The case for him is a powerful one, of course. He was first a government minister in , and occupied most of the top jobs in politics during half a century. He finally retired in , having served as prime minister for a total of nine years. But it was his extraordinary leadership in World War Two that marked him out. Bold, brave and tireless in his resolve to take on the might of Nazi Germany, he inspired a nervous and hesitant Britain through his sheer energy and force of personality to defy stark odds and never give in.
The entire world's history would have been different if he hadn't come to power in Britain in Still, Churchill made huge mistakes in his long political life - Gallipoli, the Black and Tans in Ireland, backing the use of poison gas.
As a particularly inexperienced chancellor of the exchequer in the s, he put Britain back onto the gold standard. John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, believed this was a major factor in bringing about the Great Depression. In the s, in the political wilderness, he was an angry opponent of Indian nationalism, and his language about Gandhi verged on racism. After it, Churchill was old and ill, yet he returned to lead the government from , refusing for a long time to stand down.
It's a powerful litany of failure and misjudgement, and a leading academic at Cambridge University, Dr Nigel Knight, has examined it carefully. Nevertheless at the supreme moment, in May , Churchill got it absolutely right.
During the s he had visited Hitler's Germany and seen for himself the potential for evil there. Few people, either in the UK or the US, wanted to know, and he often had a problem selling his articles about the evils of Nazism to the press. And of course once he was in power, his superb speeches inspired the country and kept it going.
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, who recently published a book about Churchill, believes that it was Churchill's characteristic determination to go and find things out for himself that was a mark of his greatness. Then came Violet Asquith, daughter of prime minister Herbert Asquith, with whom Clemmie somewhat overlapped. Churchill later revealed that he and Violet were not far short of engaged, and he may well have ended up with her if Clementine had refused his marriage proposal.
In Churchill began his painting career, going on to produce some works during his lifetime. He made countless attractive, idealized landscapes, many of which were later reproduced on greetings cards. In Churchill had two works accepted by the Royal Academy, which he had submitted under the pseudonym David Winter. By the time he died, Churchill had exhibited no less than 50 of his works at the Academy. I built with my own hands a large part of two cottages and extensive kitchen-garden walls, and made all kinds of rockeries and waterworks and a large swimming pool which was filtered to limpidity and could be heated to supplement our fickle sunshine.
Churchill truly did love the good life, and would brook little compromise when it came to eating, drinking and smoking. When required to travel by aeroplane during the Second World War, he even had his oxygen mask adapted so that he might be able to smoke through it.
He had a formidable appetite from a young age, once receiving a thrashing at school for stealing sugar from a pantry. In the year before he died, Clemmie insisted he go on a diet. Sign in. One such relationship matched Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, with Jennie Jerome, the Brooklyn-born daughter of a wealthy financier. The couple had two children together: Winston in and Jack in Yet the relationship purportedly soured, and Jennie was frequently absent.
As a student, Churchill performed poorly in virtually every subject except history and English composition. He was particularly inept at foreign languages. With the help of a military tutor, he finally qualified the third time around, but only for the cavalry class, which had lower standards than the infantry.
After graduating from Sandhurst, Churchill took leave from the army and traveled to Cuba, where he reported on an uprising for a London newspaper. He subsequently served as a war correspondent and military officer, a dual role then permitted, in India, Sudan and South Africa.
Upon arriving in South Africa in , his armored train was ambushed by Boers, the descendants of Dutch settlers who were fighting the British at the time. Churchill was captured and marched to a prison camp, which he soon escaped from by scaling a wall at night, even as two of his fellow prisoners turned back. With no precise plan, Churchill luckily stumbled upon the house of a British coal mine manager, who hid him in a mineshaft for three days and then sent him on a wool-filled rail truck into Mozambique.
From there, Churchill caught a ship back to South Africa and rushed to the front a newfound hero.
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