Many consider him to be the Greatest Englishman of the 20th century, mainly due to what he did to lead the country to victory in World War 2.
However, until he became Prime Minister, for nearly 40 years he was a contentious figure in British life.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on the 30th of November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the home of his uncle, The Duke of Marlborough. His father, Randolph Churchill, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer and his mother Jenny, was an American heiress.
Before politics he was a soldier, who took part on the morning of September 1st 1898 in the last ever English cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman, about which he wrote a moving description.
He went on to become a journalist and in 1899 the London Morning Post paid him £150,000, in present-day money, to go to South Africa and report on the Boer War.
Later that year he was aboard an armoured train carrying British troops, which was attacked by the Boers. He was captured and transported to a prisoner-of-war camp in the enemy capital of Pretoria.
He didn’t like being restricted, so he escaped. The London Post announced their reporter missing, then after several weeks of speculation as to what had happened to him, he managed to smuggle himself onto a freight train that carried him to freedom in Portuguese East Africa. Naturally, once the paper announced that their reporter was free, he became a national hero, and Churchill capitalized on it by writing about it.
Politics was always his first love and in 1900 he became a Conservative member of Parliament as the member for Oldham, then, in 1904 he defected to the Liberals!
He rose quickly to the post of First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, where he was the driving force in the Gallipoli Campaign, which proved a disaster. As a result, he was demoted to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. However, he needed to be in the middle of the action, so he resigned in November 1915 to join the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months. Then in 1917, he returned to government under the new Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and served in a variety of different ministries for many years.
To everyone’s surprise in 1925, after more than twenty years with the Liberals, he rejoined the Conservatives. He is claimed to have said, “anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat’.
As a Tory, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer until the party was out of office in 1929. He retained his seat in the House but became more and more isolated. The 1930s were his “wilderness years”, where he was worried about the rise of the dictators in Europe, as a result he became the leading force in calling for British rearmament.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and in May 1940, he finally became Prime Minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain.
These were his greatest years. He formed a national Government and brilliantly led the war effort against Hitler’s Germany. As Prime Minister, he believed that to keep fighting was the only option, and it was his magnificent speeches, with their brilliant use of language, that persuaded the British people, through the darkest days, that victory would come. It has been said that Churchill’s speeches were “an inspiration for the nation”. Basically, Churchill’s leadership style and stubbornness were just what was needed at that time to lead the country to victory.
Afterwards he settled down to write books about his experiences, which led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. In 1951 he returned to office where he was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially the preservation of the British Empire.
In declining health, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964. After his death on January 24th 1965, he was given a state funeral.
Our sister site, Educational Musicals, has created a fabulous musical about WWII and the battle between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN is a fantastic show created especially for children, with an exciting and fun script and 12 amazing songs. Find out more on click on THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN which you can see samples of script and listen to excerpts from the score.
Isn’t history fun?
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© Anthony James