, May-December 1944, is published.

September 2018

Volume 21, The Shadows of Victory, January-July 1945, is published.

August 2019

Volume 22, Leader of the Opposition, August 1945 to October 1951, is published.

Volume 23, Never Flinch, Never Weary, November 1951 to February 1965, is published, thus completing the publication of the Official Biography.

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Biography Online

Winston Churchill Biography

Churchill was famous for his stubborn resistance to Hitler during the darkest hours of the Second World War.

Short Bio Winston Churchill

Winston was born at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock near Oxford to an aristocratic family – the Duke of Marlborough. He was brought up by servants and friends of the family. He rarely spoke to his father, and he spent most of his childhood at boarding school – Harrow. Churchill wasn’t the best student, having a rebellious nature and was reportedly slow to learn; but Churchill excelled at sports and joined the officer cadet corps, which he enjoyed.

On leaving school, he went to Sandhurst to train as an officer. After gaining his commission, Churchill sought to gain as much active military experience as possible. He used his mother’s connections to get postings to areas of conflict. The young Churchill received postings to Cuba and North West India. He also combined his military duties with working as a war correspondent – earning substantial money for his reports on the fighting.

In 1899, he resigned from the military and pursued his career as a war correspondent. He was in South Africa for the Boer War, and he became a minor celebrity for his role in taking part in a scouting patrol, getting captured and later escaping. He might have gained the Victoria Cross for his efforts, though officially he was a civilian at the time. After this experience,  he gained a temporary commission in the South Africa Light Horses and later commented he had a ‘good war’ while continuing his work as a war correspondent.

Winston Churchill 1900

Churchill returned to the UK in 1900 and successfully stood as a Conservative candidate for Oldham. After becoming an MP, Churchill began a lucrative speaking tour, where he could command a high price for his speeches.

In 1904, he made a dramatic shift, leaving the Conservative Party and joining the Liberal Party. He was later often called a ‘class traitor’ by some Conservative colleagues. Churchill disagreed with an increasing amount of Conservative policies, including tariff protection. Churchill also had some empathy for improving the welfare of the working class and helping the poor.

In the Liberal Party, Churchill made a meteoric political rise. By 1908, he was made President of the Board of Trade, and he was a key supporter of Lloyd George’s radical People’s Budget – a budget which saw the growth of an embryonic Welfare State and introduction of income tax to pay for it. The budget made a significant improvement to the life of the poor and helped to address the inequality of British society.

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”

– W. Churchill Speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland (“Unemployment”), October 10, 1908,

However, although Churchill was a Liberal, he was also staunchly anti-Socialist and suspicious of trade unions. During the General Strike,  he took a hardline stance to defeat the unions at any cost.

In 1911, he was made First Lord of the Admiralty – a post he held into the First World War.

On the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, Churchill was one of the most strident members of the cabinet arguing for British involvement in the war. In August 1914, the Liberal cabinet was split with some members against going to war on the continent. However, Churchill’s view prevailed, and he admitted to being enthused about the prospects of being involved in the ‘Great War’. He went to Belgium where he urged the Royal Marines to commit to action around Antwerp. This decision was criticised for wasting resources. Others said it helped saved the channel ports from the advancing German army.

Churchill also used naval funds to help develop the tank – something he felt would be useful in the war.

However, despite tremendous eagerness for war, his flagship policy for the war was deemed a failure. Churchill planned the 1915 Dardanelles Campaign – a daring bid to knock Turkey out of the war. But, unfortunately, it proved a military failure with thousands of Allied casualties and no military gain. Although the fault of the failure was shared amongst others, Churchill resigned from his post and sought to gain a position in the army on the Western Front.

At the end of the First World War, Churchill was active in trying to support the Russian white army –  who were trying to resist the Communist forces which had gained control over the Soviet Union.

In 1924 Churchill was appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Conservative PM Stanley Baldwin. Under advice from many economists, Churchill made the decision to return Britain to the Gold Standard at a pre-war level. But, this proved to be damaging to the economy and led to a period of deflation, high unemployment and low growth. Churchill later admitted this was his greatest domestic mistake.

The low growth and declining living standards contributed to the General Strike of 1926 – Churchill eagerly sought to break the strikers and defeat the trades unions. During this period he expressed admiration for Mussolini for being a strong leader.

In the 1930s, his political eccentricities consigned him to the backbenches, where he was a vocal critic of appeasement and urged the government to re-arm. Churchill was often a lone voice in speaking about the growing danger of Hitler’s Germany. He also opposed Indian Independence and was a staunch supporter of the Empire.

After an unsuccessful start to the Second World War, the Commons chose Churchill to lead the UK in a national coalition. Churchill was instrumental in insisting Britain keep fighting. He opposed the minority voices in the cabinet seeking to make any deal with Hitler.

Churchill proved an adept war leader. His speeches became famous and proved an important rallying cry for a country which stood alone through the difficult years of 1940 and 1941. These early years saw the Battle of Britain and the Blitz – a period where invasion by Germany seemed likely.

“we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”

Speech in the House of Commons (4 June 1940)

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.”

Speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940

Churchill – 1940 during Air Raid

After the US entry into the war in 1942, the immediate crisis was over, and the tide of war began to turn. After the Battle of El Alamein, Churchill was able to tell the House of Commons.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

From 1943 onwards Churchill spent more time managing the uneasy Allied coalition of Soviet Union, US and the UK. Churchill was involved in many aspects of the war, taking an interest in all areas, especially the build up to the D-Day landings in Normandy. Churchill also participated in conferences with Stalin and Roosevelt which helped shape the war and post-war settlement. With American money, Churchill played a role in avoiding the mistakes of the First World War as the Allies sought to avoid a harsh settlement and rebuild occupied Europe.

“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.”

– Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948)

It was Churchill who helped popularise the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ after he saw the growing gulf between the Communist East and Western Europe.

“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory…. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

Speech at Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946

After winning the Second World War, Churchill was shocked to lose the 1945 general election to a resurgent Labour party. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1945-51.

But, under the Conservatives, he returned to power in the 1950 election – accepting much of the post-war consensus and the end of the British Empire. Churchill served as PM from 1951-55 before retiring from politics. In his last speech in the Commons in 1955-03-01, he ended with the words:

“The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.”

Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” Towards the end of his life, Churchill became an accomplished artist, though he found the years of retirement difficult and suffered periods of depression.

Churchill died in his home at age 90, on the morning of Sunday 24 January 1965. His funeral was the largest state funeral in the world, up to that point in time.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography Winston Churchill ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 11th Feb 2013. Last updated 11th March 2017.

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill

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Churchill, Winston

Winston churchill.

"Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat"

"Be Ye Men of Valour"

"their finest hour".

Excerpts from selected speeches delivered in the spring of 1940 Printed in NEVER GIVE IN! The Best of Winston Churchill 's Speeches Published in 2003

A fter Adolf Hitler was named chancellor (chief officer) of Germany in 1933, the German government stepped up efforts to expand its territory in Europe. An extremely dangerous leader who seemed to have a spellbinding grasp on his followers, Hitler had spent the previous decade building up the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or Nazi Party for short). The Nazis encouraged the growing nationalist movement in Germany—a movement that glorified all things German and demanded blind devotion to the party's beliefs.

British prime minister Neville Chamberlain (the chief officer of the British government) sought to avoid war between Germany and Britain. To appease Hitler, he gave in to his demands to add the German-speaking sections of Czechoslovakia to his territory. As it turned out, this alone did not satisfy the cunning German leader's appetite for power and land. By March 1939 Germany claimed the rest of Czechoslovakia. It became clear that Hitler could not be trusted. Chamberlain resigned his post and Winston Churchill, unyielding and bold, was appointed prime minister of Britain on May 10, 1940.

Churchill's first job was to form a new British government, called a coalition government. Members of all political parties—the tradition-minded Conservatives, the reform-seeking Liberals, and the workers' Labour Party—would play a role in the new government under Churchill.

World War II had already begun. In September 1939 Germany had invaded Poland. Great Britain and France responded to this aggression by declaring war on Germany. Eventually, the leading powers of the world would align (take sides) with Germany or with England. Germany, Italy, and Japan became known as the Axis Powers, and the forces that fought against Germany—France, Britain, and later the Soviet Union and the United States —were called the Allied Powers.

The Nazis' rise to power was tied directly to the staggering defeat suffered by Germany in World War I (1914-18). The First World War, sometimes referred to as the Great War, was a fight for power and influence. Germany tried to stake its claim as a leading European power through warfare. The long and bloody conflict concluded in 1918 with a full German retreat. World War I came to an official end with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (named for the French palace where peace negotiations were conducted; pronounced "ver-SIGH") in 1919. The agreement stripped Germany of much of its territory, severely limited the size of its army and navy, demanded that Germany admit responsibility for starting the war, and required the defeated nation to make payments, or "reparations," to the opposing forces—especially to France— for the damage it had caused.

These penalties caused a serious economic decline, unemployment, and political turmoil in Germany. The Great Depression —a period of extreme economic slowdown that began in the United States in 1929 and spread to Europe in the early 1930s—only compounded problems.

Hitler took advantage of this chaos and suffering. He promised the German people that their nation would rise up from disgrace and become all-powerful. World War II can be viewed as another struggle for power, an attempt by the Germans to shake off past defeats and achieve European—and eventually world—domination.

In August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, an agreement that the two countries would not fight each other. On September 1, 1939, only a week after the pact went into effect, Hitler launched a German attack on Poland. (Under the terms of the nonaggression pact, the Soviet Union would not interfere with Germany's actions in Poland.) Obligated by earlier guarantees to assist various Eastern and Central European nations in case of a German invasion, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. It was already too late to save Poland—Germany conquered it by September 24. The stunning victory was called blitzkrieg (pronounced "BLITS-kreeg," meaning "lightning war" in German).

On May 10, 1940, Germany attacked Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (a very small territory surrounded by France to the south, Belgium to the west, and Germany to the north and east). According to a special British press cable published in the New York Times , it was "generally believed" that the German "objective [was] to take the Netherlands and Belgium, solidify their positions there and then concentrate their entire attack against Britain."

Germany also invaded France on May 10, and conquered it in another blitzkrieg . The first bombing in France occurred in May at Bron Airdrom, an airport near the city of Lyon. German troops entered the capital city of Paris on June 14, 1940. Shortly thereafter, all of northern and western France was occupied by Germany (taken over by German troops and controlled by the German government). As reported in the New York Times , French government officials felt there was "no longer … any possibility for a nation within striking range of Germany to remain neutral." In the coming months more nations would be forced to join the war against Hitler.

Three speeches written by British prime minister Winston Churchill in the spring of 1940 embody the nation's fierce determination to fight Hitler to the very end. These speeches—titled "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat," "Be Ye Men of Valour," and "Their Finest Hour"—were delivered in a five-week period between May 13 and June 18, 1940. Together, they chronicle England's early role in the war, document the escalation of the conflict, and reflect the spirit of pride, purpose, and confidence that Churchill inspired in the British people.

[Image not available for copyright reasons]

Things to remember while reading the excerpts of Churchill's speeches:

• Note that each speech was named for a key line that best captured Churchill's point.
• Churchill was appointed prime minister of Britain on May 10, 1940, just three days before delivering the first of these speeches to the House of Commons . (The elected House of Commons and the nonelected House of Lords make up the British Parliament—the supreme legislative, or law-making, body in Britain. The more powerful House of Commons is considered the ruling chamber of the king-dom's legislature.)
• Churchill became prime minister of Britain when he was sixty-five years old—an age when most of his colleagues were retiring.
• The "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat" speech is considered a classic—a model of Churchill's gift for public speaking and a testament to his tireless pursuit of victory.
• A few days before Churchill gave this speech, Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. Churchill was working to shape a unified Parliament that would best lead the nation through this perilous time. He wanted to prepare British citizens for the long ordeal ahead and used "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat" to convey a message of urgency and commitment to the war effort.
• In his "Be Ye Men of Valour" speech—his first speech to be broadcast to the whole nation since his appointment as prime minister—Churchill calls on the British people to rally around the cause of freedom. He assures them that Germany will be conquered.
• Prime Minister Churchill's "Their Finest Hour" speech is set against the realization that France had indeed been devastated by the Germans' violent and forceful attacks. After France fell (surrendered) to the Germans in late June of 1940, England was Hitler's next target in a larger scheme to dominate all of Europe. Recognizing England's need for support in the war, Churchill would forge close ties with U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin . Most observers rank "Their Finest Hour" among Churchill's best-remembered wartime speeches.
• Churchill was known for his fiery temper, caustic wit, and astounding sense of self-confidence. He used all of these qualities to his advantage as England's prime minister, denouncing Hitler as a "crocodile" and motivating crowds with his rousing speeches and two-fingered "V-for-victory" sign.

"Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat"

Delivered to the House of Commons, May 13, 1940

… It must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean , that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations have to be made here at home… I would say to the House, as I said to those [ministers] who have joined the Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.'

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny , never surpassed in the dark , lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be… '

Broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), May 19, 1940

I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our Empire, of our Allies, and, above all, of the cause of Freedom. A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders . The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks, have broken through the French defences north of the Maginot Line , and strong columns of their armoured vehicles are ravaging the open country, which for the first day or two was without defenders… The regroupment of the French armies to make head against, and also to strike at, this intruding wedge has been proceeding for several days, largely assisted by the magnificent efforts of the Royal Air Force .

We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by the presence of these armoured vehicles in unexpected places behind our lines.…

It would be foolish, however, to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart or courage or to suppose that well-trained, well-equipped armies numbering three or four millions of men can be overcome in the space of a few weeks, or even months.…

In the air—often at serious odds—often at odds hitherto thought overwhelming—we have been clawing down three or four to one of our enemies; and the relative balance of the British and German Air Forces is now considerably more favourable to us than at the beginning of the battle. In cutting down the German bombers, we are fighting our own battle as well as that of France.…

We must expect that as soon as stability is reached on the Western Front , the bulk of that hideous apparatus of aggression which gashed Holland into ruin and slavery in a few days, will be turned upon us. I am sure I speak for all when I say we are ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it—to any extent that the unwritten laws of war permit… If the battle is to be won, we must provide our men with ever-increasing quantities of the weapons and ammunition they need.…

Our task is not only to win the battle—but to win the War. After this battle in France abates its force, there will come the battle for our island—for all that Britain is, and all that Britain means. That will be the struggle… The interests of property, the hours of labour, are nothing compared with the struggle for life and honour, for right and freedom, to which we have vowed ourselves .

I have received from the Chiefs of the French Republic, and in particular from its indomitable Prime Minister , M. Reynaud , the most sacred pledges that whatever happens they will fight to the end, be it bitter or be it glorious . Nay , if we fight to the end, it can only be glorious .

Having received his Majesty 's commission , I have found an administration of men and women of every party and of almost every point of view. We have differed and quarrelled in the past; but now one bond unites us all—to wage war until victory is won, and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and the agony may be. This is one of the most awe—striking periods in the long history of France and Britain. It is also beyond doubt the most sublime . Side by side, … the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them—behind us—behind the armies and fleets of Britain and France—gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians—upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall .

Today is Trinity Sunday . Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: 'Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour , and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.'

Delivered to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940

… I made it perfectly clear [a fortnight ago] that whatever happened in France would make no difference to the resolve of Britain and the British Empire to fight on, 'if necessary for years, if necessary alone.' …

During the great battle in France, we gave very powerful and continuous aid to the French army, both by fighters and bombers; but in spite of every kind of pressure we never would allow the entire metropolitan fighter strength of the Air Force to be consumed. This decision was painful, but it was also right, because the fortunes of the battle in France could not have been decisively affected even if we had thrown in our entire fighter force . That battle was lost by the unfortunate strategical opening , by the extraordinary and unforeseen power of the armoured columns and by the great preponderance of the German army in numbers. Our fighter Air Force might easily have been exhausted as a mere accident in that great struggle, and then we should have found ourselves at the present time in a very serious plight. But as it is … our fighter strength is stronger at the present time relatively to the Germans, who have suffered terrible losses, than it has ever been; and consequently we believe ourselves possessed of the capacity to continue the war in the air under better conditions than we have ever experienced before.…

There remains, of course, the danger of bombing attacks, which will certainly be made very soon upon us by the bomber forces of the enemy. It is true that the German bomber force is superior in numbers to ours; but we have a very large bomber force also, which we shall use to strike at military targets in Germany without intermission . I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us; but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it.…

In what way has our position worsened since the beginning of the war? It has worsened by the fact that the Germans have conquered a large part of the coastline of Western Europe , and many small countries have been overrun by them. This aggravates the possibilities of air attack and adds to our naval preoccupations . It in no way diminishes, but on the contrary definitely increases, the power of our long-distance blockade… If [Germany's] invasion [of Great Britain ] has become more imminent , as no doubt it has, we, being relieved from the task of maintaining a large enemy in France, have far larger and more efficient forces to meet it .

If Hitler can bring under his despotic control the industries of the countries he has conquered, this will add greatly to his already vast armament output. On the other hand, this will not happen immedi ately, and we are now assured of immense, continuous and increas ing support in supplies and munitions of all kinds from the United States; and especially of airplanes and pilots from the Dominions and across the oceans, coming from regions which are beyond the reach of enemy bombers.…

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free… But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age… Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' (Churchill, pp. 149, 151-54, 168, 172-78)

What happened next …

The German air force (called the Luftwaffe) and England's Royal Air Force (RAF) engaged in a string of air battles during the summer and fall of 1940, a period of the war nowknown as the Battle of Britain . The Germans tried to conquer England with waves of heavy bombing over the English Channel , but British forces held firm. Germany's efforts to gain control of the air were foiled.

On September 27, 1940, the governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, also known as the Axis or Three-Power Pact. Each nation pledged full cooperation and support—politically, economically, and militarily—tothe others in case of attack by another power (namely, the United States) that might enter the war. The terms of the pact were to remain in effect for ten years.

Meanwhile, tensions were mounting between Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler could not possibly achieve his goal of creating a vast European empire unless Stalin and the Soviet Union were defeated. It was inevitable that the nonaggression pact between the two countries would be broken. (See Adolf Hitler entry in chapter one for more information about the relationship between Hitler and Stalin.) The Soviets joined the Allied forces in 1941, after Germany invaded Russia. The United States entered the war that same year, following Japan's surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor .

Did you know …

• Churchill had a weakness for champagne, brandy, whiskey, and Cuban cigars. He acquired the cigar habit during his stint as a correspondent in Cuba back in 1895. (At the time the Cubans were seeking freedom from Spain; England, an ally of Spain, supported the Spanish effort to crush the Cuban rebellion.)
• During particularly stressful periods in his life, Churchill suffered severe and recurring bouts of melancholy (gloom and sorrow) and depression, a condition he referred to as his "Black Dog."
• Churchill was a night owl. He started his serious wartime planning each night at about 11:00 PM and continued working until dawn. A fanatic for cleanliness and comfort, he bathed twice daily and is said to have held many important meetings while wearing his bathrobe.

For More Information

Churchill, Winston. The Second World War . 6 volumes. New York:Houghton, 1948-54. Reprinted, 1986.

Drieman, J.E., ed. Winston Churchill: An Unbreakable Spirit . Minneapolis, MN: Dillon Press, 1990.

Harris, Nathaniel. Hitler . North Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar, 1989.

Kimball, Warren F. Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War . New York: Morrow, 1998.

Rose, Norman. Churchill: The Unruly Giant . New York: The Free Press, 1994.

Sainsbury, Keith. Churchill and Roosevelt at War: The War They Fought and the

Peace They Hoped to Make . New York: New York University Press, 1994.

Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary . New York: Knopf, 1941.

Churchill and the Generals . BBC/LeVien International, 1981.

The Nazi Strike . Fusion Video, 1984.

The Churchill Center. The Winston Churchill Home Page . [Online] http://www.winstonchurchill.org (accessed on September 5, 1999).

Allen, Peter. The Origins of World War II . New York: Bookwright Press, 1992.

"Chamberlain Resigns, Churchill Premier." New York Times , May 11, 1940, pp. 1, 9.

Churchill, Winston. NEVER GIVE IN! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches . Selected by his grandson Winston S. Churchill. New York: Hyperion, 2003.

"German Army Attacks Poland." New York Times , September 1, 1939, p. 1.

Hills, Ken. Wars That Changed the World: World War II . New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1988.

Keller, Mollie. Winston Churchill . New York: F. Watts, 1984.

"Nazis Invade Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg by Land and Air." New York Times , May 10, 1940, p. 1.

Ross, Stewart. World Leaders . New York: Thomson Learning, 1993.

Severance, John B. Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman, Artist . New York:Clarion Books, 1996.

Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) was born in 1874 in Blenheim Palace near London, England. His parents, Lord Randolph Churchill and American Jennie Jerome, later known as Lady Randolph, lived the extravagant existence of the upper-class and had little time for their son. Young Churchill felt alienated from his mother and father but developed a special bond with the doting nanny who loved and raised him as her own.

Young Churchill had a gift for writing, but his general lack of ambition and inability to pass Latin and mathematics courses almost ruined his chances for admission to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. With the help of a tutor he finally passed the entrance exams—on his third try. After graduating from Sandhurst in 1894, he became a second lieutenant in the Fourth Hussars (elaborately clad soldiers on horseback). Churchill distinguished himself as a courageous soldier and a keen-eyed war correspondent, serving in Britain's army in India and Egypt and covering the Boer War (1899-1902; a war fought between the British and the Dutch for control of South Africa ) for England's Morning Post . (While in South Africa , Churchill was taken prisoner by the Boers, then escaped and made his way back to England.)

After an unsuccessful bid for a seat in Parliament in 1899, Churchill won election the following year as the Conservative Party's candidate from Oldham. He held a number of important government positions over the next decade, married Clementine Hozier in 1908, and became First Lord of the Admiralty (commander of the British navy) in 1911.

World War I (1914-18; a war in which Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey fought against twenty-eight other countries including Britain, France, Russia, and the United States) erupted in Europe in 1914. England joined the war effort in August, following Germany's assault on Belgium. When a risky British naval attack against Turkish forces ended in defeat, Churchill—as head of the navy—was held largely responsible. He resigned his post as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. Around the same time he took up a new hobby: painting. Originally serving as a diversionfrom his career troubles, it became a lifelong love.

The war ended in 1918, and over the next two decades Churchill held various political offices, heading the war department, then the treasury, and switching political parties several times as Britain tried to recover politically and economically from four years of fighting. Except for one lost election in the early 1920s, Churchill maintained a seat in Parliament throughout the late 1930s.

Churchill's fiery personality led to frequent opposition in Parliament. He was spirited, brash, quarrelsome, and, as a result, rather unpopular with his colleagues. Early on, Churchill recognized Hitler as a threat to European peace and cautioned against the German program of arms buildup throughout the 1930s. (The Germans had been stripped of most of their weapons after World War I.) His demands for British rearmament (the buildup of forces in anticipation of war) were largely ignored until Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

At the dawn of World War II, Churchill was again named First Lord of the Admiralty, serving this time under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain . The failure of Chamberlain's appeasement strategy—yielding to many of Hitler's demands—prompted Chamberlain to resign his post in 1940. Churchill took over just as the fighting intensified, and he inspired the British nation with his strength and fearlessness throughout the war. Nicknamed the "defiant lion" for pledging "never to surrender," he was often quoted as saying, "In war you don't have to be nice, you only have to be right."

Churchill's Conservative Party was soundly defeated in Britain's general elections of 1945. The Conservative Party was the party in power during the war; by the mid-1940s the British nation was war-weary, sick of foreign policy, and more interested in domestic issues (focusing on matters within the country such as rebuilding the British economy). Shortly before the close of World War II, Churchill announced his resignation, but he served another term from 1951 to 1955. He died on January 24, 1965—seventy years to the day after his father's death.

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BORN: 1874, Oxfordshire, England

DIED: 1965, London, England

NATIONALITY: British

GENRE: Nonfiction

MAJOR WORKS: Lord Randolph Churchill (1906) The World Crisis (1923–1931) Marlborough: His Life and Times (1933–1938) The Second World War (1948–1953) A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–1958)

Winston Churchill is best remembered as Britain's prime minister during World War II . He was also one of the century's outstanding historians, and received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In several multivolume works, including monumental histories of the two world wars, he revealed his vast knowledge of British history and intimate understanding of European political and military affairs.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Born into Privilege Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire—the home of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough—on November 30, 1874. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a prominent parliamentarian, while his mother, born Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American millionaire.

Soldier and War Correspondent As a boy, Churchill was an undistinguished student with a speech impediment. Lord Randolph decided his son was destined for a military career. On his third attempt, Churchill passed the admission exam and entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where he graduated with honors in 1894. He was then appointed to the Fourth (Queen's Own) Hussars as a sub-lieutenant.

Assigned to observe Spanish forces trying to contain a revolt in Cuba in 1895, he supplemented his military income by writing dispatches from the battle. Cuba was then a Spanish territory but had been fighting for independence for several decades. Cubans also resented the harsh policies Spain had put in place. The ongoing hostilities eventually resulted in the Spanish-American War of 1898, which won Cuba its freedom from Spain.

Churchill then participated in, and reported on, military campaigns in India and the Sudan. In India, then still a colony of Great Britain , Churchill was part of Sir Bindon Blood's punitive expedition to deal with the siege of a British garrison in the Malakand region by the local Pashtun tribal army. The Pashtun were upset by the division of their lands. In the Sudan, Churchill took part in the Sudan campaign of 1898, which saw numerous British, Egyptian, and Sudanese forces march together into the Sudan to again occupy and control the country for strategic purposes. His first two books— The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899)—consist of revised reports from these expeditions.

Captivity Results in Popular Book and Political Career In a similar capacity, Churchill went to South Africa after the outbreak of the Boer War . The war was a conflict between the British Empire and the independent Boer countries of the Orange Free State and the South Africa Republic in which the British won control of the Boer territories. He was captured during the conflict in November 1899. His dramatic escape from a Pretoria prison gained him a great deal of attention in England, as did his account of the event in his book London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900). His fame helped him secure election to Parliament in 1900, as a member of the Conservative Party. Since members of Parliament were not paid, Churchill's writing income facilitated his entrance into politics, beginning a career in public service that would last more than six decades.

His first major literary undertaking began in 1902, when the family trustees gave him his father's papers. The result was a two-volume biography, Lord Randolph Churchill (1906). An act of homage to a somewhat estranged parent, the biography is also a penetrating political study. Lord Randolph had tried, and failed, to move the Tories (Conservatives) toward social reform. Churchill decided to adopt his father's principles and in 1904 defected to the Liberal Party.

Successful Politician to Failed Military Leader From 1905 to 1915, Churchill held government positions, rising from undersecretary for the colonies to president of the board of trade, a cabinet office, then to home secretary. In the reform government of Lord Asquith between 1908 and 1912, Churchill sponsored progressive legislation such as old-age pensions , unemployment insurance, and national health insurance . His book Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909) provides the intellectual foundation for these domestic policies.

Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, and brilliantly retooled the British armed forces for the looming war. However, his career suffered a blow once World War I broke out after the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand , in 1914. Because of entangling alliances, nearly the whole of Europe became involved in the conflict, which saw massive devastation and heavy causalities where the war was fought. During the war, Churchill advocated for Britain and its allies to attack Turkey through the Dardanelles strait in an attempt to gain control of the strait and western Turkey. This strategy failed and produced many casualties in the battle, which took place at Gallipoli. As a result, Churchill was demoted and lost favor with his party. Resigning from the government in 1916, he spent several months commanding troops in the trenches of the Western Front in France. The prime minister , David Lloyd George, soon recalled him to become minister of munitions.

Churchill in The World Crisis After the war, Churchill returned to high office as secretary of state for war and secretary of state for air. He lost his seat in the House of Commons in 1922, but in 1924, he rejoined the Conservatives and was immediately named chancellor of the exchequer. Meanwhile, he had begun work on his first large-scale historical study, The World Crisis: 1911–1918 , which examined World War I in six volumes (1923–1931). In the books, Churchill analyzes bloody battles in

the military sphere and tense struggles in the political, writing in the vivid, if somewhat overblown, style of a master storyteller. As in his subsequent works, he is an active participant in the events he records, lending an element of personal narrative to his sweeping world history. Through his writing, he attempted to vindicate himself for his disgrace over the Dardanelles campaign.

From the Wilderness to the Summit The Conservative government went down to defeat in 1929. Churchill again became estranged from his party, and in the 1930s his political career reached a low point that he later called his “wilderness years.” Out of office, he concentrated on writing, devoting five years of study to Marlborough (1933–1938), a four-volume biography of his distinguished forebear, an eighteenth-century military commander. He also drafted A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–1958), for which he had received a large advance but which would not see publication until years later. Its four volumes chronicle the rise of the British Empire and the English-speaking world from the time of Julius Caesar to the First World War.

In The Gathering Storm , the first of his six volumes on the Second World War, Churchill describes himself as something of a lone voice calling for Britain to counter the growing threat of Nazi Germany. (After World War I, Germany had suffered an economic and identity crisis caused in part by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles . In the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler gained power in part because he promoted the idea of a new, stronger Germany that sought to control much of Europe.) The truth is more ambiguous—Churchill praised some of Nazi leader Hitler's qualities in print and in the House of Commons —but then his predictions were vindicated. When war broke out in September 1939 after Germany invaded Poland and Great Britain and other countries declared war on Germany, Churchill returned to the war cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. The following May, Neville Chamberlain resigned as prime minister, and King George VI asked Churchill to lead a new administration.

In the early 1940s, it became clear that Churchill was the right leader for this dark moment in his nation's history as Nazi Germany gained control over more of Europe and began pounding Great Britain with bombs by air with the intent of taking it over as well. With steely resolve, while the nation was under attack, he declared that Britain's only objective was complete victory. His speeches in Parliament and on the radio offered the inspiration the country needed in the anxious months of the Blitz. He secured the aid—first economic, then military—of the United States and embraced the Soviet Union as a powerful European ally.

Later Career To end World War II in Europe, Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated the Allied victory in Europe over Germany and Italy, which came in 1945. When the Russians marched into Berlin ahead of the Americans and British, Churchill had to face the reality of a great Communist power controlling part of Europe. He proposed to divide the continent into spheres of influence: Eastern Europe to the Soviets, Western Europe to Great Britain and America. The “Iron Curtain,” as Churchill dubbed it, had fallen, and his decisions were largely responsible for the Cold War that followed.

While Churchill himself was extremely popular, the British public had not forgiven his party for supporting a policy of appeasement with Hitler. After a landslide victory for the Labour Party, Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as prime minister in July 1945, days before the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Pacific. For the next six years, reduced to the minor roles of opposition leader and elder statesman, Churchill returned to the other part of his life's work. He wrote his six-volume history, The Second World War , which became a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic. The series interweaves a general history of the war with Churchill's recollections and analysis of military and diplomatic events he personally witnessed and directly influenced.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Churchill's famous contemporaries include:

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945): Austrian-born dictator of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945): American president elected four times and serving from 1933 to 1945. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): British historian, philosopher, Nobel Prize –winning author, and political activist whose books include Principles of Mathematics (1903). Charles A. Beard (1874–1948): American historian, known for his progressive interpretation of U.S. history in books such as The Rise of American Civilization (1927). Albert Einstein (1879–1955): German-born physicist known for his theory of relativity, but who also wrote on humanitarian and political issues. George Orwell (1903–1950): British novelist and essayist; author of the influential novel 1984 .

In 1951, Churchill returned to the prime minister's seat and served a relatively uneventful four-year term. In June 1953, he suffered a severe stroke, news of which was kept from the public. Later in 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Essentially retired from the mid-1950s on, he only gave up his parliamentary seat in 1964. He died the following year at his home in London days after suffering another severe stroke.

Works in Literary Context

Winston Churchill's career as a historian coincided with his military and political roles. While his military education was formal, his historical training was self-acquired. He immersed himself in historical study while in India, reading steadily through the books his mother sent him. First came the volumes of Edward Gibbon and Thomas Babington Macaulay , which had an impact on his speeches and writing, followed by Adam Smith 's Wealth of Nations , Plato's Republic , and Charles Darwin's Origin of Species . The influence of Darwin can be seen in Churchill's belief that life is a struggle in which the fit and courageous are most likely to survive.

The Personal Element A great deal of what Churchill wrote contains his personal views and interests. This includes not only his histories of the two world wars but also the biographies of his father and the Duke of Marl-borough as well as his autobiographical writings, such as My African Journey (1908) and My Early Life (1930). His books of essays, Thoughts and Adventures (1942) and Great Contemporaries (1937), concern his adventures and the men he had known who made an impact upon him. Even A History of the English-Speaking Peoples serves as a vehicle for Churchill's ideas about politics, history, and tradition. His type of history is based on the personal element of his life.

Storytelling Churchill was mainly a storyteller. In his military histories, he uses short, breathless sentences to suggest the feeling of combat. His histories emphasize politics and wars because these were the subjects that interested him most and were most conducive to his penchant for lively narrative. He wrote in a conversational manner, creating the impression that he was talking to the reader—often because that was actually what he was doing, since he tended to dictate his work to others rather than write or type it himself.

Orality and Morality While Churchill's historical tomes are of lasting value, his achievements in political oratory have been still more influential. Many of his most memorable phrases—“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”; “Never … was so much owed by so many to so few” “the iron curtain”—have assumed a permanent place in our language and culture.

Another major legacy of Churchillian rhetoric is his vision of politics as a matter of morality, a struggle between right and wrong, between freedom and tyranny. He insisted that Hitler had to be confronted, not appeased; political leaders have been citing this lesson ever since as a justification for aggressive foreign policies.

Works in Critical Context

Churchill's early books, based on his war dispatches, brought him critical and financial success in England. The vigorous and colorful descriptions of military actions and the emphasis on the courage of British troops became the hallmarks of his military books. Once he had established himself as a statesman, the success of his literary endeavors was assured. His six-volume Second World War sold in numbers unprecedented for a nonfiction work. Critics, however, have had a more mixed reaction to his work. Critics attribute some of the success of his writing to his habit of dictating his work. Many argue this helped to infuse his writing with the spirit of “fireside chats,” thereby easily garnering public interest and sympathy.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Winston Churchill's histories of the First and Second World Wars are universally regarded as classic works of literature. Here are some other important historical accounts of the two world conflicts.

The Struggle for Europe (1952), by Chester Wilmot. An important military history of the Second World War in Europe, it was written by one of the principal reporters present at the D-Day landing. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), by William Shirer. The first major history of Nazi Germany written in English, it is based largely on documents captured from German archives at the end of the war. The Guns of August (1962), by Barbara Tuchman. An enormously influential and popular account of the origins and fateful first days of World War I by a popular American historian. The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), by Paul Fussell. This brilliant work of intellectual history probes the ways that writers and artists responded to the First World War and thus shaped the modern understanding of that earth-shattering event. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (1994), by Gerhard L Weinberg. A comprehensive history of the Second World War in a single volume, it illuminates the connections between far-flung events in the war's many theaters.

Weaknesses as a Historian Churchill's histories have not been without their critics, both immediately after they were published and up to the present. He was an amateur historian, not academically trained. He tended to overdramatize events, and his works contained factual errors and questionable interpretations. His works were chockablock with primary documents, which made them longer than many felt was justified. Perhaps the most damning criticism made of his historical works is that they were self-serving—intended to justify his policy failures, such as the Dardanelles attack, or in the case of his biographies, to whitewash the reputations of his father and the Duke of Marlborough.

It is unlikely that many of Churchill's readers have been or are bothered by the shortcomings perceived by his critics. Many readers appreciate his remarkable ability to amass and organize huge quantities of information and to communicate it with eloquence and excitement. His writings remain highly popular, and their critical prestige has only grown with time. The Second World War has appeared on numerous lists of the greatest nonfiction works of the twentieth century. Even Churchill's detractors concede the immense historical value of this series, because of its author's proximity to the momentous events described.

The World Crisis Critics had a similar reaction to The World Crisis. Reviewing the book in 1927, John Freeman wrote in the London Mercury , “A petty scrutiny of his prose style would be inept and it is necessary to take a larger view, truly identifying the style with the whole man …. Mr. Churchill's narrative is told in a way which satisfies the most exorbitant appetite. Every page is full of himself ….”

Responses to Literature

• How does Winston Churchill's biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, prefigure his own political career?
• Write about the storytelling aspect of Churchill's prose, citing several examples.
• In what ways do Churchill's political speeches and his historical narratives serve similar purposes? Write a paper in which you explain your views.
• Churchill's history of the Second World War is both a memoir and a comprehensive narrative of a major world event. Evaluate how Churchill handles these dual purposes and how the author's personal voice affects the overall success of the work.
• Write about literary and persuasive elements in one or two of Winston Churchill's classic speeches.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashley, Maurice. Churchill as Historian . London: Seeker & Warburg, 1968.

Churchill, Randolph S., and Martin Gilbert. Winston S. Churchill . 24 vols. London: Heinemann, 1966–2000.

Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: A Life . New York : Holt, 1991.

Jenkins, Roy. Churchill: A Biography . New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001.

Langworth, Richard M. A Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill . London: Brassey's, 1998.

Lukacs, John. Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian. New Haven , Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.

Manchester, William. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 . Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

Prior, Robin. Churchill's “World Crisis” as History . London: Croom Helm, 1983.

Taylor, A. J. P. et al. Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment. New York: Dial, 1969.

Weidhorn, Manfred. A Harmony of Interests: Explorations in the Mind of Sir Winston Churchill . Rutherford, N.J: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992.

Woods, Frederick. Artillery of Words: The Writings of Sir Winston Churchill. London: L. Cooper, 1992.

Periodicals

Freeman, John. “Mr. Winston Churchill as a Prose-Writer.” London Mercury 15, no. 90: 626–34.

" Churchill, Winston . " Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature . . Encyclopedia.com. 15 Apr. 2024 < https://www.encyclopedia.com > .

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Born November 30, 1874 Oxfordshire, England Died January 24, 1965 London, England

British prime minister

W inston Churchill was one of the greatest political figures of the twentieth century. He led Britain from the brink of defeat to ultimate victory in World War II (1939–45). Churchill later became the first of the major Western leaders to warn of the communist threat, and he was the first to use the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the growing division or barrier between the communist East and the democratic West. Communism is a system of government in which a single political party , the Communist Party , controls almost all aspects of people's lives. In a communist economy, private ownership of property and business is prohibited so that goods produced and wealth accumulated can be shared equally by all.

Churchill's courage and independence of mind often created difficulties for him in his early career, but they served him well during the critical moments of World War II , when he demonstrated rare qualities of leadership and outstanding gifts as a public speaker. He was a soldier, writer, artist, and statesman. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (1926–) conferred on Churchill the dignity of knighthood and invested him with the insignia of a special honor called the Order of the Garter in 1953. That year, Churchill also received the Nobel Prize in literature. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63; see entry) made Churchill an honorary U.S. citizen.

A prestigious inheritance

English on his father's side, American on his mother's, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, England, in 1874. He was the eldest son of Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895). Young Winston was born into a long, distinguished family history. He was named Winston after the Royalist (supporter of the British monarchy) family the Churchills married into before the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century. He was given the name Leonard in honor of his maternal grandfather, a wealthy American financier from New York named Leonard Jerome. The name Spencer was the married name of the daughter of the first duke of Marlborough, from whom the family descended. And lastly, he received the Churchill surname. It was the original family name of the first duke of Marlborough (John Churchill [1650–1722]), a great soldier and the family patriarch.

Young Winston's talents were not apparent during his unremarkable schooldays at Harrow, an exclusive English private school. On his third attempt to gain admittance, he was accepted for army training at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He graduated from the academy in 1894. Winston entered the army as a cavalry officer. He took to soldiering, including regimental polo playing, with great enthusiasm.

Churchill made his mark as a journalist and writer, not as a soldier, though he did participate in three major military campaigns. He was a war correspondent in 1895 with the Spanish forces fighting the guerrillas, or irregular and independent fighters, in Cuba. He served as both a war correspondent and an officer in two later campaigns: In 1897, Churchill fought in India, and in 1898 he took part in the Sudan campaign in Africa. While in Sudan, he participated in the British army's last cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman.

In 1899, Churchill went to South Africa to report on the Boer War (1899–1902) for the London Morning Post and was captured within a month of his arrival. Taken to a prison camp in Pretoria, Churchill made a dramatic escape and traveled by way of Portuguese East Africa back to the fighting front in Natal. His escape made him world-famous overnight. He returned to Britain as a national hero, and in 1900 he capitalized on his popularity by running for political office and winning a seat as a Conservative member of Parliament for Oldham, a city in northwest England. He would remain a member of Parliament for sixty-four years.

In 1904, Churchill left the Conservative Party to join the Liberals. He spent a considerable amount of his time and energy working on his father's biography, which was published in 1905. In 1908, his book My African Journey was published. It recounted his experiences—both for work and for pleasure—while touring East Africa. That same year, Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier. Together, they had five children and, in his own words, "lived happily ever afterwards."

Churchill held many high government posts during the first three decades of the century. From 1911 to 1915, he was first lord of the admiralty, which is the political head of the Royal Navy . In 1915, when he became embroiled in a heated dispute over Britain's tactics in World War I (1914–18), he resigned from the government and joined the fighting in France as a lieutenant colonel. In 1916, Churchill returned to Parliament as minister of munitions. While holding that job, he helped develop the world's first tanks. Churchill abandoned the Liberals and rejoined the Conservative Party in the early 1920s but found he was now being personally excluded from elections by officials of all major parties because of his repeated switching of party affiliation and because of military decisions he made during World War I that did not work out. Excluded from office, Churchill spent the 1930s as a private citizen and continued his writing.

Throughout the 1930s, Churchill spoke out publicly to warn the world about the threat posed by Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), the leader of Germany's Nazi Party (known primarily for its brutal policies of racism). When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, thereby starting World War II, the moment of confrontation between Britain and Hitler had finally arrived. Churchill found himself uniquely positioned as a symbol for action and national resolve because of his longstanding strong stance against Hitler's aggression, unlike Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) and other contemporary leaders. This gave Chamberlain no choice but to return Churchill to the cabinet as head of the navy. Chamberlain's efforts to appease Hitler failed, as Germany continued to expand. Chamberlain soon lost his position as prime minister to Churchill, who also became minister of defense in 1940.

After Germany defeated France, Britain's major ally in the war, Britain stood alone against the Germans for much of

1940. Churchill had inherited a grim situation: Great Britain was under constant air attack and lay under the threat of German invasion. Churchill nevertheless stood firm, refusing Hitler's offers to join his side, and requested help from other world leaders.

Churchill's genius lay in his ability to communicate his conviction that the war could and must be won. By the autumn of 1940, he became confident that the Germans could not succeed if they attempted to invade Britain. Britain had successfully withstood the first few months of German bombing of London and its other cities and had garnered support from the United States in terms of war materials to fend off potential efforts of German forces to try to cross the English Channel in a sea invasion. From the earliest days of the war, Churchill had sought an alliance with both the United States and the Soviet Union ; he knew he would need their aid in the fight against Hitler's forces. When Hitler launched his surprise attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Churchill immediately pledged Britain's aid to the Soviet people. On December 7 of that year, the United States entered the war after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor , a U.S. naval base in Hawaii. By May 1942, Churchill had his formal alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union. The leaders of the Allied nations—Churchill, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45), and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin (1879–1953; see entry)—were thereafter referred to as the Big Three.

Summit meetings

Churchill's years as Hitler's only opposition had earned him prestige equal to that of Roosevelt and Stalin, the world's two superpower leaders. Working closely with Roosevelt and keeping on equal terms with Stalin, Churchill traveled widely throughout the war and was present at the three great Allied summit meetings. The first of these was held in Tehran, Iran's capital city; the second was in Yalta in the Soviet Crimean region; and the third took place in Potsdam, Germany.

When the Big Three met at the Tehran Conference in early December 1943, the beginnings of victory were visible. The leaders began discussing strategy for the final stages of the war and plans for the postwar world. The historic Yalta Conference was held in February 1945. The postwar division of Germany was the first and most important item on the agenda. The boundaries of the occupation zones of Germany became controversial, and the exact divisions were left to later discussions.

The second item on the agenda was the formation of the United Nations (UN), an international organization, composed of most of the nations of the world, created to preserve world peace and security. It was proposed that the UN would have a Security Council and that Britain, the United States, China, and the Soviet Union—the four permanent members of the council—would each have a veto. This meant that these nations would always have the power to block any proposed UN actions that might be detrimental to their own well-being and goals.

The third item on the agenda was German war reparations, or payments for war damages. The three leaders could only agree to refer the issue to a reparations commission. The final and most difficult subject on the Yalta agenda was the future of Poland, which was occupied by Soviet forces. This subject dominated the discussions, yet no agreement or resolution was forthcoming. Poland would become a major point of conflict between the East (the Soviet Union) and the West (the other Allies).

The Potsdam Conference took place during the British general election in July 1945. It was the first major diplomatic forum at which it became apparent that the wartime alliance might not survive into peacetime. The East-West differences came to the forefront, especially over the issue of Poland. The world had changed dramatically since the Yalta Conference five months earlier. Germany had surrendered, and the Soviet Union was preparing to enter the war against Japan. Roosevelt had died, and Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53; see entry) was the new U.S. president. The day before the conference started, the United States had successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb .

Midway through the conference, Churchill was replaced by a newly elected prime minister, Clement R. Attlee (1883–1967; see entry). A general election in Great Britain was being held as the meetings began. Conservative Party candidate Churchill and Labour Party candidate Attlee had both traveled to Germany and awaited the results. The Labour Party was victorious, meaning Attlee became prime minister, replacing Churchill in the Big Three. The only easy decision to come out of the conference was an agreement regarding the eventual peace conference. The leaders agreed that foreign ministers representing the members of the UN Security Council would form another council to prepare for the peace conference.

At the Potsdam Conference , the key issues that became grounds for the Cold War began to emerge. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to 1991. At Yalta, the Big Three leaders had agreed that Germany would be divided into four occupation zones. Each of the Allied countries—Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union—would occupy one zone. Berlin, Germany's capital city, was to be similarly divided. The Soviets had rejected an earlier proposal that would have left Germany as a unified and democratic nation; still hurting from the German attack on their country during the war, the Soviets wanted a weak Germany. The United States, on the other hand, believed that a unified Germany would help keep Europe politically stable and strengthen the postwar European economy. This fundamental U.S.-Soviet disagreement remained one of the central points of contention throughout the Cold War. The leaders failed to reach a compromise on several issues, and the Potsdam Conference ended in deadlock.

Transitions

Churchill was deeply affected by his loss of position in world politics. He felt frustrated because his wartime government was broken up before he had seen the war come to an end. However, it was clear that the British people had not voted against Churchill but rather against the twenty-year reign of Conservatives in Parliament. In Britain, citizens vote for parties, and the leader of the victorious party becomes the prime minister. Churchill continued to enjoy esteem as leader of the Opposition (in Britain, the "Opposition" means the political party that, at any given time, does not hold power in Parliament). He used this position as a platform for criticizing Stalin's policies in the early Cold War years.

Churchill had begun to fear that the Soviets would spread communism throughout Europe as early as the Yalta Conference. In a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, he warned of an "iron curtain" that was descending across the European continent—that is, the strict communist policies that were shutting democracy and free trade out of the Soviet Union. A phrasemaker all his life, Churchill had provided a memorable symbol for the world's next great conflict, the Cold War. An actual "iron curtain" came fifteen years later in the cement and barbed wire of the Berlin Wall , which acted as a physical barrier between East Berlin and West Berlin.

Churchill was elected prime minister once again in October 1951. U.S. relations remained at the center of his foreign policy because of his long-standing friendship with the United States; he also wanted to strengthen those ties as the Cold War continued escalating. Churchill sought U.S. cooperation in nuclear weapons research but could not be helped by President Truman because Congress had passed the McMahon Act in 1946, which prohibited the sharing of nuclear weapons research with foreign powers. Undeterred, Churchill pursued an independent atomic research program. In October 1952, Britain exploded its first atomic bomb . Churchill later authorized production of a British hydrogen bomb , which he considered a deterrent to war. Following Stalin's death in March 1953, Churchill proposed trying to improve relations with the Soviet Union.

Churchill retired as prime minister on April 5, 1955, at the age of eighty. He remained a member of Parliament until 1964, at which point he chose not to seek reelection. By this time, he no longer played a significant role in shaping world affairs. Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965, at the age of ninety. He received a hero's funeral and was buried in St. Martin's Churchyard at Bladon, Oxfordshire, near the place of his birth.

Edmonds, Robin. The Big Three: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Peace and War. New York : Norton, 1991.

Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: A Life. London: Heinemann, 1991.

Harbutt, Fraser J. The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Jenkins, Roy. Churchill: A Biography. New York: Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Keegan, John. Winston Churchill. New York: Viking, 2002.

Lukacs, John. Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian. New Haven , CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

"Winston Churchill—Biography." Nobel e-Museum. http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1953/churchill-bio.html (accessed August 29,2003).

Writings and Honors

Winston Churchill's literary career began in 1898 with military campaign reports. His first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), recounted his experiences fighting the tribesmen of the North-West Frontier in India. Churchill next wrote about his experiences in the Battle of Omdurman in The River War (1899).

In 1900, Churchill published his only novel, Savrola, and six years later he published his first major work, a biography of his father, titled Lord Randolph Churchill. He later wrote another famous biography, Marlborough, which tells of the life of his great ancestor, the first duke of Marlborough. It was published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938. In the 1930s, while he was out of public office, Churchill wrote My Early Life (1930), Thoughts and Adventures (1932), and the first draft of History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a multivolume work that was published in the 1950s. During the 1930s, he also took up painting as a hobby, and he remained devoted to it for the rest of his life. A collection of his portrait sketches, Great Contemporaries, came out in 1937, and he published Painting as a Pastime in 1948.

Churchill's history of World War I appeared in four volumes under the title The World Crisis (1923–29). His memoirs of World War II, titled The Second World War, were published in six volumes between 1948 and 1954. Churchill published the four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58) after he retired from his position as prime minister. In 1958, the Royal Academy in London devoted its galleries to a show of Churchill's paintings.

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Excerpt from the "Iron Curtain Speech" (also known as the "Sinews of Peace speech"), March 5, 1946

Reprinted from 'Iron Curtain' Speech Fifty Years Later, published in 1999

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe .… All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in … the Soviet sphere, and all are subject … to Soviet influence … and … [an] increasing measure of control from Moscow."

O n March 5, 1946, wearing his top hat and cape and smoking a cigar, former British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) traveled with U.S. president Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53) to the American Midwest to Fulton, Missouri. In Fulton, he visited the campus of small Westminster College and delivered his famous "Iron Curtain Speech," also known as the "Sinews of Peace" speech.

Having led Great Britain through its dark days during World War II (1939–45), in July 1945, Churchill was defeated in a general election by British Labor Party candidate Clement Attlee (1883–1967). Attlee had proposed a planned economy and nationalization (in which the government takes ownership) of several British industries. The British approved of these proposals as a correct approach to rebuild Britain, and Churchill lost the election and found himself retired at seventy-one years of age. In his book The Gathering Storm, Churchill bluntly stated that having successfully brought Britain through World War II , he "was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs." Churchill could have become disheartened and sullen, simply fading from view. However, Churchill's brilliant international insightfulness continued to influence the world. He immediately set about writing his massive five-volume history of World War II.

By early 1946, he was greatly troubled by the refusal of Soviet troops to leave the Eastern European countries they had occupied after driving out the German army. He saw Soviet influence beginning to control the people and governments of Eastern Europe . Churchill believed that only with the pulling together of the United States , Britain, and Western European nations could the Soviets be stopped from overrunning all of Europe. To warn the world, Churchill delivered his "Iron Curtain Speech."

First, Churchill greeted his audience. He told them the thoughts he would express in his speech were his alone and did not represent any official stance. In the 1940s, war and tyranny were the two most disturbing menaces in the world. (Tyranny means unrestrained, oppressive rule by a government over a people.) Churchill said that while the United States and Britain enjoyed liberties, other countries were suddenly being over-whelmed with tyranny. Eloquently, Churchill lamented, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent [over Central and Eastern Europe]." The word iron brought to mind something that could not be penetrated. So a curtain of iron had closed and trapped millions behind it.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from the "Iron Curtain Speech":

• By early 1945, European leaders, rather than praising the Soviet army and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) for their hard-won victories against Nazi Germany in World War II, were feeling increasingly threatened by the growing Soviet presence in Eastern Europe.
• The Soviets so far had failed to hold free elections in Eastern European countries they had freed from Nazi Germany's control. Yet at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin had agreed with U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) and Britain's Churchill to allow the elections so that the countries could establish new governments.
• The "Iron Curtain Speech" was delivered only a couple of weeks after George F. Kennan (1904–) had startled Washington officials with the "Long Telegram." Kennan's telegram stated that the United States had best wake up and confront the Soviets from a position of power.

Excerpt from the "Iron Curtain Speech"

President McCluer, ladies and gentlemen, and last, but certainly not least, President of the United States of America,

I am very glad, indeed, to come to Westminster College this afternoon.…

It is also an honour, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps almost unique, for a private visitor to be introduced to an academic audience by the President of the United States. Amid his heavy burdens, duties, and responsibilities … the President has traveled a thousand miles to dignify and magnify our meeting here to-day and to give me an opportunity of addressing this kindred nation, as well as my own countrymen across the ocean, and perhaps some other countries too. The President has told you that it is his wish, as I am sure it is yours, that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times. I shall certainly avail myself of this freedom, and feel the more right to do so because any private ambitions I may have cherished in my younger days have been satisfied beyond my wildest dreams. Let me, however, make it clear that I have no official mission or status of any kind. I speak only for myself. There is nothing here but what you see.

I can therefore allow my mind, with the experience of a lifetime, to play over the problems which beset us on the morrow of our absolute victory in arms, and to try to make sure with what strength I have what has been gained with so much sacrifice and suffering shall be preserved for the future glory and safety of mankind.

Ladies and gentlemen, the United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an aweinspiring accountability to the future.…

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization [Comintern] intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain—and I doubt not here also—towards the people of all the Russians and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. We welcome her flag upon the seas. Above all, we welcome, or should welcome, constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own peoples on both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them to you, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe.

From Stettin [a Polish port city on the Baltic Sea ] in the Baltic to Trieste [a city at the northeasternmost point of the Adriatic Sea ] in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone—Greece with its … glories—is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany [move the Polish western boundary into Germany], and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.…

I have, however, felt bound to portray the shadow which, alike in the west and in the east, falls upon the world. I was a minister at the time of the Versailles Treaty.… In those days there were high hopes and unbounded confidence that the wars were over and that the League of Nations would become all-powerful. I do not see or feel that same confidence or even the same hopes in the haggard world at the present time.…

From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.… If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter, their influence for furthering those principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If, however, they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away, then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.

Last time [in the 1930s as Hitler came to power in Germany] I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933, or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely, ladies and gentlemen: I put it to you, surely, we must not let that happen again. This can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946—this year, 1946—by reaching a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization, and by the maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the world instrument, supported by the whole strength of the English-speaking world and all its connections. There is the solution which I respectfully offer to you in this Address to which I have given the title "The Sinews of Peace."

Let no man underrate the abiding power of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Because you see the 46 millions in our island harassed about their food supply, of which they only grow one half, even in wartime, or because we have difficulty in restarting our industries and export trade after six years of passionate war effort, do not suppose we shall not come through these dark years of privation as we have come through the glorious years of agony [World War II], do not suppose that half a century from now, you will not see 70 or 80 millions of Britons spread about the world, united in defence of our traditions and our way of life, and of the world causes which you and we espouse. If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States, with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe, and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there

will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength, seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men, if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the highroads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time, but for a century to come.

Joseph Stalin denounced the "Iron Curtain Speech" as baseless. He said it only proved that hostility was building in Western Europe and the United States against the Soviets and communism. He charged Churchill with "warmongering," or stirring up emotions in favor of war. Nevertheless, with the "Long Telegram" and now the "Iron Curtain Speech" fresh in everyone's mind, the U.S. State Department applied exceedingly strong pressure on the Soviets to move their occupying troops out of oil-rich Iran in the Middle East . The Soviets responded by pulling out their troops by May in exchange for the U.S. promise to allow them access to Iranian oil. In actuality, that promise was never fulfilled. Iran was the first test of wills between the United States and the Soviet Union as the Cold War began.

Through the summer of 1946, the Soviet Union pulled back significantly from interaction with the West. Stalin halted efforts to secure a $1 billion loan from the United States, rejected Soviet membership in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and purged any pro-Western sympathizers from the Soviet government. In June 1946, the Soviets totally rejected a U.S. plan for international control of atomic energy.

During the summer, White House aides continually impressed upon President Truman the need to exhibit American strength before the Soviets and to not compromise or make any concessions. The White House now spoke of Stalin's ultimate goal as world domination. The U.S. anti-Soviet policy solidified. Truman said he was "tired of babying the Soviets." Even Truman's mother, in an infamous message, told her Harry it was time to get tough on the Soviets.

• Churchill was a skilled, productive writer. His words captured readers' full attention. Likewise, when he rose to deliver a speech, audiences were riveted to every word.
• In the days immediately following Churchill's speech, most of the U.S. press considered the speech too extreme and reported on it in that perspective. The American public had not yet come to the conclusion that their wartime ally, the Soviet Union, posed any problems. Realizing this and ever mindful of public opinion, President Truman declined to comment on the speech to the press.
• The term "Iron Curtain" came into the general U.S. vocabulary. It was used extensively throughout the rest of the twentieth century to refer to the ruthless Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

Consider the following …

• In the speech, whom did Churchill compare Stalin to in the pre–World War II days of the 1930s? What similarities caused him to make the comparison?
• What did Churchill predict the Western powers needed to do to stop Soviet aggression?
• Comparing Churchill's "Iron Curtain Speech" and George Kennan 's "Long Telegram," look for similarities of how to halt the aggression between the Western and Eastern powers.

Bialer, Seweryn, and Michael Mandelbaum. The Global Rivals. New York : A. A. Knopf, 1988.

Larnes, Klaus. Churchill's Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy. New Haven , CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Muller, James W., ed. 'Iron Curtain' Speech Fifty Years Later. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

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Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

Andrew Sanders

Bibliography

Gilbert, M. , Churchill: A Life ( New York , 1991); Sked, A., and and Cook, C. , Post-War Britain: A Political History, 1945–1992 (Harmondsworth, 1993).

JOHN CANNON " Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer . " The Oxford Companion to British History . . Encyclopedia.com. 15 Apr. 2024 < https://www.encyclopedia.com > .

JOHN CANNON "Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer ." The Oxford Companion to British History . . Encyclopedia.com. (April 15, 2024). https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/churchill-sir-winston-leonard-spencer

JOHN CANNON "Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer ." The Oxford Companion to British History . . Retrieved April 15, 2024 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/churchill-sir-winston-leonard-spencer

Born November 30, 1874 Oxfordshire, England Died January 24, 1965 London, England British statesman, soldier, and writer

O ne of the greatest British leaders of all time, Winston Churchill became a figure of monumental importance during World War II , when he led his country through some of its darkest days. Churchill's career was long and rich and featured many ups and downs—times when many of his fellow politicians scorned him as well as times when he was considered a hero. Some of his varied accomplishments include helping to establish a welfare system in Britain, preparing the British navy for World War I (1914-18; a war that started as a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and escalated into a global war involving thirty-two nations), and earning the Nobel Prize for literature. But it is for his role in World War II that he is most remembered and admired. His powerfulspeeches, his two-fingered "V for Victory" wave, his ever-present cigar, and his tenacious refusal to give in to tyranny inspired hope and courage in people around the world.

An aristocratic background

Churchill was the son of an English aristocrat, Lord Randolph Churchill, and a descendant of John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough, who led a great military victory against the French in 1702. His mother was Jennie Jerome, an American from New York whose own mother was one-quarter Iroquois. Although Lord Randolph Churchill had once been a respected political figure, his career eventually collapsed and he died a failure at forty-six. Some observers have speculated that the younger Churchill was determined to succeed where his father had failed—or perhaps he wanted to prove his worth to his father, who once wrote that Winston lacked "cleverness, knowledge, and any capacity for settled work."

Indeed, Churchill's younger years do not reflect the achievements of his later life. He entered Harrow (a famous private school), but was not admitted to the upper (secondary) school because he refused to study Greek and Latin, preferring to read and write in English. Churchill got into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst only on his third attempt.

Enjoying life as a soldier

After leaving Sandhurst, Churchill joined the British army as a cavalry officer, and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy life as a soldier. In 1895, he took a break from his military duties to travel to Cuba, where he served as a correspondent for London's Daily Graphic , reporting on the clash between the island's Spanish colonizers and guerrilla soldiers fighting for independence.

Rejoining his army regiment, Churchill was sent to India, which was then a British colony. In 1897, he served with the Indian army on the Malakand expedition, in which they put down a rebellion of people living in the northwestern part of the country; he also wrote a book about this experience: The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898).

The next year, Churchill went to Sudan in northern Africa and took part as both an army officer and a reporter in the Battle of Omdurman, which featured what was probably the British army's last cavalry charge. About this experience he wrote to his mother that he "never felt the slightest nervousness. [I] felt as cool as I do now." Again, Churchill recorded his adventures in a book, The River War (2 vols., 1899).

A South African adventure

In 1899, Churchill traveled to South Africa to report for the London Morning Post on the war between that country's English colonizers and the Boers, Dutch settlers who had arrived in South Africa several centuries earlier. Caught up in some fighting near the town of Ladysmith, Churchill was captured by a Boer officer named Louis Botha , who many years later would become South Africa's prime minister and Churchill's good friend. Churchill made a daring escape from a prison camp and returned to the front, an experience he chronicled in London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900). This book made Churchill world famous.

Political career begins

Churchill's political career began when he was only twenty-six years old. On January 23, 1901, he became a member of Parliament for Oldham (located in England's Lancashire region). At that time he belonged to the Conservative Party, but by 1904 he had joined the Liberals and become undersecretary of state for the colonies. Churchill also found time to write a biography of his father, which was published in 1906.

Churchill claimed that following his 1908 marriage to Clementine Hozier the couple "lived happily ever afterwards." They had four children: a son named Randolph and daughters Diana, Sarah, and Mary (as well as one child who died in infancy). Meanwhile, his political career was thriving.

From 1908 to 1910 he served as president of the Board of Trade, then from 1910 to 1911 as home secretary. In this position he oversaw the early legislation setting up a welfare system. He also helped to create innovative labor exchanges, and introduced benefits for workers such as old-age pension acts.

In charge of the navy

In 1911, Churchill was named First Lord of the Admiralty, which put him at the head of Britain's navy. Concerned about Germany's rapid buildup of naval power and convinced that peace could only be maintained by preparing for war, Churchill resolved to improve the British navy through such measures as switching from coal-burning to fuel-burning ships and setting up a naval air service.

During the early years of World War I (1914-18), Churchill planned aggressive military campaigns. But when these attacks failed, Churchill lost his job. For a few years he took up painting (a hobby he pursued for the rest of his life), but in 1916, he volunteered to serve in the army. He went to the western front as commander of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. This didn't last long, though, because Prime Minister (the chief executive or top leader of the government) Lloyd George soon called on Churchill to rejoin the government.

Some frustrating years

As secretary of state for war and air (and later for air and colonies), Churchill spent the first few years after World War I working to reform the army and develop Britain's air power—he even became a pilot himself. He also spoke out against the Bolshevik revolution in Russia (in which Russia's traditional monarchy was toppled by a Communist regime) and participated in the establishment of the Irish Free State .

Churchill failed to be elected to Parliament in 1922, and he turned to writing for a few years. He returned briefly to government service when he became chancellor of the exchequer (in charge of deciding how the government spends its money) for a short, unhappy stint, but by the beginning of the 1930s he had gone back to private life.

This was a difficult decade for Churchill. He warily watched Germany rebuild its power and worried about the danger posed by Adolf Hitler . He strongly opposed the policy of appeasement (to compromise or conciliate in order to avoid a conflict) pushed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940; see entry). In 1935, Churchill made a speech to the House of Commons warning against the "ever-advancing sources of authority and despotism."

World War II changes Churchill's fortunes

When war with Germany began in 1939, Churchill was made First Lord of the Admiralty—more than twenty-five years after he had first held this post. Meanwhile, Chamberlain's government was quickly losing favor. By now, everyone realized that it had been wrong to go along with Hitler for so long, and that Churchill was one of the few who had warned against it. Now the Germans had overrun Poland, northwestern Europe, and France. They were attacking Britain by air and could invade at any time.

It was under these frightening circumstances that Churchill was chosen to lead his country. He became prime minister on May 10, 1940, and he immediately expressed his determination to keep Britain safe and, eventually, to free the rest of the world from Nazi tyranny. In a fiery speech to the House of Commons on May 13, he said, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, sweat, and tears. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory."

Waging war from Britain and abroad

Churchill planned war strategy from the cabinet war rooms, seated in front of a huge map of the world, with his aides and advisors around him. He spoke often before Parliament and on the radio, urging the British people to stand firm, and he traveled around the world trying to gain support for the war effort and visiting battle fronts. Two of the trips he made were to the United States , where he addressed Congress in December of 1941 and May of 1942, and met with U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945; see entry).

Churchill considered his ties with Roosevelt crucial to England's success in beating Hitler. Although the United States did not initially want to enter the war, Churchill and Roosevelt worked out deals allowing Britain to borrow weapons, destroyers, and personnel. (This agreement was called the Lend-Lease Program.) With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) and America's entrance into the war, Churchill's hopes of a closer alliance were fulfilled.

Churchill gained another unlikely ally when the Soviet Union got into the war. The Soviets were unexpected allies because Churchill had always been strongly opposed to communism and the Soviet Union was a Communist country. But he recognized the value of having such a powerful friend, and he told the House of Commons, "If Hitler were to launch an attack on Hell itself, I would at least continue to make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

The Allies on the road to victory

So now the "Grand Alliance" was in place—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union were united in their efforts to defeat Germany, Italy, and Japan—the Axis powers. The first joint British-U.S. campaigns were the "Operation Torch" landings in North Africa and the invasion of Italy and Sicily, which forced the Nazis to fight on two fronts instead of one. As a result, the Nazi forces were spread too thin to attack England. The Americans were also eager to regain France and the rest of northwestern Europe, but it was too risky to try this until the armies were better prepared.

That time finally came on D-Day in June 1944 when the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy in France. Churchill was so enthusiastic about this campaign that he wanted to land with the troops, and only a special order from King George VI prevented him from doing so. D-Day was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe, as hundreds of thousands of Allied troops moved into France and swept their way east, pushing the Germans back into their pre-World War II borders and finally reaching the Nazi capital of Berlin. The Germans surrendered to the Allies in May 1945. The Americans were still fighting the Japanese in the Pacific region.

Voted out of office

During the last year of the war, Churchill had played a less prominent role. First, his strong relationship with Roosevelt began to weaken due to their difference of opinion about Joseph Stalin (1879-1953; see entry), the leader of Russia: Churchill felt that the United States and England should be suspicious of Stalin; Roosevelt thought they could work cooperatively with the Soviet leader. In addition, the focus of the war had shifted away from Britain as the Russians drove back the Germans on the eastern front and the Americans concentrated on defeating the Japanese.

When the war was over, Churchill took part in the victory celebrations, but he did so with a sense of anxiety about the future. In the election of 1945, he was voted out of office. This was a sign not that the people did not respect him, but that they considered him a prime minister for war time and wanted someone else to lead them through their postwar reconstruction.

Postwar pursuits

In the years following the end of World War II, Churchill turned to his favorite pursuits: writing (his book The Second World War was published in six volumes between 1948 and 1953), painting (he exhibited his works at the Royal Academy of Art), and public speaking. Churchill continued to warn against the spread of communism and urged all English-speaking people to band together to defeat it. In a famous speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, he used the words "Iron Curtain" to describe the secrecy behind which the Soviet Union operated, and that term that would be used by many others for years to come.

In 1951, when he was seventy-seven years old, Churchill again became prime minister of Britain. He was made a Knight of the Garter (a high honor granted by the Queen of England which meant that he gained the title " Sir" in front of his name) a few weeks before the 1953 coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth. That year he also received the Nobel Prize for literature, in recognition of his many accomplished works of history, biography, politics, and memoirs. Churchill resigned as prime minister in 1955, although he continued to hold his seat in the House of Commons until 1964. He received the unusual honor of being made an honorary American citizen in 1963.

Honoring a world hero

Churchill died in January 1965. His impressive state funeral service at St. Paul 's Cathedral in London reflected his stature as a hero to the people of Britain and much of the rest of the world. A man of incredible vitality, intellect, courage, and wit, he was admired for his ability to inspire greatness in those who heard his words, such as these he delivered at his old school, Harrow, in 1941: "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."

Where to Learn More

Bradley, John. Churchill . New York : Gloucester Press, 1990.

Charmley, John. Churchill, The End of Glory: A Political Biography . San Diego , CA: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Driemen, J. E. Winston Churchill: An Unbreakable Spirit . Minneapolis, MN:Dillon Press, 1990.

Lace, William W. Winston Churchill . San Diego , CA: Lucent Books, 1995.

Manchester, William. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill . Boston:Little, Brown 1988.

Robbins, Keith. Churchill . Longman, 1992.

Rodgers, Judith. Winston Churchill . New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Keegan, John. Time (April 13, 1998): 114.

"Winston Churchill" in Grolier's World War II Commemoration [Online]Available http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_churchill.html (November 16, 1998).

Prime Minister Winston Churchill led his country to victory in World War II and inspired others to fight tyranny.

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Churchill, Winston 1874-1965

Childhood and early experience, political life, post as prime minister.

Winston Churchill was a British politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered for his opposition to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, for his inspirational leadership of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, and for his warnings about the dangers of Soviet expansionism in 1946.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on November 30, 1874, the eldest son of the Conservative politician Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife, Jennie. His grandfather was the Seventh Duke of Marlborough and, despite his half American parentage, he had a very traditional British aristocratic upbringing, attending boarding schools from the age of seven at Ascot, Brighton, and Harrow. His behavior was often willful and rebellious and although his academic performance was not exceptional, when engaged he could show considerable ability. His passion was for the army, and in 1893 he was admitted to the officer training school at Sandhurst. The death of Lord Randolph in January 1895 had an enormous effect on the young Churchill, motivating him to prove himself as a worthy son.

Between 1895 and 1899 Churchill saw active military service in Cuba , India , and the Sudan . He used the periods between campaigns to improve his general education, and wrote up his military experiences as newspaper articles and books in order to earn fame and fortune. He was determined to enter politics and left the army to unsuccessfully contest the seat of Oldham in 1899. A few months later he became a war correspondent, covering the conflict between the British and the Boer republics in South Africa . He was captured, but managed to escape. This adventure made him an international celebrity and ensured his election to Parliament in 1900.

Churchill began his political life as a Conservative. Yet when the Conservative Party began to move away from the policy of free trade toward one of tariff protection, Churchill refused to move with them and dramatically crossed the floor of the House of Commons to become a Liberal . He rose rapidly within his new party, becoming a government minister in 1908. The Liberal government introduced social change at home, while wrestling with increasing international tension abroad. Churchill was responsible for basic unemployment insurance and oversaw improvements in prison conditions. There were always clear limits to his radicalism. He was a strong opponent of socialism, took a tough line against industrial unrest, and opposed the campaign of the female suffrage movement.

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Churchill was the minister with responsibility for the British navy, a role he clearly relished. Unfortunately, his determination to bring the fleet into action led to his support for the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, during which attempts were made by British submarines to pass through the Dardanelles and disrupt Ottoman Empire shipping in the Sea of Marmara. Churchill lost his job, but after a brief spell in the trenches on the western front, was brought back as a member of Lloyd George ’ s national government, serving in a succession of government posts until the fall of the administration in 1921.

Churchill became increasingly concerned with the spread of communism abroad and socialism at home. He broke with the Liberal Party and rejoined the Conservatives, serving as chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924 until 1929. He was undoubtedly a great public figure but many regarded him as past his prime. A lifelong defender of the British Empire , Churchill was out of sympathy with mainstream political thinking over his opposition to greater independence for India. He found himself excluded from the national governments of the 1930s and was forced to spend time at Chartwell, his beloved home, writing history. From 1933 onward he became increasingly concerned by the threat posed to Europe by a revived militaristic Germany under Adolf Hitler ’ s national socialist regime, and was a vocal opponent of the Western powers ’ policy of appeasement toward the fascist dictator. In the aftermath of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia , public opinion shifted decisively behind Churchill and when Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had no choice but to bring him back into the government as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Churchill became prime minister of a national government on May 10, 1940, the day that Hitler launched his blitzkrieg offensive against France and the Low Countries . The next few months saw him lead Britain during a period of crisis, when, following the collapse of France, Britain faced the threat of invasion and was subjected to the full onslaught of the German air force. Churchill ’ s great achievement was to imbue his administration and, through the power of his oratory, the wider British public with the will to resist. He turned himself into an iconic figure, with his trademark cigar, bow tie, and two-fingered “ Victory ” salute. Behind the scenes, he worked hard to win increasing support from the United States . Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , he engaged in difficult shuttle diplomacy to build and sustain the Grand Alliance with Soviet political leader Joseph Stalin and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His stature remained high, even as Britain ’ s war contribution paled beside that of the United States and Soviet Union . Put simply, his policy was to take the offensive and to strive for victory.

There is no doubt that Churchill expected to win the general election of 1945, but the Conservatives were defeated by the Labour Party , and he found himself out of office. He remained a major figure on the international stage, and in March 1946 he used his stature to warn of the dangers of Soviet expansionism in his famous “ Iron Curtain ” speech delivered at Fulton, Missouri . He also called for European reconciliation and spoke in support of the nascent United Europe movement. Not yet ready to retire from public life, he published his account of The Second World War (1948-1954) before winning a further term as prime minister in 1951. His policy was to call for summit discussions with the Soviet Union while building up Britain ’ s nuclear force and strengthening relations with the United States . Ill health finally forced his retirement in 1955. His reputation now secure, he published his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-1958). In the last two decades of his life he received many honors, including knighthood, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and honorary American citizenship.

Sir Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965, seventy years to the day after the death of his father. He was given a state funeral and is buried in Bladon parish churchyard, within sight of his birthplace at Blenheim.

SEE ALSO Chamberlain, Neville; Conservative Party (Britain); Hitler, Adolf; Iron Curtain; Stalin, Joseph; Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ; World War I ; World War II

Brendon, Piers. 1984. Winston Churchill : A Brief Life . New York : Harper and Row.

Churchill, Randolph S., and Sir Martin Gilbert. 1966-88. Winston S. Churchill . 8 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Jenkins, Roy. 2001. Churchill: A Biography . New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Reynolds, David. 2004. In Command of History . London: Allen Lane.

Allen Packwood

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Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

The English statesman and author Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) led Britain during World War II and is often described as the "savior of his country."

Sir Winston Churchill 's exact place in the political history of the 20th century is, and will continue to be, a subject of debate and polemical writing. Where he succeeded, and how much he personally had to do with that success, and where he failed, and why, remain to be established. That he was a political figure of enormous influence and importance, belonging in many ways to an age earlier than the 20th century, and that he fitted uneasily into the constraints of British party politics until his moment came in 1940 are not in doubt. Until recently his reputation during the years from 1940 onward was scarcely questioned. But now historians are beginning to reassess his career in just the same way as Churchill himself tried to revise T. B. Macaulay's account of the Duke of Marlborough by writing a multivolumed Life of his distinguished ancestor (completed in 1938).

Churchill's record both before 1939 and after 1945 was for the most part undistinguished. But as Anthony Storr writes: "In 1940 Churchill became the hero that he had always dreamed of being. … In that dark time, what England needed was not a shrewd, equable, balanced leader. She needed a prophet, a heroic visionary, a man who could dream dreams of victory when all seemed lost. Winston Churchill was such a man; and his inspirational quality owed its dynamic force to the romantic world of phantasy in which he had his true being."

Winston Churchill was born on Nov. 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace—the home given by Queen Anne to his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a Tory Democrat who achieved early success as a rebel in his party but who later failed and was cruelly described as "a man with a brilliant future behind him." His mother was Jenny Jerome, the beautiful and talented daughter of Leonard Jerome, a New York businessman.

Winston was conventionally educated following the norms of his class. He went to preparatory school, then to Harrow (1888), then to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was neither happy nor successful at school. Winston idolized his mother, but his relations with his father, who died in 1895, were cold and distant. It is generally agreed that as a child Winston was deprived of openly expressed warmth and affection.

Churchill very early exhibited the physical courage and love of adventure and action that he was to keep throughout his political career. His first role was that of a soldier-journalist. Having joined the 4th Hussars in 1895, he immediately went to Cuba to write about the Spanish army for the Daily Graphic. He took part in the repulse of the insurgents who tried to cross the Spanish line at Trochem. In 1896 he was in India, and while on the North-West Frontier with the Malakand Field Force he began work on a novel, Savrola, a Tale of the Revolution in Laurania, which was published in 1900. More important, however, were his accounts of the military campaigns in which he participated. A book about the North-West Frontier and the Malakand Field Force was followed by a book about the reconquest of the Sudan (1899), in which he had also taken part. He went to Africa during the Boer War as a journalist for the Morning Post, and the most romantic of his escapades as a youth was his escape from a South African prison during this conflict.

Young Politician

In 1899 Churchill lost in his first attempt at election to the House of Commons . This was to be the first of many defeats in elections and by-elections during his career—he lost more elections than any other political figure in recent British history. But in 1900 he entered the House of Commons , in which he served intermittently until 1964. Throughout this long span his presence and oratory exercised a magnetic attraction in an institution he always refused to leave for the House of Lords .

Churchill's early years in politics were characterized by an interest in the radical reform of social problems. In 1905 he completed a biography of his father, which is perhaps his best book. Lord Randolph had tried to give coherence and organization to a popular socially oriented Toryism; Churchill carried that effort into the Liberal party, which he had joined in 1904 because of his disagreement with the revived demands for protectionism by the Chamberlain section of the Tory party. The major intellectual achievement of this period of Churchill's life was his Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909). In this work he stated his creed: "Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. … Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right." Churchill was very active in the great reforming government of Lord Asquith between 1908 and 1912, and his work in palliating unemployment was especially significant.

In 1912 Churchill became first lord of the Admiralty—the range of offices which he held was as remarkable as the number of elections which he lost. He switched his enthusiasm away from butter toward guns, and his goal was the preparation of Britain's fleet for impending war. While at the Admiralty, Churchill suffered a major setback. He became committed to the view that the navy could best make an impact on the 1914-1918 war in Europe by way of a swift strike through the Dardanelles. This strategy proved unsuccessful, however, and Churchill lost his Admiralty post. In 1916 he was back in the army and served for a time on the front lines in France.

Interwar Years

Churchill soon reentered political life. Kept out of the Lloyd George War Cabinet by conservative hostility to his style and philosophy, by 1921 Churchill held a post in the Colonial Office. A clash with Mustapha Kemal in Turkey, however, did not help his reputation, and in 1922 he lost his seat in the House of Commons. The Conservative party gained power for the first time since 1905, and Churchill now began long-term isolation, with few friends in any part of the political spectrum.

In 1924 Churchill severed his ties with liberalism and became chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin 's government. His decision to put Britain back on the gold standard was a controversial one, attacked by the economist John Maynard Keynes, among others. Although he held office under Baldwin, Churchill did not agree with the Conservative position either on defense or on imperialism. In 1931 he resigned from the Conservative "shadow cabinet" as a protest against its Indian policy. Ever the romantic imperialist, he did not want to cast away "that most truly bright and precious jewel in the crown of the King." Baldwin and he also disagreed on how to react to the crisis caused by the abdication of King Edward VIII .

Churchill's interwar years were characterized by political isolation, and during this period he made many errors and misjudgments, among them his bellicosity over the general strike of 1926. Thus he cannot be viewed simply as a popular leader who was kept waiting in the wings through no fault of his own. In fact, it is not completely evident that he was aware of the nature of the fascist threat during the 1930s.

World War II

The major period of Churchill's political career began when he became prime minister and head of the Ministry of Defense early in World War II. "I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," he wrote in the first volume of his account of the war. (This account was later published in six volumes from 1948 to 1953). His finest hour and that of the British people coincided. His leadership, which was expressed in noble speeches and ceaseless personal activity, stated precisely what Britain needed to survive through the years before United States entry into the war.

The evacuation of Dunkirk and the air defense of the Battle of Britain have become legend, but there were and are controversies over Churchill's policies. It has been argued that Churchill's oversensitivity to the Mediterranean as a theater of war led to mistakes in Crete and North Africa. The value of his resistance to the idea of a second front as the Germans advanced into Russia has also been questioned. And there has been considerable debate over the wisdom of the course he pursued at international conferences (such as those at Yalta in February 1945) which reached agreements responsible in large part for the " cold war " of the 1950s and 1960s. But although criticisms may be made of Churchill's policies, his importance as a symbol of resistance and as an inspiration to victory cannot be challenged.

The final period of Churchill's career began with his rejection by the British people at the general election of 1945. At that election 393 Labour candidates were elected members of Parliament as against 213 Conservatives and their allies. It was one of the most striking reversals of fortune in democratic history. It may perhaps be explained by Churchill's aggressive vituperation during the campaign combined with the electorate's desire for patient social reconstruction rather than for a return to prewar economic mismanagement.

In 1951, however, Churchill again became prime minister . He resigned in April 1955 after an uneventful term in office. For many of the later years of his life, even his iron constitution was not strong enough to resist the persistent cerebral arteriosclerosis from which he suffered. He died on Jan. 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral, the details of which had been largely dictated by himself before his death.

Further Reading

Churchill's own works, combining a very personal perspective with grand historical themes, are written with great style and lucidity. They include The World Crisis (6 vols., 1923-1931), an account of World War I ; The Second World War (6 vols., 1948-1953); and the less satisfactory but sometimes elegant History of the English Speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-1958).

An official multivolume biography of vast scope, with separate companion volumes of documents, was started by Churchill's son, Randolph S. Churchill: Winston S. Churchill, vol. 1: Youth, 1874-1900 (1966); Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume I, pts. 1 and 2 (1967); Winston S. Churchill, vol. 2: Young Statesman, 1901-1914 (1967). The best introductory assessment of Churchill is A. J. P. Taylor and others, eds., Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment (1969), a volume of essays. For the best example of what will be a growing industry of revisionism on Churchill's reputation see Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 (1970).

There are many other studies of Churchill: Alan Moorehead, Winston Churchill in Trial and Triumph (1955); Alfred L. Rowse, The Churchills (2 vols., 1956-1958; 1 vol., 1966); Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (1957; rev. ed. 1966); American Heritage, Churchill: The Life Triumphant; the Historical Record of Ninety Years (1965); Malcolm Thomson, Churchill: His Life and Times (rev. ed. 1965; published 1949 as Life and Times of Winston Churchill ); Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (1966); Kenneth Young, Churchill and Beaverbrook: A Study in Friendship and Politics (1966); Brian Gardner, Churchill in His Time: A Study in Reputation, 1939-1945 (1968); Dennis Bardens, Churchill in Parliament (1969); and John Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day: Working with Churchill (1969). Harold MacMillan's memoirs have much material on Churchill: Winds of Change, 1914-1939 (1966); The Blast of War, 1939-1945 (1967); and Tides of Fortune, 1945-1955 (1969).

Additional Sources

Charmley, John, Churchill, the end of glory: a political biography, New York : Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Churchill, Winston S. (Winston Spencer), Memories and adventures, New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Churchill, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: a life, London: Heinemann, 1991.

Pelling, Henry, Winston Churchill, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989.

Robbins, Keith, Churchill, London; New York: Longman, 1992.

Rose, Norman, Churchill: the unruly giant, New York: Free Press, 1995.

Sandys, Celia, The young Churchill: the early years of Winston Churchill, New York: Dutton, 1995.

Soames, Mary, Winston Churchill: his life as a painter: a memoir by his daughter, London: Collins, 1990.

Winston Churchill: resolution, defiance, magnanimity, good will, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996. □

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Born: November 30, 1874 Oxfordshire, England Died: January 24, 1965 Oxfordshire, England English prime minister , statesman, and author

The English statesman and author Sir Winston Churchill led Britain during World War II (1939 – 45) and is often described as the "savior of his country." Sir Winston Churchill 's exact place in the political history of the twentieth century is, and will continue to be, a subject of debate. But his strong personality and forceful determination made him a popular figure during the war years.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace — a home given by Queen Anne to Churchill's ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a Tory Democrat (a British political party ) who achieved early success as a rebel in his party. Later, after Randolph Churchill failed, he was cruelly described as "a man with a brilliant future behind him." His mother was Jenny Jerome, the beautiful and talented daughter of Leonard Jerome, a New York businessman. Winston idolized his mother, but his relations with his father, who died in 1895, were cold and distant. It is generally agreed that as a child Winston was not shown warmth and affection by his family.

As a child Churchill was sensitive and suffered from a minor speech impediment. He was educated following the norms of his class. He first went to preparatory school, then to Harrow in 1888 when he was twelve years old. Winston was not especially interested in studying Latin or mathematics and spent much time studying in the lowest level courses until he passed the tests and was able to advance. He received a good education in English, however, and won a prize for reading aloud a portion of Thomas Macaulay's (1800 – 1859) Lays of Ancient Rome (1842). After finishing at Harrow, Winston failed the entrance test for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst three times before finally passing and being allowed to attend the school. His academic record improved a great deal once he began at the college. When he graduated in 1894 he was eighth in his class.

Military journalist

Very early on Churchill demonstrated the physical courage and love of adventure and action that he kept throughout his political career. His first role was that of a soldier-journalist. In 1895 he went to Cuba to write about the Spanish army for the Daily Graphic. In 1896 he was in India , and while on the North-West Frontier with the Malakand Field Force he began work on a novel, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania. The book was published in 1900.

More important, however, were Churchill's accounts of the military campaigns in which he participated. Savrola was followed by a book about the reconquest of the Sudan (1899), in which he had also taken part. As a journalist for the Morning Post, he went to Africa during the Boer War (1899 – 1902), where British forces fought against Dutch forces in South Africa . The most romantic of his adventures as a youth was his escape from a South African prison during this conflict.

Young politician

In 1899 Churchill lost in his first attempt at election to the House of Commons , one of two bodies controlling Parliament in England. This was to be the first of many defeats in elections, as Churchill lost more elections than any other political figure in recent British history. But in 1900 he entered the House of Commons , in which he served off and on until 1964.

Churchill's early years in politics were characterized by an interest in the radical reform (improvement) of social problems. The major intellectual achievement of this period of Churchill's life was his Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909). In this work he stated his belief in liberalism, or political views that stress civil rights and the use of government to promote social progress. Churchill was very active in the great reforming government of Lord Asquith between 1908 and 1912, and his work fighting unemployment was especially significant.

In 1912 Churchill became first lord of the Admiralty, the department of British government that controls the naval fleet. He switched his enthusiasm away from social reform to prepare Britain's fleet for a war that threatened Europe . While at the Admiralty, Churchill suffered a major setback. He became committed to the view that the navy could best make an impact on the war in Europe (1914 – 18) by way of a swift strike through the Dardanelles , a key waterway in central Europe. This strategy proved unsuccessful, however, and Churchill lost his Admiralty post. In 1916 he was back in the army, serving for a time on the front lines in France .

Interwar years

Churchill soon reentered political life. He was kept out of the Lloyd George War Cabinet by conservative hostility toward his style and philosophy. But by 1921 Churchill held a post as a colonial secretary. A clash with Turkish president Kemal Atat ü rk, however, did not help his reputation, and in 1922 he lost his seat in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party gained power for the first time since 1905, and Churchill began a long-term isolation, with few political allies.

In 1924 Churchill severed his ties with liberalism and became chancellor of the Exchequer (British treasury) in Stanley Baldwin 's (1867 – 1947) government. Churchill raised controversy when he decided to put Britain back on the gold standard, a system where currency equals the value of a specified amount of gold. Although he held office under Baldwin, Churchill did not agree with his position either on defense or on imperialism, Britain's policy of ruling over its colonies. In 1931 he resigned from the conservative "shadow cabinet" in protest against its Indian policy.

Churchill's years between world wars were characterized by political isolation. During this period he made many errors and misjudgments. Chief among these was his warlike approach to the general strike of 1926. Thus, he cannot be viewed simply as a popular leader who was kept waiting in the wings through no fault of his own.

The major period of Churchill's political career began when he became prime minister and head of the Ministry of Defense early in World War II , when British and American Allies fought against the Axis of Germany , Italy, and Japan .

"I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," Churchill wrote in the first volume of his account of the war. (This account was later published in six volumes from 1948 to 1953.) His finest hour and that of the British people came at the same time. His leadership, which was expressed in noble speeches and constant personal activity, stated precisely what Britain needed to survive through the years before the United States entered the war.

The evacuation of Dunkirk and the air defense of the Battle of Britain became legend, but there were and are controversies over Churchill's policies. It has been argued that Churchill was too sensitive to the Mediterranean as a theater of war, which led to mistakes in Crete and North Africa. The value of his resistance to the idea of a second front as the Germans advanced into Russia has also been questioned. And there has been considerable debate over the courses he pursued at international conferences, such as those at Yalta in February 1945.

Many believed some of Churchill's policies were responsible for the " cold war " of the 1950s and 1960s, where relations between Eastern Communist powers and Western powers came to a standstill over, among other things, nuclear arms. Although criticisms may be made of Churchill's policies, his importance as a symbol of resistance and as an inspiration to victory cannot be challenged.

The final period of Churchill's career began with the British people rejecting him in the general election of 1945. In that election 393 Labour candidates were elected members of Parliament against 213 Conservatives and their allies. It was one of the most striking reversals of fortune in democratic history. It may perhaps be explained by Churchill's aggressive campaign combined with the British voters' desire for social reconstruction.

In 1951, however, Churchill again became prime minister. He resigned in April 1955 after an uneventful term in office. For many of the later years of his life, even his personal strength was not enough to resist the persistent cerebral arteriosclerosis, a brain disorder, from which he suffered. He died on January 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral, the details of which had been largely dictated by himself before his death.

There is little doubt that Winston Churchill was a political figure of enormous influence and importance. His record, both before 1939 and after 1945, was for the most part undistinguished. But as Anthony Storr writes: "In 1940 Churchill became the hero that he had always dreamed of being. … In that dark time, what England needed was not a shrewd, equable, balanced leader. She needed a prophet, a heroic visionary, a man who could dream dreams of victory when all seemed lost. Winston Churchill was such a man."

Charmley, John. Churchill, The End of Glory: A Political Biography. New York : Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Churchill, Winston S. Memories and Adventures. New York : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Manchester, William. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932 – 1940. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.

Manchester, William. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, 1874 – 1932. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.

" Churchill, Winston . " UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography . . Encyclopedia.com. 15 Apr. 2024 < https://www.encyclopedia.com > .

"Churchill, Winston ." UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography . . Encyclopedia.com. (April 15, 2024). https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/churchill-winston

"Churchill, Winston ." UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography . . Retrieved April 15, 2024 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/churchill-winston

Churchill, Winston S.

Martin Gilbert , Churchill: A Life , 1991. Norman Rose , Churchill: An Unruly Life , 1994. Warren Kimball , Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War , 1997.

John W. Young

John Whiteclay Chambers II " Churchill, Winston S. . " The Oxford Companion to American Military History . . Encyclopedia.com. 15 Apr. 2024 < https://www.encyclopedia.com > .

John Whiteclay Chambers II "Churchill, Winston S. ." The Oxford Companion to American Military History . . Encyclopedia.com. (April 15, 2024). https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/churchill-winston-s

John Whiteclay Chambers II "Churchill, Winston S. ." The Oxford Companion to American Military History . . Retrieved April 15, 2024 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/churchill-winston-s

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Winston Churchill (November 30, 1874–January 24, 1965) was a legendary orator, a prolific writer, an earnest artist, and a long-term British statesman. Yet Churchill, who twice served as prime minister of the United Kingdom, is best remembered as the tenacious and forthright war leader that led his country against the seemingly undefeatable Nazis during World War II .

Fast Facts: Winston Churchill

• Known For : Prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II
• Also Known As : Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
• Born : November 30, 1874 in Blenheim, Oxfordshire, England
• Parents : Lord Randolph Churchill, Jennie Jerome
• Died : January 24, 1965 in Kensington, London, England
• Education : Harrow School, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst
• Published Works:   Marlborough: His Life and Times , The Second World War , six volumes, A History of the English- Speaking Peoples , four volumes, The World Crisis , My Early Life
• Awards and Honors : Privy Council of the United Kingdom, Order of Merit, Honorary Citizen of the United States, Nobel Prize in Literature
• Spouse : Clementine Hozier
• Children : Diana, Randolph, Marigold, Sarah, Mary
• Notable Quote : "The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this—a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, ‘We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls."

Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 at his grandfather's home, Blenheim Palace in Marlborough, England . His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a member of the British Parliament and his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American heiress. Six years after Winston's birth, his brother Jack was born.

Since Churchill's parents traveled extensively and led busy social lives, Churchill spent most of his younger years with his nanny, Elizabeth Everest. It was Mrs. Everest who nurtured Churchill and cared for him during his many childhood illnesses. Churchill stayed in touch with her until her death in 1895.

At age 8, Churchill was sent off to boarding school. He was never an excellent student but he was well-liked and was known as a bit of a troublemaker. In 1887, the 12-year-old Churchill was accepted to the prestigious Harrow school, where he began studying military tactics.

After graduating from Harrow, Churchill was accepted into the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1893. In December 1894, Churchill graduated near the top of his class and was given a commission as a cavalry officer.

Churchill, the Soldier and War Correspondent

After seven months of basic training, Churchill was given his first leave. Instead of going home to relax, Churchill wanted to see action; so he traveled to Cuba to watch Spanish troops put down a rebellion. Churchill didn't go just as an interested soldier, however. He made plans to be a war correspondent for London's The Daily Graphic . It was the beginning of a long writing career.

When his leave was up, Churchill traveled with his regiment to India. Churchill also saw action in India when fighting Afghan tribes. This time, again not just a soldier, Churchill wrote letters to London's The Daily Telegraph . From these experiences, Churchill also wrote his first book, "The Story of the Malakand Field Force" (1898).

Churchill then joined Lord Kitchener's expedition in the Sudan while also writing for The Morning Post . After seeing a lot of action in the Sudan, Churchill used his experiences to write "The River War" (1899).

Again wanting to be at the scene of the action, Churchill managed in 1899 to become the war correspondent for The Morning Post during the Boer War in South Africa. Not only was Churchill shot at, but he was also captured. After spending nearly a month as a prisoner of war, Churchill managed to escape and miraculously made it to safety. He also turned these experiences into a book he titled, "London to Ladysmith via Pretoria" (1900).

Becoming a Politician

While fighting in all these wars, Churchill decided he wanted to help make policy, not just follow it. So when the 25-year-old returned to England as both a famous author and a war hero, he was able to successfully run for election as a member of Parliament (MP). This was the start of Churchill's very long political career.

Churchill quickly became known for being outspoken and full of energy. He gave speeches against tariffs and in support of social changes for the poor. It soon became clear that he did not hold the beliefs of the Conservative Party, so he switched to the Liberal Party in 1904.

In 1905, the Liberal Party won the national election and Churchill was asked to become the under-secretary of state at the Colonial Office.

Churchill's dedication and efficiency earned him an excellent reputation and he was quickly promoted. In 1908, he was made president of the Board of Trade (a cabinet position) and in 1910, Churchill was made home secretary (a more important cabinet position).

In October 1911, Churchill was made first lord of the Admiralty, which meant he was in charge of the British Navy. Worried about Germany's growing military strength, he spent the next three years working diligently to strengthen the service.

Churchill was a very busy man. He was nearly continuously writing books, articles, and speeches while holding important government positions. However, he made time for romance when he met Clementine Hozier in March 1908. The two were engaged on August 11 of that same year and married just a month later on September 12, 1908.

Winston and Clementine had five children together and remained married until Winston's death at age 90.

Churchill and World War I

When the war began in 1914, Churchill was praised for the work he had done behind the scenes to prepare Great Britain for war. However, things quickly started to go badly for him.

Churchill had always been energetic, determined, and confident. Couple these traits with the fact that Churchill liked to be part of the action and you have Churchill trying to have his hands in all military matters, not only those dealing with the navy. Many felt that Churchill overstepped his position.

Then came the Dardanelles campaign. It was meant to be a combined naval and infantry attack on the Dardanelles in Turkey, but when things went badly for the British, Churchill was blamed for the whole thing.

Since both the public and officials turned against Churchill after the Dardanelles disaster, Churchill was swiftly moved out of government.

Forced Out of Politics

Churchill was devastated to have been forced out of politics. Although he was still a member of Parliament, it just wasn't enough to keep such an active man busy. Churchill became depressed and worried that his political life was completely over.

It was during this time that Churchill learned to paint. It started as a way for him to escape the doldrums, but like everything he did, he worked diligently to improve himself. Churchill continued to paint for the rest of his life.

For nearly two years, Churchill was kept out of politics. Then in July 1917, Churchill was invited back and given the position of minister of munitions. The following year, he was named secretary of state for war and air, which put him in charge of bringing all the British soldiers home.

A Decade in Politics and a Decade Out

The 1920s had its ups and downs for Churchill. In 1921, he was made the secretary of state for the British colonies but only a year later he lost his MP seat while in the hospital with acute appendicitis.

Out of office for two years, Churchill found himself leaning again toward the Conservative Party. In 1924, Churchill won a seat as an MP, but this time with Conservative backing. Considering he had just returned to the Conservative Party, Churchill was quite surprised to be given the very important position of chancellor of the exchequer in the new conservative government that same year. Churchill held this position for nearly five years.

In addition to his political career, Churchill spent the 1920s writing his monumental, six-volume work on World War I called The World Crisis (1923-1931).

When the Labour Party won the national election in 1929, Churchill was once again out of government. For 10 years, he held his MP seat but did not hold a major government position. However, this didn't slow him down.

Churchill continued to write, finishing a number of books including his autobiography, My Early Life . He continued to give speeches, many of them warning of Germany's growing power. He also continued to paint and learned bricklaying.

By 1938, Churchill was speaking out openly against British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's plan of appeasement with Nazi Germany. When Nazi Germany attacked Poland, Churchill's fears had proved correct. The public once again realized that Churchill had seen this coming.

After 10 years out of the government, on September 3, 1939, just two days after Nazi Germany attacked Poland, Churchill was asked to once again become the first lord of the Admiralty.

Churchill Leads Great Britain in WWII

When Nazi Germany attacked France on May 10, 1940, it was time for Chamberlain to step down as prime minister. Appeasement hadn't worked; it was time for action. The same day that Chamberlain resigned, King George VI asked Churchill to become prime minister.

Just three days later, Churchill gave his "Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat" speech in the House of Commons. This speech was just the first of many morale-boosting speeches made by Churchill to inspire the British to keep fighting against a seemingly invincible enemy.

Churchill spurred himself and everyone around him to prepare for war. He also actively courted the United States to join in the hostilities against Nazi Germany. Also, despite Churchill's extreme dislike for the communist Soviet Union, his pragmatic side realized he needed their help.

By joining forces with both the United States and the Soviet Union, Churchill not only saved Britain but helped save all of Europe from the domination of Nazi Germany.

Falls Out of Power, Then Back in Again

Although Churchill was given credit for inspiring his nation to win World War II , by the end of the war in Europe, many felt he had lost touch with the daily lives of the people. After suffering through years of hardship, the public didn't want to go back to the hierarchical society of pre-war Britain. They wanted change and equality.

On July 15, 1945, the election results from the national election came in and the Labour Party had won. The following day, Churchill, age 70, resigned as prime minister.

Churchill remained active. In 1946, he went on a lecture tour in the United States that included his very famous speech, "The Sinews of Peace," in which he warned of an "iron curtain" descending upon Europe. Churchill also continued to make speeches in the House of Commons and to relax at his home and paint.

Churchill also continued to write. He used this time to start his six-volume work, The Second World War (1948-1953).

Six years after resigning as prime minister, Churchill was again asked to lead Britain. On October 26, 1951, Churchill began his second term as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

During his second term, Churchill focused on foreign affairs because he was very worried about the atomic bomb . On June 23, 1953, Churchill suffered a severe stroke. Although the public wasn't told about it, those close to Churchill thought he would have to resign. Surprising everyone, Churchill recovered from the stroke and got back to work.

On April 5, 1955, 80-year-old Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister due to failing health.

In his final retirement, Churchill continued to write, finishing his four-volume A History of the English Speaking Peoples (1956-1958). Churchill also continued to give speeches and to paint.

During his later years, Churchill earned three impressive awards. On April 24, 1953, Churchill was made knight of the garter by Queen Elizabeth II , making him Sir Winston Churchill. Later that same year, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ten years later, on April 9, 1963, President John F. Kennedy awarded Churchill with honorary U.S. citizenship.

In June 1962, Churchill broke his hip after falling out of his hotel bed. On January 10, 1965, he suffered a massive stroke. He fell into a coma and died on January 24, 1965, at age 90. Churchill had remained a member of Parliament until a year before his death.

Churchill was a gifted statesman, writer, painter, orator, and soldier. Probably his most significant legacy is as a statesman who led his nation and the world during World War II. Both his actions and his words had a profound impact on the outcome of the war.

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• Winston Churchill Biography: A Beginner's Guide to the Extraordinary Life of a Visionary Leader

Winston Churchill Biography: A Beginner’s Guide to the Extraordinary Life of a Visionary Leader

Welcome to our beginner’s guide to the captivating life of Sir Winston Churchill . In this blog post, we’ll delve into the early life, political career, key role in World War II, leadership style, and the many achievements and awards that shaped this remarkable historical figure. Winston Churchill’s influence on the world continues to be felt decades after his time, and understanding his life’s journey will provide valuable insight into the qualities of an extraordinary leader.

Winston Churchill Biography

Winston Churchill Early Life:

To understand the greatness of a person, we must first understand his roots. Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, into the prominent aristocratic Churchill family. His early life was shaped by a privileged upbringing, giving him access to top-notch education and a network of influential individuals.

Growing up, young Winston showed a keen interest in history, literature, and the military. His adventurous spirit and thirst for knowledge laid the foundation for the outstanding achievements that awaited him in the future.

Political Career of Winston Churchill:

Churchill’s entry into the political arena began at a relatively young age. In 1900, he was elected as a Member of Parliament and soon attracted the attention of his peers with his fiery speeches and strong convictions. His tenure in various government positions saw him supporting social reforms, advocating strong defense and promoting free trade policies.

Transitioning from role to role, Churchill’s political career was a roller-coaster ride filled with both triumphs and challenges. Nevertheless, his determination and indomitable spirit made him an enduring figure in British politics.

Winston Churchill World War II:

The defining moment in Winston Churchill’s life came during World War II. Appointed as Prime Minister in 1940, his leadership and resolve during the darkest days of the war won him the unwavering admiration of the British people. With his iconic speeches, such as the famous “We will fight on the beaches”, Churchill united the nation to stand firm against the Nazi threat.

His strategic decisions and strong leadership in coordination with the Allied forces played a key role in the final defeat of Hitler’s Germany. Winston Churchill’s unwavering determination became synonymous with the indomitable spirit of the British nation during those difficult times.

Winston Churchill Leadership Style:

Churchill’s leadership style was a unique blend of charisma, courage and a strong sense of duty. He was known for his pragmatic approach involving himself in important decision-making processes. His ability to communicate effectively with the masses even in times of crisis made him a symbol of hope and inspiration.

Despite facing adversity and making difficult choices, Churchill remained steadfast in pursuing what he believed was right for the country. His strong leadership style left an indelible mark on history and continues to inspire leaders around the world.

Winston Churchill Achievements and Awards:

During his illustrious career, Winston Churchill earned many achievements and accolades. His efforts during World War II earned him the distinction of being a Nobel laureate, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his historical writings.

In addition, he was knighted and received various prestigious awards during his lifetime and posthumously. Churchill’s contribution to British politics, literature and world history has left a lasting legacy that is celebrated today.

conclusion:

In conclusion, Sir Winston Churchill’s life was a collection of extraordinary events and remarkable achievements. From his early life to his illustrious political career, his unwavering leadership during World War II and the multitude of awards he received, Churchill’s legacy continues to be an inspiration for generations to come.

The lessons we can learn from his life are invaluable – the importance of determination, resilience and unwavering leadership in the face of adversity. The biography of Winston Churchill is a vivid example of what can be achieved when passion, purpose and a strong sense of duty come together. His story will continue to inspire us to reach greater heights in our endeavours.

Q1: When and where was Winston Churchill born?

A: Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxford shire, England.

Q2: What were Winston Churchill’s early life and education like?

A: Churchill’s early life was privileged, coming from an aristocratic family. He attended Harrow School and later attended the Royal Military Academy Sand hurst, where he received military training.

Q3: What role did Winston Churchill play in World War II?

A: Winston Churchill served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, leading the nation with his resolute leadership and inspiring speeches during the challenging times of the war.

Q4: What were Winston Churchill’s most famous speeches during World War II?

A: Some of Churchill’s most famous speeches during World War II include “We shall fight on the beaches,” “Their finest hour,” and “The few.”

Q5: How did Winston Churchill’s leadership impact the outcome of World War II?

A: Churchill’s strong leadership and strategic decisions played a crucial role in boosting the morale of the British people and galvanizing the Allied forces, contributing significantly to the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany.

Q6: What were Winston Churchill’s major accomplishments in politics?

A: Winston Churchill’s major accomplishments in politics include his role as Prime Minister during World War II, leading the nation through its darkest hours, and his contributions to social reforms and international diplomacy.

Q7: What awards and honors did Winston Churchill receive during his lifetime?

A: Among his numerous awards and honors, Winston Churchill was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his historical writings and contributions to literature.

Q8: How did Churchill’s leadership style differ from other leaders of his time?

A: Churchill’s leadership style was marked by his charisma, courage, and hands-on approach to decision-making, making him a strong and inspiring leader during difficult times.

Q9: What was Churchill’s stance on international relations and diplomacy?

A: Churchill believed in the importance of maintaining strong alliances with other nations, and he was a vocal advocate for the United Nations and the need for global cooperation.

Q10: How is Churchill remembered in history and popular culture?

A: Winston Churchill is remembered as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, whose indomitable spirit and unwavering leadership during World War II continue to be celebrated in history books, documentaries, and movies.

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The 10 Best Books By and About Winston Churchill

The prime minister was also a prolific writer and historian.

• Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Winston Churchill is one of those historical figures who almost needs no introduction. As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he led his country through the darkest days of World War II and became a symbol of strength, stability, and effective leadership. But Churchill’s legacy extends far beyond his most famous moment in the spotlight.

Born in 1874 to an aristocratic family, Churchill grew up during the reign of Queen Victoria and bore witness to many events that shaped the 20th century . He served as a war correspondent in his twenties, became a Member of Parliament in 1900, and fought in the First World War, all before his famous tenure as Prime Minister. After the war, his political party was defeated in the general election and he turned his attention to his life-long love of writing, penning a novel and several well-received history volumes. He re-entered the political stage in the 1950s, aggressively denouncing the Soviet Union and serving as Prime Minister a second time from 1951 to 1955.

If you’ve been wanting to learn more about Winston Churchill's unique life and how that shaped his outlook, look no further than this list! Here are the 10 best books by and about Winston Churchill. 

Books By Churchill

The Gathering Storm

By Winston S. Churchill

Churchill’s two identities as wartime Prime Minister and historian came together in his six-volume history, The Second World War . Volume one, The Gathering Storm , sets the stage for World War II. Based on historical research, government documents, and Churchill’s own recollections, the book chronicles Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s increasingly aggressive military moves in Europe, Britain’s failed strategy of appeasement, and finally Britain's entry into the conflict in 1939. Churchill’s access to primary sources like telegrams, secret orders, and speeches allows him to give an almost minute-by-minute account of events. 

The Hinge of Fate

Volume four of The Second World War finds the Allies in a precarious position. It’s early 1942. The Americans have been attacked at Pearl Harbor , and Singapore has fallen to the Japanese. Yet, in just a few months' time, several decisive military victories will turn the tide of war in the Allies' favor. In The Hinge of Fate , Churchill describes the key decisions that put the Allies on their path to eventual victory. 

Inspiring Winston Churchill Quotes That Will Help You Maintain a Stiff Upper Lip

Triumph and Tragedy

Triumph and Tragedy —the sixth and final volume of The Second World War —chronicles the final months of WWII, from the landings at Normandy on D-Day to Japan’s surrender after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although there have been many other histories of the war written since Churchill published his final volume in 1953, The Second World War  still stands as an important portrait of how people felt about the war in its immediate aftermath, from an author with a unique vantage point.

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The Birth of Britain

Another of Churchill’s multi-volume histories is A History of the English-Speaking Peoples , his account of Britain from the period of Roman occupation up through Churchill’s own lifetime. The first volume, The Birth of Britain , begins when Julius Caesar invades the British Isles in 55 BCE. From there, he covers quite a bit of ground, concluding the volume with the death of King Richard III in 1485. Through all of it, Churchill’s love for his home country shines through. 

Winston Churchill’s Paranormal Encounter Allowed Him to Face His Distant Father

My Early Life

By Winston Churchill

Churchill’s autobiography covers the first 30 years of his life, long before he became Prime Minister. In My Early Life , Churchill recalls his childhood and his years in the British Army. He spent many of his formative years traveling both with the military and as a war correspondent, reporting most famously on the Second Boer War in South Africa. When Churchill published the book in 1930, he was serving as a Conservative Member of Parliament, and had no idea how monumental his next 30 years would be. The book is an important chronicle of the events that would shape Churchill into the giant history remembers him as. 

Books About Churchill

Churchill: Walking With Destiny

By Andrew Roberts

Churchill: Walking With Destiny , written by award-winning author Andrew Roberts, is a newer addition to the canon of historical studies of Churchill. Roberts applies the same level of scrutiny to Churchill as he did in his bestselling biographies of Napoleon and King George III. He seeks to understand what made Churchill the man he was, and draws on an extensive body of research—including previously unreleased historical materials—to find his answers. In his study, Roberts also asks what Churchill’s life, and his successes and failures, can teach today’s leaders in an increasingly unstable world. 

Churchill Style

By Barry Singer

In Churchill Style , author Barry Singer approaches Churchill not as a towering historical figure, but as a person. While most biographies tend to focus on his political philosophies and wartime strategies, Singer explores his personal interests, from the clothes he liked to his iconic cigars. Supplemented by photographs, Churchill Style  allows readers to get to know the man behind the myth. 

The Bittersweet History Behind Armistice Day

By Celia Sandys

Another more personal approach to Churchill’s life comes from his granddaughter Celia Sandys. Sandys shares the story of her grandfather’s participation as a correspondent and combatant in the Boer War, one of the defining conflicts of South Africa. According to Booklist , "this affectionate biographical portrait of a very young, very spirited, and very enterprising Winston Churchill succeeds in foreshadowing the magnitude of the renown he eventually achieved."

Winston's War

By Max Hastings

No list of books about Churchill would be complete without at least one objective account dedicated to his time as Prime Minister during World War II. In Winston’s War , award-winning historian and journalist Max Hastings chronicles Churchill’s experiences, from his election to Prime Minister in 1940 to the end of the war in 1945. During those turbulent years, Churchill not only had to deal with a world war, but also with several problems on the home front that occasionally posed a threat to his own leadership. Ultimately, Hastings is able to paint a full portrait of the years that defined Churchill’s legacy. 

By John Lukacs

In his biography, historian John Lukacs provides a full portrait of Churchill and a thorough assessment of his career. He dedicates chapters to Churchill’s personal life, his relationships with other world leaders like FDR and Stalin, his time as Prime Minister, and his career as a historian. While Lukacs clearly has admiration for Churchill, he does not let that affect his study of his life, spending equal time on Churchill’s failures as he does his successes. 

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The Biography of British Bulldog Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was a British Prime Minister, soldier, and writer who remains to this day one of the most popular and significant figures in political history.

Winston Churchill is a well-known political figure who held major military and civilian positions in the British government during his long political career, including being elected as Prime Minister twice. He held the premiership of Great Britain from 1940–1945 and again from 1951–1955. Winston Churchill is recognized as an inspirational political leader who led Great Britain to victory in World War II. He is known as an outstanding orator and writer and received the Nobel Prize in 1953 for writing his six-volume history of World War II. Churchill was an excellent painter as well, and his works of art are now worth millions of dollars.

Youth & Childhood of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 at his family’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Lady Jennie Jerome. Even though Churchill saw himself as British, his mother was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1854 to a wealthy financier, Leonard Jerome. Lord Randolph Churchill and Lady Jannie Jarome met in Paris, France, and married in 1873. Churchill and his brother, Jack, were raised mainly in the United Kingdom, though they moved from place to place throughout their childhood and spent holidays in different European countries, including Austria-Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Winston Churchill was particularly attached to his nanny, Mrs. Elizabeth Everest, and called her “Woom” or “Woomany.” In 1893, after 18 years of service, Elizabeth Everest left her job and soon died of peritonitis in 1896. Winston Churchill grieved the death of his closest friend, referring to her as “my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of the twenty years I had lived.” Lady Churchill played a limited role in Churchill’s early years, which might be a reason for his attachment to his nanny. Referring to his mother, Winston Churchill later stated: “ I loved her dearly—but at a distance ,” but as he grew older, he saw Lady Churchill as his closest friend and strongest ally.

Winston Churchill attended multiple schools but had little interest in academic excellence or discipline. According to Victorian traditions, Churchill was first sent to the boarding school of St. George in Berkshire at the age of seven, where he had poor grades and often misbehaved. Due to his poor health, Churchill moved to Brunswick School in Hove in September 1884, where he slightly improved his academic performance.

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In April 1988, Winston Churchill barely passed the Harrow School exams. He was particularly interested in history and English but was still unpunctual and described as careless by his teachers. During this time, Winston Churchill found his passion in poetry and writing and published his works in the school magazine Harrovian.

Due to his poor academic performance, Churchill’s family thought he would not be able to study at the university and instead chose a military career for him. It took Churchill three attempts to pass the exams at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1893, where he spent 15 months as a cadet in the cavalry. Soon after his graduation, his father died in January 1895.

The early death of his father led Churchill to believe that his family members would die young, which did not appear to be true. Lady Churchill, who married twice after Lord Churchill’s death, died in her late sixties in 1921, while his brother, Jack Churchill, died in 1947, aged 67. Winston Churchill himself lived for 70 years after his father’s death and survived multiple strokes.

After graduating from the military college, Winston Churchill left for Cuba to report on the Cuban War of Independence for the Daily Graphic. After spending a couple of months there, his regiment was relocated to India, where Winston Churchill served both as a soldier and journalist until 1897. The Story of the Malakand Field Force, published in 1898, gained Churchill wider public attention. He started his career as an author, culminating in the publication of his romance, Savrola, in 1900. In 1899, the London Morning Post sent Winston Churchill to South Africa to cover the Boer War . He was captured just after arriving and managed to escape through a bathroom window, which made him a celebrity back in Britain.

With his background as a soldier, war correspondent, and author of six books, Winston was 30 years old and already well-known when he married Clementine Hozier. Clementine became and remained Churchill’s trusted confidante throughout his political career. According to Churchill, getting through the war years would have been “ impossible without her ,” not only for her efforts to preserve his health but also for influencing her husband’s political decisions.

Winston Churchill’s Political Career Before World War II

Winston Churchill began his political career at a young age, at only 25 years old. His activities in India and Cuba helped to expand his horizons. Besides observing the wars for independence, he embarked on self-education, reading works of Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin , and Thomas Babington Macaulay, among others. As a result, in 1899, Winston Churchill left the military and decided to dedicate himself to politics. He hired a private secretary and participated in the 1900 General Elections as a Conservative candidate for the Oldham seat.

Churchill managed to secure a seat in Parliament with a narrow victory. Members of parliament were not paid at the time, so Winston Churchill embarked on lecture tours around the world to discuss his experiences in South Africa. He traveled to the United States and met President William McKinley and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt . He also visited Canada and returned to Europe to give lectures in Madrid and Paris. Churchill managed to acquire a considerable amount of money to support his political endeavors.

Although Churchill was allied with the Hughligans, a conservative group, he was one of their most vocal critics regarding the level of public expenditures. Over time, Winston Churchill became more inclined toward the liberal opposition as their views aligned on key issues, such as the censure against the government’s use of indentured Chinese laborers in South Africa and voting in favor of a bill introduced by the liberals to restore legal rights to trade unions.

Churchill’s opposition to the Conservatives pushed the Oldham Conservative Association to withdraw their support of his candidacy in the election in December 1903. However, this didn’t stop Churchill from upholding his values. The opposition finally culminated on May 31, 1904, when Churchill left the Conservative Party for the Liberal Party at the House of Commons.

The Liberal Party won the 1906 general elections with 337 seats to the Conservative Party’s 157. On the request of the Manchester Liberals, Winston Churchill ran for the Manchester North West seat and was elected to the House of Commons once more.

During this time, Churchill also finished and published his father’s biography after working on it for several years. He received an advance payment of £8,000 for it, which was the highest amount ever paid for a political biography in the country at the time, which is equivalent in purchasing power to £1,244,517.44 today. In this new government, Churchill distinguished himself as the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, a position that he requested.

Churchill rose swiftly within the Liberal ranks and became a cabinet minister in 1908—President of the Board of Trade. In 1910, he served as a Home Secretary for a year, and in 1911, he was appointed the First Lord of the Admiralty. These events mark the period when Churchill shifted his focus from domestic to international politics. During this time, the world saw the rise of Germany , and Churchill saw the need to prepare Britain for future international crises. He worked on modernizing the British fleet and navy.

Nevertheless, the start of World War I was not as successful for Britain as Churchill thought. The 1915 British invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Ottoman Empire, which aimed to take them out of the war, is regarded as the lowest point in his political career. Turkish forces resisted, and after nine months and 250,000 casualties, Britain was forced to withdraw. Churchill left the post and, in 1924, rejoined the Conservatives, holding different positions in the government.

During the period between World War I and World War II , Churchill was actively trying to spread awareness about the rise of German nationalism that threatened another war. Adolf Hitler declared on March 16, 1935, that he would rearm Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament following World War I in order to prevent Germany from starting a new war. Hitler announced plans to reintroduce conscription, build an army of more than 500,000 troops, and develop an aviation force. However, the previous experience of military campaigns pushed Britain toward isolationism, making it reluctant to be involved in another international conflict.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938, granting Germany a piece of Czechoslovakia, which Churchill described as “throwing a small state to the wolves” and failing Britain’s attempts to maintain peace.

In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and Britain and France were forced to declare war. Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill took his place on May 10, 1940.

Leadership During World War II

As Nazi Germany threatened an invasion , Winston Churchill directed his energy as Prime Minister toward increasing and modernizing British defense. He adopted the position of Minister of Defense as well. Besides taking an active role in both administrative and diplomatic tasks, he gave remarkable and memorable speeches, trying to lift and stimulate British morale in a time of great crisis.

In 1940, Germany attacked Russia, and the United States entered World War II in 1941. Thanks to Winston Churchill’s political intuition, he had already established close relations with the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and despite mistrust, he cooperated with the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, as well. These leaders, also called the “Big Three,” met several times to discuss wartime issues, the most important of which were held in 1943 in Tehran, Iran, and Yalta, Crimea in 1945. The key outcome of the Tehran Conference was the Allies’ commitment to open a second front against Nazi Germany. While at Yalta, the Big Three agreed that Germany would be divided into four post-war occupation zones under the control of American, British, French, and Soviet military forces following its unconditional capitulation. The opening of the second front gave the Soviet Union much-needed power to fight in Eastern Europe and eventually weakened Nazi Germany. Churchill was the chief architect of these negotiations that eventually led to the victory of the Allied Forces.

In September 1945, Germany surrendered, and the war was over. In Britain, new elections were approaching, and a victorious Churchill seemed unbeatable. However, war-weary British voters did not want the Conservatives to be elected again. In the 1945 elections, Winston Churchill lost.

He continued giving public speeches on different political issues. In 1946, in the United States, he declared that “ an iron curtain has descended across the continent ,” once again warning about the growing dangers of the Soviet Union, which, as history shows, appeared true. He advocated for the British union with France and Germany to re-create “the European Family,” which would eventually pave the way to his idea of the “ United States of Europe .” Churchill believed that only close cooperation and the unity of the English-speaking world could destroy communist tyranny.

The Post-War Political Career of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill again ran for the post of Prime Minister and was re-elected in 1951. However, as the British politician Roy Jenkins described him, he was “ gloriously unfit for office ” by this time. Churchill was already 77 and in deteriorating health. He often dealt with the day-to-day tasks from his bed. Even though his decision-making and powerful personality were the same, his leadership appeared less decisive, so his influence, especially on British domestic policies, was limited.

Nevertheless, Winston Churchill never stopped trying to influence the Cold War using his personal diplomatic ties, but they were not successful. His vision of building a sustainable détente between the East and the West failed. Eventually, his poor health led him to resign on April 5, 1955. Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Eden became the new prime minister.

“ I am ready to meet my maker; whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter ,” Winston Churchill declared on his 75th birthday. He remained a member of parliament, though he did not play an active role, finally announcing his retirement from politics in 1963.

Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral for his enormous contributions to the United Kingdom and the international community. He became the first non-royal to be given a state funeral since the Duke of Wellington, a leading military and political figure in 19th-century Britain who also served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

In the book Things That Matter, a collection of his newspaper columns and essays, famous American columnist Charles Krauthammer included a small chapter entitled “ Winston Churchill: The Indispensable Man .” In it, he argues why Time magazine should have chosen Churchill as its “Person of the Century” in 1999:

“Because only Churchill has that absolutely necessary criterion—irreplaceability. And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, the common man—the taxpayer, the grunt—fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, and Reagan. But above all, victory required one man, without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.”

Who Was Winston Churchill? The Dark Side of Britain’s Great Hero

By Tsira Shvangiradze MA Diplomacy and Int'l Politics, BA Int'l Relations Tsira is an international relations specialist based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She holds a MA in Diplomacy and International Politics and a BA in International Relations from Tbilisi State University. In her spare time, she contributes articles in the field of political sciences and international relations.

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• World Biography

Winston Churchill Biography

Born: November 30, 1874 Oxfordshire, England Died: January 24, 1965 Oxfordshire, England English prime minister, statesman, and author

The English statesman and author Sir Winston Churchill led Britain during World War II (1939–45) and is often described as the "savior of his country." Sir Winston Churchill's exact place in the political history of the twentieth century is, and will continue to be, a subject of debate. But his strong personality and forceful determination made him a popular figure during the war years.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace—a home given by Queen Anne to Churchill's ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a Tory Democrat (a British political party) who achieved early success as a rebel in his party. Later, after Randolph Churchill failed, he was cruelly described as "a man with a brilliant future behind him." His mother was Jenny Jerome, the beautiful and talented daughter of Leonard Jerome, a New York businessman. Winston idolized his mother, but his relations with his father, who died in 1895, were cold and distant. It is generally agreed that as a child Winston was not shown warmth and affection by his family.

As a child Churchill was sensitive and suffered from a minor speech impediment. He was educated following the norms of his class. He first went to preparatory school, then to Harrow in 1888 when he was twelve years old. Winston was not especially interested in studying Latin or mathematics and spent much time studying in the lowest level courses until he passed the tests and was able to advance. He received a good education in English, however, and won a prize for reading aloud a portion of Thomas Macaulay's (1800–1859) Lays of Ancient Rome (1842). After finishing at Harrow, Winston failed the entrance test for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst three times before finally passing and being allowed to attend the school. His academic record improved a great deal once he began at the college. When he graduated in 1894 he was eighth in his class.

Military journalist

Very early on Churchill demonstrated the physical courage and love of adventure and action that he kept throughout his political career. His first role was that of a soldier-journalist. In 1895 he went to Cuba to write about the Spanish army for the Daily Graphic. In 1896 he was in India, and while on the North-West Frontier with the Malakand Field Force he began work on a novel, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania. The book was published in 1900.

More important, however, were Churchill's accounts of the military campaigns in which he participated. Savrola was followed by a book about the reconquest of the Sudan (1899), in which he had also taken part. As a journalist for the Morning Post, he went to Africa during the Boer War (1899–1902), where British forces fought against Dutch forces in South Africa. The most romantic of his adventures as a youth was his escape from a South African prison during this conflict.

Young politician

In 1899 Churchill lost in his first attempt at election to the House of Commons, one of two bodies controlling Parliament in England. This was to be the first of many defeats in elections, as Churchill lost more elections than any other political figure in recent British history. But in 1900 he entered the House of Commons, in which he served off and on until 1964.

Churchill's early years in politics were characterized by an interest in the radical reform (improvement) of social problems. The major intellectual achievement of this period of Churchill's life was his Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909). In this work he stated his belief in liberalism, or political views that stress civil rights and the use of government to promote social progress. Churchill was very active in the great reforming government of Lord Asquith between 1908 and 1912, and his work fighting unemployment was especially significant.

Interwar years

Churchill soon reentered political life. He was kept out of the Lloyd George War Cabinet by conservative hostility toward his style and philosophy. But by 1921 Churchill held a post as a colonial secretary. A clash with Turkish president Kemal Atatürk, however, did not help his reputation, and in 1922 he lost his seat in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party gained power for the first time since 1905, and Churchill began a long-term isolation, with few political allies.

In 1924 Churchill severed his ties with liberalism and became chancellor of the Exchequer (British treasury) in Stanley Baldwin's (1867–1947) government. Churchill raised controversy when he decided to put Britain back on the gold standard, a system where currency equals the value of a specified amount of gold. Although he held office under Baldwin, Churchill did not agree with his position either on defense or on imperialism, Britain's policy of ruling over its colonies. In 1931 he resigned from the conservative "shadow cabinet" in protest against its Indian policy.

Churchill's years between world wars were characterized by political isolation. During this period he made many errors and misjudgments. Chief among these was his warlike approach to the general strike of 1926. Thus, he cannot be viewed simply as a popular leader who was kept waiting in the wings through no fault of his own.

World War II

The major period of Churchill's political career began when he became prime minister and head of the Ministry of Defense early in World War II, when British and American Allies fought against the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

"I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," Churchill wrote in the first volume of his account of the war. (This account was later published in six volumes from 1948 to 1953.) His finest hour and that of the British people came at the same time. His leadership, which was expressed in noble speeches and constant personal activity, stated precisely what Britain needed to survive through the years before the United States entered the war.

The evacuation of Dunkirk and the air defense of the Battle of Britain became legend, but there were and are controversies over Churchill's policies. It has been argued that Churchill was too sensitive to the Mediterranean as a theater of war, which led to mistakes in Crete and North Africa. The value of his resistance to the idea of a second front as the Germans advanced into Russia has also been questioned. And there has been considerable debate over the courses he pursued at international conferences, such as those at Yalta in February 1945.

Many believed some of Churchill's policies were responsible for the "cold war" of the 1950s and 1960s, where relations between Eastern Communist powers and Western powers came to a standstill over, among other things, nuclear arms. Although criticisms may be made of Churchill's policies, his importance as a symbol of resistance and as an inspiration to victory cannot be challenged.

The final period of Churchill's career began with the British people rejecting him in the general election of 1945. In that election 393 Labour candidates were elected members of Parliament against 213 Conservatives and their allies. It was one of the most striking reversals of fortune in democratic history. It may perhaps be explained by Churchill's aggressive campaign combined with the British voters' desire for social reconstruction.

In 1951, however, Churchill again became prime minister. He resigned in April 1955 after an uneventful term in office. For many of the later years of his life, even his personal strength was not enough to resist the persistent cerebral arteriosclerosis, a brain disorder, from which he suffered. He died on January 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral, the details of which had been largely dictated by himself before his death.

There is little doubt that Winston Churchill was a political figure of enormous influence and importance. His record, both before 1939 and after 1945, was for the most part undistinguished. But as Anthony Storr writes: "In 1940 Churchill became the hero that he had always dreamed of being.… In that dark time, what England needed was not a shrewd, equable, balanced leader. She needed a prophet, a heroic visionary, a man who could dream dreams of victory when all seemed lost. Winston Churchill was such a man."

For More Information

Charmley, John. Churchill, The End of Glory: A Political Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Churchill, Winston S. Memories and Adventures. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: A Life. London: Heinemann, 1991.

Manchester, William. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932–1940. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.

Manchester, William. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, 1874–1932. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.

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Finest Hour 190

Winston s. churchill: the triumphant story of the greatest biography on the planet.

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Dal Newfield at his retirement party after a career in California state government, 1981. His spirit lives on in the “great work” he so longed to see completed.

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January 3, 2021

Finest hour 190, fourth quarter 2020, by richard m. langworth.

Richard M. Langworth ( [email protected] ) has been Senior Fellow for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project since 2014. He is author or editor of sixty books, including Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, Churchill and the Avoidable War, Churchill by Himself, A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Winston Churchill , and publisher of the first American edition of Winston Churchill’s India .

We go back a long way,” Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn recently reminded me. “I knew Dal Newfield.” He realized that would invoke a fond memory. A few are still left who remember the man responsible for where some of us are today.

Dalton Newfield was a Sacramento resident and army veteran who had admired Winston Churchill since he saw him in person during the Second World War. In 1970, I shrank away from Finest Hour after the first eleven issues, clearing the decks for an automotive writing career in New York City. Dal rescued the thin little newsletter of the “Winston S. Churchill Study Unit” and produced twenty-two issues. His first cover was memorable: a replica of The Times front page for 30 November 1874. In the upper left corner, each copy marked with a hand-applied red dot, was the announcement: “Born at Blenheim Palace, of The Lady Randolph Churchill, a son….”

The Age of Newfield

Dal’s increasingly interesting editions extended far beyond the original scope of stamp collecting. We never had more than $300 in the bank, but he found a friendly printer and begged or borrowed what we then called “halftones”—photos to liven it up. We could not afford typesetting, so he typed each issue on a carbon ribbon Selectric. Running out of space, he would continue articles up and down the margins. It was a happy, eclectic little newssheet, brimming with Churchilliana.

2024 International Churchill Conference

“Look,” Newfield said early on: “Stamps are fine, but they don’t do justice to this grand character. We need a broader approach. You came up aces with the title Finest Hour . Now let’s rename the organization.” I suggested “International Churchill Society.” It seemed like a good idea at the time.

High among Dal’s priorities was Churchill’s deep literary heritage. He produced many articles about Churchill’s books and books about him, especially Winston S. Churchill , the Official Biography. (Actually there was nothing “official” about it, since the biographer was never asked to follow a particular line.) Martin Gilbert had just succeeded Randolph Churchill, who had published seven volumes. I invited Randolph to be our first honorary member, two weeks before he died in 1968. Martin, a stamp collector, remembered when my letter arrived.

Books were Newfield’s forte— he was the world’s first Churchill specialist bookseller. He worked to get member discounts on Martin’s first volume, The Challenge of War 1914–1916 . By 1975, when Martin published the “companion” or document volumes to that work, the book business was taking all of Dal’s spare time. He gave up editing, and Finest Hour vanished. Meanwhile he was selling me books and reigniting my Churchill compulsion. In 1981 he slyly suggested: “You’re freelancing now, so why not revive FH ? There’s enough in the treasury for one issue, and I have a pretty good promo list.” He sure did. One of our first subscribers was US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. We returned his check and made him an honorary member. “That way,” Dal said, “he can never get away.”

Alas, only a few months later, Dalton Newfield unexpectedly died, leaving his many friends bereft. One of those was a scholar named Larry Arnn. They had met in the late 1970s, when Larry was Martin Gilbert’s chief of research, while studying at the London School of Economics and Oxford.

The “Great Work” Falters

Larry had joined Martin in 1977, after publication of biographic Volume 5, The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939 . Martin and his staff developed the document volumes for The Prophet of Truth . Working with them was a Lancashire girl named Penny, the future Mrs. Arnn. They left for the States in 1980, and the third and last of the Volume 5 documents did not appear until 1983.

Martin and his team were fastidious, interviewing anyone who knew Churchill, vacuuming every archive and resource. Originally Randolph had envisioned five volumes of biography and ten of documents, but the job was exploding. At 1,106 pages, The Prophet of Truth was nearly double the size of the first narrative volume. At 4,592 pages, its accompanying documents nearly quadrupled the page count for the “companions” to Volume I.

Martin Gilbert was not independently wealthy, and his pay for the biography was low. Increasingly, he would set it aside to take on other assignments. Like Sir Winston himself, he was “living from mouth to hand.” The “Great Work” was repeatedly delayed. The last three narrative volumes were done by 1988, but of their accompanying documents, there was no sign. After the last biographic volume, the publishers—Heinemann in the UK and Houghton Mifflin in the US—lost interest. They saw the job as essentially finished; the slow-selling documents were unprofitable. Yet from a scholarly standpoint, they were the heart of the work

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Stepping up.

Here was where the seeds Dal Newfield planted took root. Born among two-dozen stamp collectors, the Churchill Society by the mid-1980s had acquired some serious, visionary Churchillians. “If you want to do something lasting,” they said, “find a way to publish things commercial publishers won’t touch.” In 1986, launching the Churchill Literary Foundation, we set out to do just that.

It began small, with a booklet by the aforesaid Caspar Weinberger. Through it we raised support for more. By 1992 we had produced ten specialized publications, including Churchill’s The Dream and his Chartwell Bulletins —and even a series of fifty-year calendars (1940–90, and so on). The last special publication, The Churchill Companion (2013), brought the total to twenty-four. The Foundation (absorbed into The Churchill Centre after 1995) worked with publishers to reissue long outof-print books like The Malakand Field Force, Savrola, The Boer War , and the six-volume World Crisis . I even published one myself— India , Churchill’s rare book of 1931 speeches. But the question remained: how to finish the Official Biography?

Wendy Reves and the War Papers

Fortune then smiled in the person of Wendy Reves, vivacious widow of Emery Reves, Sir Winston’s literary agent. In the 1950s, the devoted couple had hosted WSC in his old age at their Riviera villa, “La Pausa.” Emery died in 1981, but Wendy still lived there. I met Wendy at the Hotel Pierre in New York in 1986. There was no mistaking the former fashion model: smartly dressed, dark glasses, trademark black headband. She became an enthusiastic supporter.

In 1990 we began seeking to restart the document volumes, which had ended with the year 1939—tantalizingly, the eve of Churchill’s finest hour. To cover 1940–65 properly, Martin Gilbert said, would require at least six more. We passed his thoughts to Wendy—she always referred to him in French as Monsieur Geelbear . “How much will it take?” she asked. We told her. She said, “When can he start?”

Thus followed three huge document volumes, The Churchill War Papers , covered the early period of the Second World War from September 1939 through December 1941. The main publisher was W. W. Norton (Houghton Mifflin opted out). Heinemann in London tagged along, popping their logo on the spine and selling their version at twice Norton’s price, pleasing nobody.

Martin’s output, vast and wonderful as it was, did not please the sponsor. The first two volumes arrived in quick succession in 1993 and 1994. Then Martin became sidetracked again, and we did not see the third until 2000. Wendy Reves had faithfully kept her bargain, paying the bills for each (mainly secretarial and research staff). But the six-year delay exhausted her patience. “I’m done,” she declared. I recall that Martin himself did not greatly object. I think he was fairly exhausted, too.

Larry Arnn Raises the Tattered Flag

Now what? Unbeknown to us, another champion was already in the field, who would finish the job. Happily, it was somebody we knew and trusted, a man who has never let us down. So it was that Larry Arnn, by now president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, set out to finish the longest biography in history. In so doing, as Churchill said, he raised “a tattered flag found lying on a stricken field.”

The task ahead was daunting. Raw material for the remaining document volumes—thousands of papers covering 1943–65—was mainly assembled. Indeed Martin Gilbert had compiled a “wodge” of documents for almost every day of Churchill’s life. But all had to be edited into a coherent whole. Sources needed to be checked, cross-references listed, rejects weeded out, additions pondered, facts verified. A comprehensive index and set of footnotes were needed, including thumbnail biographies of every person mentioned. And Martin was not getting any younger.

So Hillsdale College arranged to buy the Gilbert Papers, to work out rights and permissions, and to publish the volumes—not with an outside publisher but through Hillsdale College Press. Martin Gilbert would remain editor, with this proviso: “If for any reason you are unable to finish it, we will.”

Dave Turrell, my former associate editor at FH , recalled the “heart-stopping moment” when we realized Dr. Arnn’s full plan: “Not only would Hillsdale produce the remaining seven document volumes. It would first go back to the beginning, reissuing all twenty-four previous volumes in a uniform edition, modestly priced within everyone’s pocketbook. Those of us waiting for new material would have to wait awhile longer. It was frustrating, but in hindsight it was the correct decision. It incidentally broke the hearts of secondhand booksellers around the world. The Churchill Documents 11–13 cost $60 each, compared to thousands for the original companions to Volume 5. (For Dave’s article, see https://bit. ly/34IAIzi.)

“History Lived and Made in Real Time”

In 2006, forty years after they had first appeared, Hillsdale reissued Volume 1, Youth 1874–1900 and its two volumes of documents. It was not until 2013 that new ground opened with The Churchill Documents , Volume 17, Testing Times, 1942 . Dear Martin Gilbert died in 2015 leaving a majestic legacy of eighty-eight books about Churchill, Jewish history, and twentieth-century history. He lived to see all of his volumes in the official biography back in print and one new volume too. Testing Times bore his name as editor, and all six volumes published after his death listed him as co-editor with Larry Arnn.

Their careful attention to detail makes these books invaluable. Start with pagination: each reprint carries the same page numbers as the originals—so citations are always the same, regardless of edition. The scholarly endnotes were largely the work Hillsdale’s Churchill Fellows, students engaged in Churchill classes or research, under the supervision of Dr. Arnn and Research Director Soren Geiger. My own role was to read the manuscripts, querying points, providing new references, or possible additional material. The indexing is exhaustive, far deeper than the earlier volumes. Indexer Sheila Ryan won the American Society for Indexing Excellence 2019 Award for The Churchill Documents , Volume 21, The Shadows of Victory, January– July1945 (https://bit.ly/2EAiVzN). E-book versions of the eight narrative volumes are now available, and electronic document volumes are forthcoming.

Scores of scholars have testified to the historic value of all this labor. “We will never again have so thorough a record of any statesman’s decision-making, so vast and consequential,” wrote Eliot Cohen. “Accompanied by a full apparatus of footnotes identifying persons mentioned, correcting dates, and clarifying obscure references, the document volumes contain an extraordinary array of materials: official memoranda, correspondence, speeches, diary entries by friends (and enemies), reports, instructions, recollections, and even dinner lists.” They also have a use beyond simply research, Dave Turrell added: “They can also be read in their own right. Not only do they tell their own story, but the voices we eavesdrop on increase our understanding. They read as a radio play, where we get to hear history being lived and made in real-time.”

The End of the Beginning

Publishing the world’s longest biography would be enough for many, but it did not stop there. Simultaneously, Dr. Arnn started the Hillsdale College Churchill Project to exploit and apply the lessons of Churchill’s rich, inspiring life. “The study of statesmanship,” he says, “is central to Hillsdale’s mission, which includes cultivating the moral and spiritual values. The classics teach that we can best understand the art of statesmanship by studying those who have a reputation for it. One sees prudence, the virtue of the statesman, most clearly through the words and actions of those who pursued justice in the midst of the obstacles and necessities of political life.”

What better model for teaching statesmanship than Churchill? “His career was long, the facts so well recorded, the quality so very high. It spanned the most traumatic events in history—the largest wars, the greatest depression, the worst tyrannies, and the most rapid advancement of technology and therefore of human power. As he faced these crises, Churchill wrote with profuse detail and with great ability about his doings, thereby leaving one of the richest records of human undertaking.” Its legal structure ensures that the Churchill Project will be functioning long after all of us are gone. For that reason, I joined the team in 2014 and serve with pride. Working with Hillsdale’s bright young students is a privilege and an inspiration. A center for Churchill Studies is something I dreamed about for forty years. Dal Newfield dreamed about it too.

“A right understanding of Churchill’s record” requires deep resources. Along with the Gilbert Papers, the Project acquired the Ronald Cohen collection of Churchill essays, forewords, and contributions—Sections “B” through “G” of his Bibliography. Ron himself donated his collection of recordings, the authentic voice of Churchill, now being digitalized for online access. Other collections of Churchill books, artifacts and papers, my own included, are archived at the College or in trust for it.

These materials combine to teach statesmanship through the best teacher of modern times. The method includes national conferences, symposia, scholarships, online courses, and an endowed faculty chair. A steady flow of new publications is planned. One is an electronic version of the Cohen Bibliography, the essential reference to Churchill’s writings. We hope to do more publishing of original texts, obscure writings not seen since first publication. Most recently, the Project marshalled a battery of scholars to defend Churchill’s good name from an outburst of defamation. Suitable, I think, for a college whose motto reads, “Pursuing truth and defending liberty since 1844.”

Through these endeavors, Hillsdale is building an institution for Churchill research, scholarship, and learning. You may also subscribe, with 60,000 others, to bulletins on new articles, research papers and video resources, and announcements of free online courses and events. For details visit winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu or email this writer.

The biography is done, the work goes on, the subject is evergreen. “Great men are the ambassadors of Providence sent to reveal to their fellow men their unknown selves,” said President Calvin Coolidge. “To them is granted the power to call forth the best there is in those who come under their influence.” Here in Winston Churchill, we have the story of one man, it is true; but a man who shows us what we are, all of us, at our best.

A Distaff Big Three

Death to the French

Leading Myths: WSC & GBS

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Churchill’s The World Crisis , Part Twenty-two

Once per week, Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arnn joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss Great Books, Great Men, and Great Ideas.

Dr. Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, joins Hugh Hewitt on the  Hillsdale Dialogues  for his series on “Churchill the Writer.” In this episode, Dr. Arnn and Hugh continue their discussion of  The World Crisis, Vol. 3 , which covers 1916-1918.

Release date: 19 April 2024

Read more about Sir Winston Churchill including the official biography of Churchill by Martin Gilbert at the Hillsdale Official Store.

More from this show

Churchill’s The World Crisis , Part Twenty-one

The stakes of the war in israel, churchill’s the world crisis , part twenty, dishonesty and the legacy media, churchill’s the world crisis , part nineteen, super tuesday and the immigration crisis.

A painting of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work he hated is up for auction

LONDON — A portrait of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work the British leader loathed went on display Tuesday at Churchill’s birthplace ahead of an auction in June.

The painting by modernist artist Graham Sutherland was made in preparation for a larger portrait that Churchill hated and which was later destroyed — an episode recounted in the TV series “The Crown.”

The surviving oil-on-canvas study shows Churchill’s head in profile against a dark background. It is expected to sell for between 500,000 pounds and 800,000 pounds ($622,000 and $995,000) at Sotheby’s in London on June 6.

Sutherland was commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to paint Churchill to mark his 80th birthday in 1954. The full-length portrait was unveiled in Parliament that year, with Churchill calling it, with a smirk, “a remarkable example of modern art.”

Churchill is said to have complained that the painting “makes me look half-witted, which I ain’t.” It was delivered to his home and never seen again. The Churchill family disclosed years later that it had been destroyed.

Its fate was recreated with poetic license in an episode of “The Crown” in which Churchill’s wife, Clementine, watches the painting go up in flames.

Andre Zlattinger, Sotheby’s head of modern British and Irish art, said that in the surviving study, “Churchill is caught in a moment of absent-minded thoughtfulness, and together with the backstory of its creation, it gives the impression of a man truly concerned with his image.”

Sotheby’s put the picture on public display inside the room where Churchill was born 150 years ago at Blenheim Palace, a country mansion 60 miles northwest of London. Visitors can see it there until Sunday. It will go on show at Sotheby’s offices in New York May 3-16 and London May 25-June 5.

The Associated Press

A painting of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work he hated is up for auction

L ONDON (AP) — A portrait of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work the British leader loathed went on display Tuesday at Churchill’s birthplace ahead of an auction in June.

The painting by modernist artist Graham Sutherland was made in preparation for a larger portrait that Churchill hated and which was later destroyed — an episode recounted in the TV series “The Crown.”

The surviving oil-on-canvas study shows Churchill’s head in profile against a dark background. It is expected to sell for between 500,000 pounds and 800,000 pounds ($622,000 and $995,000) at Sotheby’s in London on June 6.

Sutherland was commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to paint Churchill to mark his 80th birthday in 1954. The full-length portrait was unveiled in Parliament that year, with Churchill calling it, with a smirk, “a remarkable example of modern art.”

Churchill is said to have complained that the painting “makes me look half-witted, which I ain’t.” It was delivered to his home and never seen again. The Churchill family disclosed years later that it had been destroyed.

Its fate was recreated with poetic license in an episode of “The Crown” in which Churchill’s wife, Clementine, watches the painting go up in flames.

Andre Zlattinger, Sotheby’s head of modern British and Irish art, said that in the surviving study, “Churchill is caught in a moment of absent-minded thoughtfulness, and together with the backstory of its creation, it gives the impression of a man truly concerned with his image.”

Sotheby’s put the picture on public display inside the room where Churchill was born 150 years ago at Blenheim Palace, a country mansion 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of London. Visitors can see it there until Sunday. It will go on show at Sotheby’s offices in New York May 3-16 and London May 25-June 5.