Journalist, historian, solider, painter, he was also one of the greatest leaders of our time. His name was Winston Churchill and he rallied the nation in its darkest hour.
Even tough he was one of Britain’s greatest leaders, he was also one of the hardest man to work with. With many failures in his political career his opponents called him “A man with a brilliant future behind him”. (Churchill the maverick politician)
But most of his colleges and friends will remember him as a hardworking man who, after every failure, pulled himself back and began anew.
Few people remember his early days.
He was born in aristocracy, his father Lord Randolph Churchill was the youngest son of the Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer Churchill. His mother was a lively daughter of an American financier. When his mother was seven and a half months pregnant she stayed at Blenheim palace, were on the 30th November of 1874 Winston Churchill was born and baptized. He was brought up by a nanny, Ms. Elizabeth Anne Everest. She served as his confidante, nurse, and mother substitute. (Jenkins 10)
At the age of seven his mother sent him to a boarding school. And at the age of thirteen he went to Harrow School. At Harrow school he showed great interest in fencing and the subject History of England. He also won the public school championship in fencing. His parents’ were too busy with their social life to pay any attention to their son.
During his years at Harrow he sent several letters to his mother asking her to come to see him, but it was all in vain. On speech day, an annual event where all the parents come to see their children in school, his parents failed to come. Instead, his nanny came.
He was very close to his nanny. When she came to see him in her nanny’s clothes, young Winston proudly showed her around the school, enduring the comments of his schoolmates. After Harrow Churchill applied to Sandhurst to train as a soldier. He spent the next four years as a regular solider fighting in India and in this period he wrote newspaper articles, and at twenty-three he published his first book, “A graphic account of the war on the north-west frontier”.
In 1899 he went to South Africa to report on the war. On the 15th November a train with a hundred and fifty soldiers on board, including Churchill, set off to patrol. The train was ambushed, and during the attack Churchill took command. He was successful to take sixty man to safety, but when he went back to support the remaining troops he was captured by the enemies and taken prisoner. When the press wrote about his endeavors he became an immediate hero. He was able to escape from the prison he was held in by jumping over the wall and docking a train. He was wanted dead or alive. Later in one of his books Churchill wrote, “I certainly hated every minute of my captivity more than I hated any other period of my whole life”. (Churchill 259) Eventually he appeared in Dublin, where he delivered speeches on how he escaped, and after some time he even wrote a book about it. Now it was time for Churchill to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the political career.
In 1900 Churchill joined the parliament as a conservative, but later in 1904 he changed party’s from conservatives to the liberals. At the age of 30 he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, his first ministerial post. Three years later he became one of the youngest cabinet ministers ever. He introduced many social reforms, abolished sweated labor.
Despite being a good politician his love life wasn’t so great. During those years Churchill proposed to three women which all turned him down. Apparently they weren’t interested in his political career. Soon he met one that was interested in him and his political career, the future Mrs. Churchill, Clementine Hose. Their first meeting did not go so well. Their daughter Diana Churchill remembers how her mother told her that she felt uncomfortable when a man just stood there and gazed at her and when he asked her for a dance, she took her exit very quickly. They did not see each other for another four years until they met by chance at a dinner party. After an evening spent in each others company, they felt attracted to each other. A few weeks later she was invited with him to insertnamehere palace to spend a weekend as a guest at Churchill’s cousin the duke of Mallborn. At the end of the weekend, the 11th of August, Churchill proposed to Clementine at the very place he was born. She accepted and they decided to keep their engagement a secret until she could go to London and tell her mother. But Churchill couldn’t hold his excitement, when he saw his closest friend at the palace, he rushed up to him, embraced him, and in full sight of several palace servants blurted out the news. On 12 September 1908, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, Clementine married the ten year older Churchill. In 1911 Churchill was given the cabinet post he was most suited for, First Lord of the Admiralty. On the 4th of August 1914 Great Britain declared war on Germany. During a stalemate on the western front, Churchill proposed a naval attack through the Dardanelles against Germany’s ally Turkey. The operation was carried out but it was a total disaster. Many British lives and ships were lost, and Churchill was blamed for this failure. The cabinet lost faith in his judgment and in May 1915 he was removed from the Admiralty.
Having nowhere left to go, Churchill decided to fight as a soldier on the front lines. The ex-cabinet minister was now a Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 6th battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers. With the disaster at Dardanelles his man had a very low opinion of him. But Churchill’s man quickly grew to like him, he shared their hardships and their moments of relaxations. He was not afraid to go on patrols close to the German lines, and many of his man could see that he was a real man’s man. After six months in France Churchill returned to Britain and again got back in Politics.
In 1924 the conservatives won the election and Stanley Baldwin, the new Prime Minister invited Churchill to join the government. Once more Churchill changed party’s from the Liberal to the Conservatives. Later he was given the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill remained Chancellor for five years but he failed to revive the economy or reduce the unemployment.
In 1931 Ramsay MacDonald formed a national government with Conservatives and Liberals, but Churchill was not invited to join them. He was disliked, because he opposed their plans to give self government to India. He spent the next ten years out of office. He spent those ten years lecturing in the United States.
Receiving secret information about Hitler’s future intentions, Churchill used this information to urge Britain to re-arm. But the government paid no attention to him, nor did anyone take him or his warnings seriously.
In March 1939 Hitler broke the Munich agreement and occupied the Czech capital Prague. Finally people realized that Churchill was right. A nationwide campaign began to bring Churchill back.
On the 1st September 1939 English and France declared war on Germany. Chamberlin, now the Prime Minister, asked Churchill to join the cabinet as the First Lord of Admiralty, and Churchill accepted. In 1940 the German troops occupied Denmark and southern Norway. Seeing the chance to forestall the enemy, Churchill wanted to send troops to Norway but the cabinet delayed for too long and the Germans got there first. For three weeks the British troops tried to drive them out but they couldn’t do so. The battle in Norway was a disaster. Once again many thought that Churchill was at fault, but it was decided that it was Chamberlin who had to go and that Churchill should replace him.
On the 10th May 1940 Chamberlin resigned, and only one person could now hold the country together. The same day at evening, Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But hard times lay ahead.