Winston Churchill

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Date of Birth	:	30 Nov, 1874
Date of Death	:	24 Jan, 1965
Place of Birth	:	Blenheim Palace, United Kingdom
Profession	:	Former Prime Minister Of The United Kingdom
Nationality	:	British

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire into the wealthy, aristocratic Spencer family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Mahdist War (also known as the Anglo-Sudan War), and the Second Boer War, later gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security. As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli campaign, but after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months. In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

Out of government during his so-called "wilderness years" in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became prime minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain. Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition. Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an "iron curtain" of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. Between his terms as prime minister, he wrote several books recounting his experience during the war. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He lost the 1950 election but was returned to office in 1951. His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and preservation of what remained of the British Empire with India now no longer part of it. Domestically, his government emphasised housebuilding and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor). In declining health, Churchill resigned as prime minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964. Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and the rest of the Anglosphere where he is generally viewed as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy against the spread of fascism. While he has been criticised for his views on race and empire alongside some of his wartime decisions, historians often rank Churchill as the greatest prime minister in British history.

Early life

Childhood and Schooling: 1874-1895

Jenny Spencer Churchill with her two sons Jack (left) and Winston (right) in 1889

Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 in his family's ancestral home at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. On his father's side, he was a member of the British aristocracy, being descended from John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Woodstock in 1874, representing the Conservative Party. His mother, Jenny, was the daughter of a wealthy American businessman, Leonard Jerome.

In 1876, Churchill's grandfather, John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom. Randolph became her private secretary and the family moved to Dublin. Winston's brother Jack was born there in 1880. Throughout much of the 1880s, Randolph and Jenny were effectively estranged, and the brothers were mostly cared for by their nanny, Elizabeth Everest. When he died in 1895, Churchill wrote that "for the whole twenty years that I lived he was my dearest and most intimate friend".

Churchill began boarding at St George's School in Ascot, Berkshire at the age of seven but was not academic and had poor behaviour. In 1884, he transferred to Brunswick School in Hove, where his academic performance improved. In April 1888, aged 13, he narrowly passed the Harrow School entrance examination. His father wanted him to prepare for a military career and so his last three years at Harrow were in the army. After two failed attempts to gain admission to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he succeeded on his third. In September 1893 he was accepted as a cadet in the cavalry. His father died in January 1895, a month after Churchill graduated from Sandhurst.

Cuba, India and the Sudan: 1895-1899

Churchill in military uniform of the 4th Queen's Own Hussars at Aldershot in 1895.

In February 1895, Churchill was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars Regiment of the British Army based at Aldershot. Eager to witness military operations, he uses his mother's influence to post himself on a battlefield. In the fall of 1895, he and his friend Reggie Barnes, then a subaltern, traveled to Cuba to observe the War of Independence and became embroiled in conflict after joining Spanish forces in an effort to suppress the independence fighters. Churchill sent reports about the conflict to London's Daily Graphic. He moved to New York City and wrote to his mother praising the United States, "What wonderful people Americans are!" , visited Calcutta three times and joined the Hyderabad and North West Frontier expeditions.

In India, Churchill began a self-education project,reading many authors including Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin and Thomas Babington Macaulay. The books were sent to him by his mother, with whom he corresponded frequently while abroad. To learn about politics, he asked his mother to send him copies of the annual register of political calendars. In a letter written to him in 1898, he referred to his religious beliefs, saying: "I do not accept Christianity or any other religious belief". Churchill was christened into the Church of England but, as he later noted, he underwent a virulently anti-Christian phase in his youth,and was an agnostic as an adult. In another letter to one of his cousins, he referred to religion as "a delicious medicine" and expressed a preference for Protestantism over Roman Catholicism because he considered it "a step closer to reason".

Interested in British parliamentary affairs, he declared himself "a Liberal on all accounts" and added that he could never endorse the Liberal Party's support for Irish Home Rule. Instead, he aligned himself with the Tory Democracy wing of the Conservative Party and, on a visit home, gave his first public speech for the party's Primrose League at Claverton Down, near Bath. Combining reformist and conservative views, she supported the promotion of secular, secular education while opposing women's suffrage.

Churchill volunteered to join Bindon Blood's Malakand Field Force in the campaign against the Mohmand rebels in the Swat Valley of northwestern India. Blood accepted Churchill as a journalist on the condition that he began his writing career. He returned to Bangalore in October 1897 and there wrote his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, which received positive reviews. He wrote his only fiction, Savrola, a Ruritanian romance. To keep himself fully occupied, Churchill wrote what Roy Jenkins called his "whole habit", especially when he was out of office through his political career. Writing was his main defense against recurring depression, which he referred to as his "black dog".

Using his contacts in London, Churchill attached himself to General Herbert Kitchener's campaign in the Sudan as a 21st Lancers subaltern, additionally, working as a journalist for The Morning Post. After fighting at the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, the 21st Lancers were disbanded. In October, Churchill returned to England and began writing The River War, an account of the campaign which was published in November 1899; It was at this time that he decided to leave the army. He criticized Kitchener's actions during the war, particularly the latter's merciless treatment of enemy wounded and the desecration of Muhammad Ahmad's tomb at Omdurman.

On 2 December 1898, Churchill traveled to India to settle his military business and complete his resignation from the 4th Hussars. He spent most of his time there playing polo, the only ball game he was interested in. After leaving the Hussars, he left Bombay on 20 March 1899 to begin a career in politics.

Lloyd George government: 1916–1922

Minister of Munitions: 1917–1919

In October 1916, Asquith resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Lloyd George who, in May 1917, sent Churchill to inspect the French war effort.In July, Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions. He quickly negotiated an end to a strike in munitions factories along the Clyde and increased munitions production. In his October 1917 letter to his Cabinet colleagues, he penned the plan of attack for the next year that would bring final victory to the Allies. He ended a second strike, in June 1918, by threatening to conscript strikers into the army. In the House of Commons, Churchill voted in support of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave some British women the right to vote.[196] In November 1918, four days after the Armistice, Churchill's fourth child, Marigold, was born.