Winston Churchill

I

Introduction

Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945, 1951-1955), widely regarded as the greatest British leader of the 20th century. Churchill is celebrated for his leadership during World War II (1939-1945). His courage, decisiveness, political experience, and enormous vitality enabled him to lead his country through the war, one of the most desperate struggles in British history.

Winston Churchill’s public life extended from the reign of Queen Victoria in the late 19th century to the Cold War. During this long political career, Churchill held every important cabinet office in the British government, except foreign minister. Churchill was also known for the many books on British history and politics he wrote throughout his lifetime. His command of the English language not only made him a great orator but earned him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953.

II

Early Life

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, his family's ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, on November 30, 1874. He was the elder son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a British statesman who rose to be chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. His mother was an American, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a New York financier. Churchill inherited a family tradition of statesmanship that went back to the great English general John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, in the 17th century. Young Winston attended Harrow School, on the outskirts of London, where he was schooled in the classics. He was a precocious student and, like his father, had a remarkable memory, but he was also stubborn. Churchill had little interest in learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. By his own account, he considered himself such a dunce that he 'could learn only English.' However, he said, 'I learned it thoroughly.'

From early childhood Churchill was fascinated by soldiers and warfare, and he often played with the large collection of lead soldiers in his nursery. His later years at Harrow were spent preparing to enter the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, from which he graduated with honors. Early in 1895 his father died; Churchill was only 20 years old. A few weeks later Churchill was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, a regiment of the British army.

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III

War Correspondent

In November 1895 Churchill spent his first military leave on assignment for a London newspaper. He traveled to Cuba in order to accompany the Spanish army, which was then attempting to stop a rebellion. On his 21st birthday, which he spent in the Cuban jungle, he came under fire for the first time. Later, after his regiment was sent to India in 1896, he secured a temporary transfer to the turbulent North-West Frontier, where a tribal insurrection was under way. Churchill's dispatches to the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 1897 formed the basis for his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898).

In 1898 Churchill went to Egypt attached to the 21st Lancers and took part in the reconquest of the Sudan. This area south of Egypt had been controlled by Egypt prior to 1885, when it fell to a rebel Muslim group. As Britain gained control of Egypt in the 1880s and 1890s, it sought to reclaim the Sudan. During the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898, Churchill participated in one of the last cavalry charges in British military history. Again his newspaper dispatches were followed by a book, The River War (1899) in two volumes, the most substantial work he wrote before entering Parliament.

Churchill resigned his army commission in 1899 and turned to journalism and politics. He ran for a seat in Parliament as a Conservative candidate but was not elected. He then went to South Africa to cover the Boer War that had just broken out between Britain and the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers. He was captured by the Boers and imprisoned at the State Model School in Pretoria. He managed to escape from prison and then take the railroad into Portuguese East Africa, a feat that made him a national hero. He then returned to South Africa and sought another army commission. He fought and wrote about the war until he returned to London in the summer of 1900. His newspaper dispatches were promptly reprinted in two books, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) and Ian Hamilton's March (1900).

IV

Member of Parliament

When Churchill returned to England in 1900, his South African exploits had made him famous, and he was elected to the House of Commons. Though he was a Conservative, he criticized military spending and supported free trade, which soon resulted in a conflict with the Conservative leadership, who supported large military budgets and protective tariffs. In 1904 he 'crossed the floor of the House' to take a seat with the Liberal Party.

Churchill also continued writing. His political ambition was evident in his sole novel, Savrola (1900), in which the hero leads a democratic revolution in an imaginary country in the Balkans, only to see the revolution escape from his control. During his first years in Parliament, Churchill wrote a two-volume biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill (1906)—an illuminating study of British parliamentary government. His diligent research about his father's political career helped him learn about British politics and prepare for cabinet office.

After the Liberals won the election in 1905, Churchill was appointed undersecretary at the Colonial Office, where he was the minister responsible for issues concerning Britain’s colonies. One of his tours to inspect colonies in East Africa resulted in another book, My African Journey (1908). In 1908 he gained his first cabinet post as president of the Board of Trade. That same year, Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier. They had five children, one of whom died as a young child. In 1910 Churchill became home secretary, with responsibility for police and the prison system. He held this post until 1911, superintending liberal reforms of Britain's prison system to reduce lengthy terms, to find alternatives to prison for youthful offenders, and to distinguish between criminal and political prisoners.