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| Sir Winston Churchill |
Bio from: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/churchil.htm
Statesman, historian, and biographer,
whose five years of war leadership (1940-45) secured him a
central place in modern British
history. Churchill is widely considered the greatest political figure in 20th-
century Britain. He won the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1953. In was an open secret that he would have
preferred the Nobel Peace Prize.
Churchill's career was anything but predictable: he supported the
Zionist movement in Palestine
(1921-22), during the Abdication crisis (1926) he was loyal to Edward VIII,
and during the 1945 election campaign
he tried to brand Labour as a totalitarian party.
'Hitler knows that he will have to
break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all
Europe may be free and the life of
the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail,
the whole world, including the Unites
States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink
into the abyss of a new Dark Age,
made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of
perverted science. Let us therefore
brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the
British Empire and its Commonwealth
last for a thousand years, men will say, "This was their finest hour.
"' (Churchill in his speech on
June 18, 1940)
Winston Churchill was the son of
conservative politician Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife,
Jennie Jerome, and a direct
descendant from the first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722). Lady
Randolph's second son, Jack, was born
in 1880, and rumors circulated that he had a different father
from Winston Churchill. "George
Moore, the Anglo-Irish novelist, said she had 200 lovers, but apart from
anything else the number is
suspiciously round," Roy Jenkins wrote in his biography on Churchill.
"I
loved her dearly — but at a
distance," Churchill later said of his mother in MY EARLY LIFE (1930). In
school Churchill was at the bottom of
his class. Nothing showed that he would became "the largest
human being of our time" (Isaiah
Berlin). Physically he was not a big man - at 5-foot-8 he was shorter
than Harry Truman. Churchill attended
Harrow and Sandhurst, from which he graduated twentieth in a
class of 130. Shortly after his
father's death in 1895, he was commissioned in the Fourth Hussars. He
soon obtained a leave, and worked
during the Cuban war as a reporter for the London Daily Graphic.
"It is better to be making the
news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic." (from The
Malakand
Field Force)
From 1896 to 1897 Churchill served as
a soldier and journalist in India, and wrote the basis for THE
STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE
(1898). "Writing is an adventure," Churchill once said. "To
begin with, it is a toy and
amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it
becomes a tyrant. The last phase it
that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill
the monster and fling him to the
public."
In 1898 Churchill fought at the
battle of Omdurman in Sudan, depicting his experiences in THE RIVER
WAR, AN ACCOUNT OF THE RECONQUEST OF
THE SUDAN (1899). Churchill's several books
dealing with his early career include
MY AFRICAN JOURNEY (1908) and MY EARLY LIFE (1930).
Churchill resigned his commission in
1899, and was assigned to cover the Boer War for the London
Morning Post. His adventures, capture
by the Boers, and a daring escape, made Churchill celebrity and
hero on his return to England in
1900.
In 1900 Churchill was first elected
to Parliament. He switched from conservatives to Liberal Party in
1904. In 1908 he married Clementine
Ogilvy Hozier, with whom he had one son and three daughters.
This relationship brought much
happiness and security throughout Churchill's lifetime. Between 1906
and 1911 Churchill served in various
governmental posts, and was appointed lord of the admiralty in
1911. As home secretary (1910-11) he
used troops against strikers in South Wales.
After the outbreak of First World War
he supported the Dardannelles Campaign, an operation against
the Turks. He had encouraged the
development of such materiel as tank, and was generally credited
with the British Fleet's preparedness
in August 1914. But abortive expeditions to Antwerp and Gallipoli
and the failed action at the
Dardanelles did great harm to Churchill reputation and career. Reduced in
1915 to minor office as Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster, he resigned. Churchill rejoined the Army,
and rose to the rank of colonel. In
1917 he was appointed Lloyd George's minister of munition,
subsequently becoming the state
secretary for war and air (1918-21), and colonial secretary (1921-22).
During the postwar years he was
active in support of the Whites (anti-Bolsheviks) in Russia.
At the election of 1922 Churchill was
defeated as an Anti-Socialist. A rabid anti-Bolshevik, he further
alienated critics by a third abortive
military expedition - to help the White Russians on the Murman
Coast. He left Parliament in 1922,
and returned to the House as a Conservative. From this period he is
remembered for his role as chancellor
of the exchequer (1924-29) for the part he played in defeating the
General strike of 1926 as an opponent
of organized labour when the latter came into direct conflict with
the principle of public order and
government. In 1923 Lord Alfred Douglas accused Churchill of having
arranged the wartime death of Lord
Kitchener. Douglas's source was a bogus captain who had been
certified as a lunatic. Much later he
addressed a sonnet to Winston Churchill. False news annoyed
Churchill but also BBC - he saw it as
a rival to his own British Gazette, edited from his official address at
Downing Street.
Out of office, Churchill began
writing THE WORLD CRISIS, which appeared in 6 volumes (1923-31).
The work was attacked by the eminent
poet and critic Herbert Read in English Prose Style (1928). He
described Churchill prose as being
high-sounding, redundant, falsely eloquent and declamatory, sharing
his view with the younger post-war
generation of writers who praised the virtues of simplicity. In 1924
Churchill was elected to Parliament,
and appointed chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill's defense of
the gold was criticized by the
economist John Maynard Keynes, who foresaw that such policy would
drop coal prices significantly. It
lead to conditions which eventually provoked the general strike of 1926.
Later, during World War II, Keynes
was one of Churchill's economic advisers.
After Conservative defeat in 1929,
Churchill was again out of office. His absence from government
lasted a decade. During this time he
wrote a four-volume biography of his ancestor, MARLBOROUGH:
HIS LIFE AND TIMES (1933-1938).
"I cannot forecast to you the
action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
(from a radio broadcast, October 1,
1939)
With the outbreak of World War II
Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty. On May 10, 1940,
he became Prime Minister, and
established close ties with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His
radio speeches strenghtened the
nation's determination to win the war. "We shall not flag nor fail. We
shall go on to the end. . . . We
shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets . . . we shall never
surrender." In 2001, some sixty years later, President George W. Bush used
an adaptation of these words in his
speeches after a terrorist attack against World Trade Center on
September 11. In November 1943
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met in Teheran and at the meeting
Churchill presented Stalin with a
sword of honor for the people of Stalingrad. The Yalta meeting with
Roosevelt and Stalin resulted in the
dissection of Europe into opposing political jurisdictions. His
strategic misjudgment was blamed for
the wartime success of Germany in Africa, Norway, and the
Aegean. He had difficulties to
tolerate Charles de Gaulle, and he told to a friend: "Of all the crosses I
have to bear, the heaviest is the
Cross of Lorraine." During the war Churchill was relatively healthy but
in 1943 and 1944 he suffered
pneumonia; also his long, official meals with Stalin, which could take four-
five hours, gave him stomach pains.
On 8 May Churchill announced the unconditional surrender of
Germany. His Conservative party was
defeated by the Labour party in the 1945 election, but he
continued as Opposition leader in the
House of Commons: against Indian independence, and in favor of
the United Nations, a unified Europe,
and manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.
During the war Churchill also had
time to support the idea of C.K. Ogden for an international language,
Basic English. "Basic English is
a carefully wrought plan for transactions of practical business and
interchange of ideas, a medium of
understanding to many races and an aid to the building of a new
structure for preserving peace."
(Churchill at Harvard, 1943) Churchill emerged from WW II as a
national hero, but was out of the
office for several years. However, he led the Conservative opposition,
and remained active as a political
thinker. A sign of the beginning of the Cold War was Churchill's
famous 'Iron Curtain' speech in
Fulton, Missouri, in spring 1946.
Churchill's history THE SECOND WORLD
WAR appeared in six volumes (1948-54). Churchill had once
predicted that history would treat
him kindly because he himself would write it. The work was received
with mixed critics, praised for its
grandeur, but Volume 2 (the period through 1941) was considered
poorly arranged, and Volume 5
(through 1944) seemed to most critics a falling-off from earlier volumes.
"The quality of Churchill's
volumes on the Second World War is that of his whole life. His world in built
upon the primacy of public over
private relationships, upon the supreme value of action, of the battle
between simple good and simple evil,
between life and death; but, above all, battle." (Isaiah Berlin in
The Proper Study of Mankind, 1998)
In 1951 Churchill became prime
minister, and was knighted in 1953. Next year he was acclaimed by the
Queen and Parliament as 'the greatest
living Briton'. Churchill's efforts to bring an end to the first phase
of the Cold War by a summit
conference between himself, Eisenhower and Stalin (1952-55) turned out
to be fruitless. He resigned from the
prime minister's office in 1955 and was succeeded by Anthony
Eden. He had suffered a paralytic
stroke a few year before, and Lord Moran, his physician, gave him
some stimulant, perhaps amphetamine.
It is possible that Churchill took drugs, "Dr. Moran's green pills",
before important political meetings.
His diet was not healthy - he was overweight, did not take any
unnecessary steps in his old days,
and his servants helped him to dress and undress. After his
retirement he published the
monumental A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE (1956-
58), which mostly dealt with politics
and war. At Westerham, Kent, Churchill concentrated in painting,
masonry, and horse racing. He
frequently dictated letters to his secretaries half-dressed and often
roamed around his rooms at Chartwell
nude when he awoke. During this last period of his life, when he
was not in the center of political
power, he also suffered from depression.
"I am ready to meet my
Maker," Churchill said on his 75th birthday. "Whether my Maker is
prepared for
the ordeal of meeting me is another
matter." Churchill died on January 24, 1965, after suffering cerebral
thrombosis. Later historians have
been critical of Churchill's actions and relationships with world leaders,
and the opening of British government
files in the 1980s have brought new material into daylight. The
conviction that Churchill was among
the most important men in modern history have remained
unchanged.
Winston married Clementine Hozier on 12 Sep 1908 in St. Margaret's, Westminster,
London, England. Clementine was born on 1 Apr 1885 in Mayfair, London, England.
She died on 12 Dec 1977 in Princes Gate, Knightsbridge, London, England. She
was buried in St. Martins's Church, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire,
England.
Appendix A - Sources
1. Steve
Riddle, World Connect Project pages of Steve Riddle (http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=sriddle).
2. Compiled
by: Find A Grave, Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/), Find A Grave, PO
Box 522107, Salt Lake City, UT 84152-2107.