WINSTON CHURCHILL

Few people in history have been great, but perhaps the greatest of the great was Winston Churchill. Born the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Jennie Jerome, daughter of a New York financier, he was a lonely child, much estranged from his father and brought up by a nurse. Growing up in Blenheim Palace – an ancestor was the Duke of Marlborough – he went to Harrow where he was a less than brilliant student and finally got into Sandhurst after failing the exams three times.
His father died in 1895 when Churchill was 21. Becoming a war correspondent, he took part in the last cavalry charge of British history at Omdurman, and during the Boer War he was captured but became a national hero for his daring escape across the length of South Africa. In 1900 he became Conservative MP for Oldham, but having a disagreement, he crossed the House to the Liberals, becoming Home Secretary in 1910 and First Lord of the Admiralty the following year.
During the First World War he was blamed for the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign so he resigned and fought in the trenches before becoming secretaries of War and the Colonies, where he was instrumental in setting up the Irish Free State.
Churchill left the Liberals in 1923, rejoining the Tories as MP for Epping. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 he brought about Britain’s return to the gold standard, and as Home Secretary defeated the General Strike of 1926. However, in 1929 he fell out with the Tories over India, rearmament and appeasement, beginning his ‘wilderness years’ where he spoke out about Hitler.
On the first day of war he was back in the Admiralty, becoming Prime Minister in 1940 and masterminding western strategy, playing a major part in organising the Battle of Britain and Battle of Alamein. With a close relationship with the Americans, and an amazing oratory ability, in 1940 he was the main weapon of freedom in the world.
Prime Minister again from 1951-55, he devised the term ‘Iron Curtain’ and stood up against Soviet Russia before retiring to his Chartwell home in Kent, with his wife Clementine, whom he married in 1908. Dying in 1965, he was one of the few non-­Royals to have a State Funeral.
In addition to this impressive career, Churchill was a good artist and brilliant writer, his ‘History of World War II’ and ‘History of the English Speaking Peoples’ earning him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Knighted in 1953, he thought one of his greatest achievements was the brick wall he spent years building at Chartwell.
However, this greatness aside, Churchill was also exceptionally egoistic, often drunk, and suffered throughout his life with depression, which he called the Black Dog. Forever a cigar smoker, he was also infamous for his humour. When one lady said to him: ‘Winston, you’re drunk,’ he replied: ‘Yes, madam. You’re ugly, but in the morning I will be sober.’
It was, of course, a lie.

© Anthony North, February 2003