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By Richard Aldous

• Nov. 13, 2018

CHURCHILL Walking With Destiny By Andrew Roberts Illustrated. 1,105 pp. Viking. $40.

In April 1955, on the final weekend before he left office for the last time, Winston Churchill had the vast canvas of Peter Paul Rubens’s “The Lion and the Mouse” taken down from the Great Hall at the prime ministerial retreat of Chequers. He had always found the depiction of the mouse too indistinct, so he retrieved his paint brushes and set about “improving” on the work of Rubens by making the hazy rodent clearer. “If that is not courage,” Lord Mountbatten, the First Sea Lord, said later, “I do not know what is.”

Lack of courage was never Churchill’s problem. As a young man he was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery fighting alongside the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier , and subsequently he took part in the last significant cavalry charge in British history at the Battle of Omdurman in central Sudan . In middle age he served in the trenches of World War I, during which time a German high-explosive shell came in through the roof of his dugout and blew his mess orderly’s head clean off. Later, as prime minister during World War II, and by now in his mid-60s, he thought nothing of visiting bomb sites during the Blitz or crossing the treacherous waters of the Atlantic to see President Roosevelt despite the very real chance of being torpedoed by German U-boats.

Churchill had political courage too, not least as one of the few to oppose the appeasement of Hitler. Many had thought him a warmonger and even a traitor. “I have always felt,” said that scion of the Establishment, Lord Ponsonby, at the time of the Munich debate in 1938, “that in a crisis he is one of the first people who ought to be interned.” Instead, when the moment of supreme crisis came in 1940, the British people turned to him for leadership. Here was his ultimate projection of courage: that Britain would “never surrender.”

If courage was not the issue, lack of judgment often was. Famous military disasters attached to his name, including Antwerp in 1914 , the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) in 1915 and Narvik in 1940 . So too did political controversies, like turning up in person to instruct the police during a violent street battle with anarchists, defying John Maynard Keynes in returning Britain to the gold standard or rashly supporting Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. His views on race and empire were anachronistic even for those times. The carpet bombing of German cities during World War II; the “naughty document” that handed over Romania and Bulgaria to Stalin; comparing the Labour Party to the Gestapo — the list of Churchillian controversies goes on. Each raised questions about his temperament and character. His drinking habits also attracted comment.

Such is the challenge facing any biographer of Churchill: how to weigh in the balance a life filled with so much triumph and disaster, adulation and contempt. The historian Andrew Roberts’s insight about Churchill’s relation to fate in “Churchill: Walking With Destiny” comes directly from the subject himself. “I felt as if I were walking with destiny,” Churchill wrote of that moment in May 1940 when he achieved the highest office. But the story Roberts tells is more sophisticated and in the end more satisfying. “For although he was indeed walking with destiny in May 1940, it was a destiny that he had consciously spent a lifetime shaping,” Roberts writes, adding that Churchill learned from his mistakes, and “put those lessons to use during civilization’s most testing hour.” Experience and reflection on painful failures, while less glamorous than a fate written in the stars, turn out to be the key ingredients in Churchill’s ultimate success.

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The 10 Best Books By and About Winston Churchill

The prime minister was also a prolific writer and historian.

• Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Winston Churchill is one of those historical figures who almost needs no introduction. As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he led his country through the darkest days of World War II and became a symbol of strength, stability, and effective leadership. But Churchill’s legacy extends far beyond his most famous moment in the spotlight.

Born in 1874 to an aristocratic family, Churchill grew up during the reign of Queen Victoria and bore witness to many events that shaped the 20th century . He served as a war correspondent in his twenties, became a Member of Parliament in 1900, and fought in the First World War, all before his famous tenure as Prime Minister. After the war, his political party was defeated in the general election and he turned his attention to his life-long love of writing, penning a novel and several well-received history volumes. He re-entered the political stage in the 1950s, aggressively denouncing the Soviet Union and serving as Prime Minister a second time from 1951 to 1955.

If you’ve been wanting to learn more about Winston Churchill's unique life and how that shaped his outlook, look no further than this list! Here are the 10 best books by and about Winston Churchill. 

Books By Churchill

The Gathering Storm

By Winston S. Churchill

Churchill’s two identities as wartime Prime Minister and historian came together in his six-volume history, The Second World War . Volume one, The Gathering Storm , sets the stage for World War II. Based on historical research, government documents, and Churchill’s own recollections, the book chronicles Hitler’s rise to power, Germany’s increasingly aggressive military moves in Europe, Britain’s failed strategy of appeasement, and finally Britain's entry into the conflict in 1939. Churchill’s access to primary sources like telegrams, secret orders, and speeches allows him to give an almost minute-by-minute account of events. 

The Hinge of Fate

Volume four of The Second World War finds the Allies in a precarious position. It’s early 1942. The Americans have been attacked at Pearl Harbor , and Singapore has fallen to the Japanese. Yet, in just a few months' time, several decisive military victories will turn the tide of war in the Allies' favor. In The Hinge of Fate , Churchill describes the key decisions that put the Allies on their path to eventual victory. 

Inspiring Winston Churchill Quotes That Will Help You Maintain a Stiff Upper Lip

Triumph and Tragedy

Triumph and Tragedy —the sixth and final volume of The Second World War —chronicles the final months of WWII, from the landings at Normandy on D-Day to Japan’s surrender after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although there have been many other histories of the war written since Churchill published his final volume in 1953, The Second World War  still stands as an important portrait of how people felt about the war in its immediate aftermath, from an author with a unique vantage point.

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The Birth of Britain

Another of Churchill’s multi-volume histories is A History of the English-Speaking Peoples , his account of Britain from the period of Roman occupation up through Churchill’s own lifetime. The first volume, The Birth of Britain , begins when Julius Caesar invades the British Isles in 55 BCE. From there, he covers quite a bit of ground, concluding the volume with the death of King Richard III in 1485. Through all of it, Churchill’s love for his home country shines through. 

Winston Churchill’s Paranormal Encounter Allowed Him to Face His Distant Father

My Early Life

By Winston Churchill

Churchill’s autobiography covers the first 30 years of his life, long before he became Prime Minister. In My Early Life , Churchill recalls his childhood and his years in the British Army. He spent many of his formative years traveling both with the military and as a war correspondent, reporting most famously on the Second Boer War in South Africa. When Churchill published the book in 1930, he was serving as a Conservative Member of Parliament, and had no idea how monumental his next 30 years would be. The book is an important chronicle of the events that would shape Churchill into the giant history remembers him as. 

Books About Churchill

Churchill: Walking With Destiny

By Andrew Roberts

Churchill: Walking With Destiny , written by award-winning author Andrew Roberts, is a newer addition to the canon of historical studies of Churchill. Roberts applies the same level of scrutiny to Churchill as he did in his bestselling biographies of Napoleon and King George III. He seeks to understand what made Churchill the man he was, and draws on an extensive body of research—including previously unreleased historical materials—to find his answers. In his study, Roberts also asks what Churchill’s life, and his successes and failures, can teach today’s leaders in an increasingly unstable world. 

Churchill Style

By Barry Singer

In Churchill Style , author Barry Singer approaches Churchill not as a towering historical figure, but as a person. While most biographies tend to focus on his political philosophies and wartime strategies, Singer explores his personal interests, from the clothes he liked to his iconic cigars. Supplemented by photographs, Churchill Style  allows readers to get to know the man behind the myth. 

The Bittersweet History Behind Armistice Day

By Celia Sandys

Another more personal approach to Churchill’s life comes from his granddaughter Celia Sandys. Sandys shares the story of her grandfather’s participation as a correspondent and combatant in the Boer War, one of the defining conflicts of South Africa. According to Booklist , "this affectionate biographical portrait of a very young, very spirited, and very enterprising Winston Churchill succeeds in foreshadowing the magnitude of the renown he eventually achieved."

Winston's War

By Max Hastings

No list of books about Churchill would be complete without at least one objective account dedicated to his time as Prime Minister during World War II. In Winston’s War , award-winning historian and journalist Max Hastings chronicles Churchill’s experiences, from his election to Prime Minister in 1940 to the end of the war in 1945. During those turbulent years, Churchill not only had to deal with a world war, but also with several problems on the home front that occasionally posed a threat to his own leadership. Ultimately, Hastings is able to paint a full portrait of the years that defined Churchill’s legacy. 

By John Lukacs

In his biography, historian John Lukacs provides a full portrait of Churchill and a thorough assessment of his career. He dedicates chapters to Churchill’s personal life, his relationships with other world leaders like FDR and Stalin, his time as Prime Minister, and his career as a historian. While Lukacs clearly has admiration for Churchill, he does not let that affect his study of his life, spending equal time on Churchill’s failures as he does his successes. 

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Official Biography

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Winston S. Churchill

by Randolph S. Churchill and Martin Gilbert

“A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement… rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author

“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

“Confronted with this mighty ocean of narrative, the only possible response is total immersion. The great tidal wave of detail plunges the reader almost involuntarily into Churchill’s life….It is a Churchilliad, and Gilbert is its bard.” —Simon Schama, The New Republic

Volume I, Youth, 1874-1900

This wonderfully readable volume was received with broad praise. Generally positive, though not without criticism, it reflects the theme of the work, “he shall be his own biographer,” but Randolph Churchill adds his own literary style, thoroughly documented with “wonderful grub” provided by his dedicated researchers, including his ultimate successor, Martin Gilbert. The text covers the years from Churchill’s birth in 1874, his education at Harrow and Sandhurst, his early adventures as a war correspondent and sensational escape during the Boer War, his North American lecture tour, and his entry into Parliament. The term “official” does not mean that the biographers were required to stick to an authorized line or avoid certain subjects; rather, that they were allowed unprecedented access to the Churchill archive from which the biography is largely drawn. Buy Volume 1 Now >

Volume II, Young Statesman, 1901-1914

The last volume written by Randolph Churchill traces the story of his father’s entry into Parliament as a Conservative, aged twenty-six. An independent spirit and rebel, Churchill is praised for his maiden speech by the Leader of the Opposition. His lifelong collegiality toward the opposite party is soon in evidence. Finally, in 1904, he breaks with the Conservatives over Free Trade, which he ardently supports. “Crossing the floor” to the Liberals with his usual good timing, Churchill holds increasingly important cabinet positions in the great Liberal governments of 1906-14. The volume details his work as a crusading Home Secretary, his key role in reforming the House of Lords, his advocacy of Irish Home Rule, and his arrival at the Admiralty, where he prepares the Royal Navy for war with Germany. Buy Volume 2 Now >

Volume III, The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Martin Gilbert, appointed official biographer after Randolph’s death in 1968, now begins an almost day by day chronology of Churchill’s life, concentrating on the first perilous years of World War I. We begin with Churchill leading the Admiralty in early battles with the German fleet, moving to the epic failure of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, when Churchill falls from power and is exiled to Belgian trenches as “the escaped scapegoat.” Detailed accounts describe Churchill the warrior, including his efforts to prolong the siege of Antwerp, to develop the expanded use of air power, and to promote his concept for what he calls a “land caterpillar,” soon to be known as the tank. In Flanders, he heads a battalion of Scots Fusiliers—at first unwelcome, later beloved by them all. Buy Volume 3 Now >

Volume IV, World in Torment, 1916-1922

This meticulous account of Churchill’s wide-ranging activities toward the end of World War I and its aftermath displays his persuasive oratory, administrative skill, and masterful leadership. Remarkably, only a few years after the disaster of the Dardanelles, Churchill regains a leading position in British political life. He returns to government as Minister of Munitions, becomes Minister for War and Air, and finally Colonial Secretary. Here we read of his minor role in the Versailles Treaty, his critical work demobilizing the army, and his intervention against the Bolsheviks in Russia. Here too we see his actions over the Chanak Crisis with Turkey, the remaking of the Middle East, and the creation of the Irish Free State, when an Irish patriot wrote: “Tell Winston we could never have done without him.” Buy Volume 4 Now >

Volume V, The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939

Here is a vivid, intimate picture of Churchill’s public and private life between the wars—eighteen years of triumph and tragedy. He becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer and defends the government during the General Strike. Out of office in 1929, he travels North America, enters a ten year sojourn in the political wilderness, but soon reaches his zenith as a writer. He fights the India Bill, champions Edward VIII in the Abdication crisis, and warns of the threat of Hitler. Martin Gilbert reveals the extent to which senior civil servants and officers risked their careers supplying Churchill with secret information about German rearmament. ​Finally, war is declared in September 1939 and Churchill becomes First Lord of the Admiralty ​a quarter century since he last held that post. Buy Volume 5 Now >

Volume VI, Finest Hour, 1939-1941

This precise narrative puts us at Churchill’s shoulder during the most critical years of his life and the world’s, starting with the outbreak of war in September 1939 and ending with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Martin Gilbert unfolds the early events of World War II: Hitler’s supreme triumph on the continent, Britain’s victories in the air, the London Blitz, the U-boat war, Hitler’s attack on Russia, Churchill’s first personal contact with Roosevelt at the Atlantic Charter conference in August 1941, Pearl Harbor, and the forging of the “Grand Alliance.” In Churchill’s crucial meetings with FDR, Gilbert shows not only how each decision was reached, but what influences lay behind it, carefully developing an intimate account of a unique—if not wholly untroubled—relationship between the two great allies. Buy Volume 6 Now >

Volume VII, Road to Victory, 1941-1945

This volume runs from the Japanese attack on Hawaii and British Asia in 1941 through V-E Day and beyond to the end of World War II. From the nadir of the war we observe the turning of “the Hinge of Fate,” the battles of Alamein and Stalingrad, the invasions of North Africa, Italy, and finally France. We are there for the great summit conferences, from Moscow in 1942 (“like carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole”) to Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam. We witness Churchill’s reaction to the waxing of American and Soviet power, the ring closing around Germany, arguments over invasion routes, the death of Hitler, growing concerns about postwar Soviet expansion, the atomic bomb, and the fateful British election that cost the prime minister his job. Buy Volume 7 Now >

Volume VIII, Never Despair, 1945-1965

The final volume covers Churchill’s last twenty years, starting with his role as a scintillating Leader of the Opposition (1945-51). We witness his great speeches of resolve and reconciliation at Fulton, Zurich, and The Hague, his efforts for “a final settlement” with the Soviets, and Eisenhower’s determined resistance. We follow Churchill’s return to the premiership (1951-55), his last efforts to secure permanent peace, his resignation, his final words to his colleagues, his declining years, and his death—seventy years almost to the hour of his father’s passing in 1895. ​​Included is the full text of “The Dream,” Churchill’s ​imagined ​encounter with his father​’s ghost​, ​when​ ​he ​describes ​all that has happened since 1895—​never ​revealing the role ​Winston himself played. Buy Volume 8 Now >

History of the Official Biography

February 1932

Randolph Churchill asks his father for permission to write his biography. Winston says wait.

Winston Churchill writes his son Randolph: “I have reflected carefully on what you said. I think that your biography of Derby is a remarkable work, and I should be happy that you should write my official biography when the time comes.”

October 25, 1962

Martin Gilbert is hired by Randolph Churchill to serve as one of his research assistants.

Randolph Churchill publishes the first narrative volume of the official biography, Winston S. Churchill: Youth, 1874-1900.

Randolph Churchill dies aged only 57.

October 1968

Martin Gilbert is selected to succeed the late Randolph Churchill as the official biographer.

Larry Arnn begins working on the official biography as Sir Martin’s research assistant.

Martin Gilbert publishes the eighth and final narrative volume of the official biography, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945-1965.

The document volumes, which had ceased appearing in 1982 after The Coming of War 1936-1939, resume publication as The Churchill War Papers, thanks to the kind generosity of Wendy Reves.

Martin Gilbert accepts a position with Hillsdale College as the William and Berniece Grewcock Distinguished Fellow.

Hillsdale College becomes the publisher of the official biography and undertakes to return every previous volume to print along with the still-unpublished document volumes covering 1942-1965.

The first Hillsdale editions are published, comprising Volume I, Youth 1874-1900, together with its two document volumes. Henceforth, the document volumes will be numbered sequentially.

After forty-four years as official biographer, Martin Gilbert falls ill and is unable to continue his work.

Hillsdale’s document volumes reach Vol. 17, Testing Times, 1942—the first new set of documents in thirteen years.

February 2015

Sir Martin Gilbert passes away aged 78.

Larry Arnn edits and publishes The Churchill Documents: Volume 18, One Continent Redeemed, January –August 1943 as a continuation of Martin Gilbert’s work.

October 2016

Volume 19, Fateful Question, September 1943 to April 1944, is published. At over 2,700 pages, it is the longest volume to date.

February 2018

Volume 20, Normandy and Beyond, May-December 1944, is published.

September 2018

Volume 21, The Shadows of Victory, January-July 1945, is published.

August 2019

Volume 22, Leader of the Opposition, August 1945 to October 1951, is published.

Volume 23, Never Flinch, Never Weary, November 1951 to February 1965, is published, thus completing the publication of the Official Biography.

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As Liberal minister

• During World War I
• In and out of office, 1922–29
• Exclusion from office, 1929–39
• As prime minister
• Formation of the “grand alliance”
• Military successes and political problems
• Electoral defeat
• As opposition leader and world statesman
• As prime minister again
• Retirement and death

What did Winston Churchill do during World War II?

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Winston Churchill

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• Table Of Contents

As prime minister (1940–45) during most of World War II , Winston Churchill rallied the British people and led the country from the brink of defeat to victory. He shaped Allied strategy in the war, and in the war’s later stages he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union . 

Through his father,  Lord Randolph Churchill , a Tory politician, Winston was directly descended from John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, the hero of the wars against  Louis XIV  of France in the early 18th century. His mother,  Jennie Jerome , was the daughter of a New York financier and horse racing enthusiast, Leonard W. Jerome.

At Harrow School , Winston Churchill’s conspicuously poor academic record provoked his father’s decision to enter him into an army career. On his third attempt he managed to pass the entrance examination to the Royal Military College (now Academy), Sandhurst , but, once there, he applied himself seriously and graduated 20th in a class of 130.

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Winston Churchill (born November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace , Oxfordshire, England—died January 24, 1965, London) was a British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory.

After a sensational rise to prominence in national politics before World War I , Churchill acquired a reputation for erratic judgment in the war itself and in the decade that followed. Politically suspect in consequence, he was a lonely figure until his response to Adolf Hitler’s challenge brought him to leadership of a national coalition in 1940. With Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin he then shaped Allied strategy in World War II, and after the breakdown of the alliance he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union . He led the Conservative Party back to office in 1951 and remained prime minister until 1955, when ill health forced his resignation.

In Churchill’s veins ran the blood of both of the English-speaking peoples whose unity, in peace and war, it was to be a constant purpose of his to promote. Through his father, Lord Randolph Churchill , the meteoric Tory politician, he was directly descended from John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough , the hero of the wars against Louis XIV of France in the early 18th century. His mother, Jennie Jerome , a noted beauty, was the daughter of a New York financier and horse racing enthusiast, Leonard W. Jerome.

The young Churchill passed an unhappy and sadly neglected childhood, redeemed only by the affection of Mrs. Everest, his devoted nurse. At Harrow his conspicuously poor academic record seemingly justified his father’s decision to enter him into an army career. It was only at the third attempt that he managed to pass the entrance examination to the Royal Military College, now Academy, Sandhurst, but, once there, he applied himself seriously and passed out (graduated) 20th in a class of 130. In 1895, the year of his father’s tragic death, he entered the 4th Hussars. Initially the only prospect of action was in Cuba, where he spent a couple of months of leave reporting the Cuban war of independence from Spain for the Daily Graphic (London). In 1896 his regiment went to India, where he saw service as both soldier and journalist on the North-West Frontier (1897). Expanded as The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), his dispatches attracted such wide attention as to launch him on the career of authorship that he intermittently pursued throughout his life. In 1897–98 he wrote Savrola (1900), a Ruritanian romance , and got himself attached to Lord Kitchener’s Nile expeditionary force in the same dual role of soldier and correspondent. The River War (1899) brilliantly describes the campaign.

Political career before 1939

The five years after Sandhurst saw Churchill’s interests expand and mature. He relieved the tedium of army life in India by a program of reading designed to repair the deficiencies of Harrow and Sandhurst, and in 1899 he resigned his commission to enter politics and make a living by his pen. He first stood as a Conservative at Oldham, where he lost a by-election by a narrow margin, but found quick solace in reporting the South African War for The Morning Post ( London ). Within a month after his arrival in South Africa he had won fame for his part in rescuing an armoured train ambushed by Boers, though at the price of himself being taken prisoner. But this fame was redoubled when less than a month later he escaped from military prison. Returning to Britain a military hero, he laid siege again to Oldham in the election of 1900. Churchill succeeded in winning by a margin as narrow as that of his previous failure. But he was now in Parliament and, fortified by the £10,000 his writings and lecture tours had earned for him, was in a position to make his own way in politics.

A self-assurance redeemed from arrogance only by a kind of boyish charm made Churchill from the first a notable House of Commons figure, but a speech defect, which he never wholly lost, combined with a certain psychological inhibition to prevent him from immediately becoming a master of debate. He excelled in the set speech, on which he always spent enormous pains, rather than in the impromptu; Lord Balfour, the Conservative leader, said of him that he carried “heavy but not very mobile guns.” In matter as in style he modeled himself on his father, as his admirable biography , Lord Randolph Churchill (1906; revised edition 1952), makes evident, and from the first he wore his Toryism with a difference, advocating a fair, negotiated peace for the Boers and deploring military mismanagement and extravagance.

In 1904 the Conservative government found itself impaled on a dilemma by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s open advocacy of a tariff. Churchill, a convinced free trader , helped to found the Free Food League. He was disavowed by his constituents and became increasingly alienated from his party. In 1904 he joined the Liberals and won renown for the audacity of his attacks on Chamberlain and Balfour. The radical elements in his political makeup came to the surface under the influence of two colleagues in particular, John Morley, a political legatee of W.E. Gladstone, and David Lloyd George , the rising Welsh orator and firebrand. In the ensuing general election in 1906 he secured a notable victory in Manchester and began his ministerial career in the new Liberal government as undersecretary of state for the colonies. He soon gained credit for his able defense of the policy of conciliation and self-government in South Africa. When the ministry was reconstructed under Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith in 1908, Churchill was promoted to president of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the cabinet. Defeated at the ensuing by-election in Manchester , he won an election at Dundee . In the same year he married the beautiful Clementine Hozier; it was a marriage of unbroken affection that provided a secure and happy background for his turbulent career.

At the Board of Trade, Churchill emerged as a leader in the movement of Liberalism away from laissez-faire toward social reform. He completed the work begun by his predecessor, Lloyd George, on the bill imposing an eight-hour maximum day for miners. He himself was responsible for attacking the evils of “sweated” labour by setting up trade boards with power to fix minimum wages and for combating unemployment by instituting state-run labour exchanges.

When this Liberal program necessitated high taxation, which in turn provoked the House of Lords to the revolutionary step of rejecting the budget of 1909, Churchill was Lloyd George’s closest ally in developing the provocative strategy designed to clip the wings of the upper chamber. Churchill became president of the Budget League, and his oratorical broadsides at the House of Lords were as lively and devastating as Lloyd George’s own. Indeed Churchill, as an alleged traitor to his class, earned the lion’s share of Tory animosity . His campaigning in the two general elections of 1910 and in the House of Commons during the passage of the Parliament Act of 1911 , which curbed the House of Lords’ powers, won him wide popular acclaim. In the cabinet his reward was promotion to the office of home secretary. Here, despite substantial achievements in prison reform, he had to devote himself principally to coping with a sweeping wave of industrial unrest and violent strikes. Upon occasion his relish for dramatic action led him beyond the limits of his proper role as the guarantor of public order. For this he paid a heavy price in incurring the long-standing suspicion of organized labour .

In 1911 the provocative German action in sending a gunboat to Agadir , the Moroccan port to which France had claims, convinced Churchill that in any major Franco-German conflict Britain would have to be at France’s side. When transferred to the Admiralty in October 1911, he went to work with a conviction of the need to bring the navy to a pitch of instant readiness. His first task was the creation of a naval war staff. To help Britain’s lead over steadily mounting German naval power, Churchill successfully campaigned in the cabinet for the largest naval expenditure in British history . Despite his inherited Tory views on Ireland, he wholeheartedly embraced the Liberal policy of Home Rule , moving the second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill of 1912 and campaigning for it in the teeth of Unionist opposition. Although, through his friendship with F.E. Smith (later 1st earl of Birkenhead ) and Austen Chamberlain, he did much to arrange the compromise by which Ulster was to be excluded from the immediate effect of the bill, no member of the government was more bitterly abused—by Tories as a renegade and by extreme Home Rulers as a defector.

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Winston Churchill

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 7, 2019 | Original: October 27, 2009

Winston Churchill was one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated himself to public service. His legacy is a complicated one: He was an idealist and a pragmatist; an orator and a soldier; an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist; a defender of democracy – especially during World War II – as well as of Britain’s fading empire. But for many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Winston Churchill is simply a hero.

Winston Churchill came from a long line of English aristocrat-politicians. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was descended from the First Duke of Marlborough and was himself a well-known figure in Tory politics in the 1870s and 1880s.

His mother, born Jennie Jerome, was an American heiress whose father was a stock speculator and part-owner of The New York Times. (Rich American girls like Jerome who married European noblemen were known as “dollar princesses.”)

Did you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II.

Churchill was born at the family’s estate near Oxford on November 30, 1874. He was educated at the Harrow prep school, where he performed so poorly that he did not even bother to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, in 1893 young Winston Churchill headed off to military school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Battles and Books

After he left Sandhurst, Churchill traveled all around the British Empire as a soldier and as a journalist. In 1896, he went to India; his first book, published in 1898, was an account of his experiences in India’s Northwest Frontier Province.

In 1899, the London Morning Post sent him to cover the Boer War in South Africa, but he was captured by enemy soldiers almost as soon as he arrived. (News of Churchill’s daring escape through a bathroom window made him a minor celebrity back home in Britain.)

By the time he returned to England in 1900, the 26-year-old Churchill had published five books.

Churchill: “Crossing the Chamber”

That same year, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a Conservative. Four years later, he “crossed the chamber” and became a Liberal.

His work on behalf of progressive social reforms such as an eight-hour workday, a government-mandated minimum wage, a state-run labor exchange for unemployed workers and a system of public health insurance infuriated his Conservative colleagues, who complained that this new Churchill was a traitor to his class.

Churchill and Gallipoli

In 1911, Churchill turned his attention away from domestic politics when he became the First Lord of the Admiralty (akin to the Secretary of the Navy in the U.S.). Noting that Germany was growing more and more bellicose, Churchill began to prepare Great Britain for war: He established the Royal Naval Air Service, modernized the British fleet and helped invent one of the earliest tanks.

Despite Churchill’s prescience and preparation, World War I was a stalemate from the start. In an attempt to shake things up, Churchill proposed a military campaign that soon dissolved into disaster: the 1915 invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.

Churchill hoped that this offensive would drive Turkey out of the war and encourage the Balkan states to join the Allies, but Turkish resistance was much stiffer than he had anticipated. After nine months and 250,000 casualties, the Allies withdrew in disgrace.

After the debacle at Gallipoli, Churchill left the Admiralty.

Churchill Between the Wars

During the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill bounced from government job to government job, and in 1924 he rejoined the Conservatives. Especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again.

Likewise, the British government ignored Churchill’s warnings and did all it could to stay out of Hitler’s way. In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement giving Germany a chunk of Czechoslovakia – “throwing a small state to the wolves,” Churchill scolded – in exchange for a promise of peace.

A year later, however, Hitler broke his promise and invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war. Chamberlain was pushed out of office, and Winston Churchill took his place as prime minister in May 1940.

Churchill: The “British Bulldog”

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister.

“We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

Just as Churchill predicted, the road to victory in World War II was long and difficult: France fell to the Nazis in June 1940. In July, German fighter planes began three months of devastating air raids on Britain herself.

Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide war supplies – ammunition, guns, tanks, planes – to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war.

Though Churchill was one of the chief architects of the Allied victory, war-weary British voters ousted the Conservatives and their prime minister from office just two months after Germany’s surrender in 1945.

The Iron Curtain

The now-former prime minister spent the next several years warning Britons and Americans about the dangers of Soviet expansionism.

In a speech in Fulton, Missouri , in 1946, for example, Churchill declared that an anti-democratic “Iron Curtain,” “a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization,” had descended across Europe. Churchill’s speech was the first time anyone had used that now-common phrase to describe the Communist threat.

In 1951, 77-year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister for the second time. He spent most of this term working (unsuccessfully) to build a sustainable détente between the East and the West. He retired from the post in 1955.

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth made Winston Churchill a knight of the Order of the Garter. He died in 1965, one year after retiring from Parliament.

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Nonfiction Books » History Books » Historical Figures

The best books on winston churchill, recommended by richard toye.

Winston Churchill: A Life in the News by Richard Toye

Winston Churchill’s role as a global statesman remains immensely controversial. For some he was the heroic champion of liberty, saviour of the free world; for others a callous imperialist with a doleful legacy. Here, historian Richard Toye chooses the best books to help you understand the man behind the myths and Churchill's own role in making those myths.

Interview by Benedict King

My Early Life 1874-1904 by Winston Churchill

Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East by Warren Dockter

In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War by David Reynolds

Churchill and the Dardanelles by Christopher M Bell

Winston Churchill As I Knew Him by Violet Bonham Carter

1 My Early Life 1874-1904 by Winston Churchill

2 churchill and the islamic world: orientalism, empire and diplomacy in the middle east by warren dockter, 3 in command of history: churchill fighting and writing the second world war by david reynolds, 4 churchill and the dardanelles by christopher m bell, 5 winston churchill as i knew him by violet bonham carter.

Y our most recent book is Churchill: A Life in the News . Churchill was making the news even before he became a politician, as a soldier, but also, quite literally, as a journalist. What’s your focus in the book? 

He was a very good journalist, very interesting, and certainly one of the most highly paid. That background also influenced him when he was prime minister. At the time of the Anzio landings , when things were going badly wrong, there was a minor crisis when British journalists had their press credentials withdrawn because they were alleged to be spreading despair. They were restored, and it turned out to be a little bit of a storm in a teacup, but Churchill said in the House of Commons, “Well, I would never have been allowed, when a correspondent during the Boer War, to use the expression, ‘The situation is desperate.’”

In some ways, as a young man, he was pushing the envelope a bit. He was trying to be a little bit controversial, a little bit provocative, but he was doing so with an understanding that he was governed by the rules of censorship —particularly when he was a serving soldier, and also as a journalist. There were strict limits to what you should and should not say. Having operated as a journalist in that context made him less forgiving and less understanding, later, of journalists who he thought were doing things contrary to his government’s interests, basically by being openly critical of him or his ministers.

In the Boer War he went out as a journalist, then joined in the fighting, didn’t he? But in the Sudan he was actually a commissioned officer who was taking money from The Morning Post.

That was not unusual at the time. How were the newspapers to get their news, unless they had people on the spot? As journalism became more professionalized, some very successful papers started to be able to afford to send their own people out, which they certainly were doing in the 1890s.

Not all war reporting was done by soldiers. But there was still quite a tradition of journalism being a letter which a person has written from a faraway place. It appears in the newspaper six weeks later, when it’s made its way all the way across the sea on a fairly slow boat.

So his dual role wasn’t that eccentric?

No, I don’t think so. Maybe he was unusual in the degree to which he had already decided that he wanted to build a political career and was trying to exploit his opportunities to that end. It’s as if, whatever other people are doing, Churchill was doing it times ten. It became a bit more problematic and controversial when he did it because he was trying to make it into such a high-profile thing. But it certainly wasn’t unique.

You have also contributed to another book published in 2020, The Churchill Myths. What aspect of his reputation is that looking at? And to what extent is it looking at his own role in that myth-making?

We start with the statement that this isn’t a book about Winston Churchill. It’s a book about his image and the way it evolved in the years after his death, and the way in which people have attempted to exploit it for various political purposes. At the level of cartoons and films, there is one fixed Churchillian image—with a cigar—and it’s true. But, actually, in terms of the way in which he’s discussed, there has been a significant evolution.

To give two examples during his own lifetime: nobody in Britain criticised Churchill in respect of the Bengal famine. Partly because they probably didn’t care very much about the Bengal famine, if we’re absolutely honest. But also, the information that we now have about the things which Churchill said and did about the Bengal famine weren’t in the public domain—and remained out of it until the 1970s and 1980s when there were various archival releases, publication of people’s diaries and so on and so forth.

“He wanted to be a celebrity politician.”

Even in the 1990s, there was a critical biography of Churchill by Clive Ponting which doesn’t mention the Bengal famine. Now it’s probably one of the major points of criticism levelled at Churchill, if not the biggest point. Without going into the rights and wrongs of that, it takes archival releases, but it also needs historians to decide that this is an important theme and to start making arguments about it.

On the other hand, one of the things that he’s most celebrated for now—explored in the film Darkest Hour —is the question of whether or not the British should try and explore peace terms via Italy in 1940. All these discussions did take place, but we didn’t know that they took place until the early 1970s, when the cabinet papers were released. Churchill, in his memoirs, not only did not mention them, he explicitly said that there was no discussion of the idea of peace terms whatsoever. Now, he may have been doing that to protect other people. We don’t really know. But he was at pains to deny that it happened and yet, now, that is one of the things for which he is most celebrated. Churchill has always been an icon of Britishness , but how that has played out has been very different over time.

One of the things this book, The Churchill Myths, makes clear is that over the last 40 years the Churchill myth has been even bigger in British politics and more dominant than it was, say, in the first fifteen years after his death. Yet he’s a deeply problematic figure. I think you say in the book that Churchill probably wouldn’t even get into the British National Party these days.

Actually, we quote somebody else as saying that. I don’t think I’d go quite that far! His place in public life is very difficult to judge exactly. There were critical plays in the 1970s, but then you might ask whether that was an elite thing that most of the population never saw. How much weight should we attach to these negative representations?

Thatcher and Reagan made a great play with the Churchill myth, as you would expect. George Bush Sr and John Major didn’t particularly. Tony Blair was interested in doing it, but it was a little bit problematic for him because he was a Labour prime minister and there’s no way you’re going to get a big cheer at the Labour Party Conference from mentioning Churchill. During the Kosovo crisis, for example, he mentioned Clem Attlee and Ernie Bevin standing up to fascism and putting himself in that position.

“Churchill has always been an icon of Britishness, but how that has played out has been very different over time”

Let’s move on to the books. One of Winston Churchill’s own books, My Early Life, is the first one. I’m not quite sure when he wrote it, but what story is he telling about himself?

It was published in 1930 and it is very much the story of his early adventures. It covers his childhood, his schooling, the wars I was mentioning earlier. And it concludes with him getting married to Clementine Hozier. The last line is: “And I lived happily ever after.”

He wrote a lot of other autobiographical works, but in contrast to the multi-volume World Crisis and the six-volume Second World War— which were very much based around documents and trying to justify particular courses of action and, often, to exculpate himself from where he had come in for criticism— My Early Life is a more personal book. His memory is certainly not perfect in every respect. He does slip up and, for example, says he makes a speech one year, when actually he made it the year before. But I think it’s the book that would be most likely to win you over to liking Churchill’s personality, even if you didn’t share his politics. There’s an ironic, kind of self-mocking tone to it, which I think casts him in a better light than much of his other more self-justificatory writing. It shows his ability to laugh at himself and the follies of youth and to be a bit more reflective.

“For a lot of people, if they escaped from prison in South Africa in a dramatic way, that would be the thing for which they were famous. Yet a lot of people don’t know that about Churchill”

It’s funny because he publishes it at a point when he’s about to take a sharp turn to the right and campaign vociferously against greater self-government for India. He doesn’t in that period come across in a particularly forgiving or magnanimous light. But this book is humorous and, of course, it’s a pretty exciting story.

For a lot of people, if they were put in prison in South Africa and then escaped in a very dramatic way, that would be the thing for which they were famous. And yet, a lot of people don’t know that about Churchill because there’s so much focus, understandably enough, on the 1930s and the 1940s. Of course, when people make documentaries about him it gets mentioned, but that is still a fact that would come as a surprise to a lot of people. It shows that there was a Churchill before the Churchill with whom we’re all familiar, with this very dramatic and impressive and often quite strange and problematic backstory. This book enriches your understanding of him, even though it’s not a book to be taken literally as an account of everything that he did.

Is he very consciously positioning himself politically in the book in a way that is then interesting in the light of what happened in the 1930s when he was out of power and then what happened in the war? Is he building personal myths about himself? Or is it fairly free of that kind of thing?

I don’t think it’s egregious. In other books—when he writes about Gallipoli, for example—it’s full of, ‘if only this had happened’ and ‘if ships had arrived 10 minutes earlier, then the whole course of the war have been different’—that kind of thing. I think it was possibly easier for him to write a slightly more modest account of a time when he wasn’t that important in politics. In terms of justifying his entire record, there’s considerably less at stake. Some things were at stake. Aylmer Haldane, one of the other people in the prison in South Africa, contested Churchill’s account of whether or not he’d done the honourable thing in escaping in the way he did. It’s not necessarily a trouble free zone.

He starts the book by saying, ‘I was a child of the Victorian age ’. Now, that reads as a simple statement. And it’s obviously true: he was born in 1874. But what was the significance of that? Why does he choose to say it then? It very much relates to the point I was making earlier, about his turn to campaigning on India . In my book on his imperial views, Churchill’s Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made , I argue that his views weren’t frozen in time at the end of the Victorian period. He joined the Liberal Party in 1904 and spent 20 years in the Liberal Party. He was perceived by some as a Little Englander and a danger to the Empire when he was a minister in the Colonial Office in 1905-08.

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What he’s actually doing in 1930, having made a swing back to the right throughout much of the previous decade, is re-identifying with his youth and saying, ‘these are my roots’. In that book I say that it was in the interwar years that Churchill decided to become a Victorian. That is to say, there’s image-making going on and, so, although My Early Life is ostensibly a relatively unpolitical book, you can read deeper things into it.

That’s interesting. I’m based in Oxford, where the debate has been raging about Cecil Rhodes. His political vision seemed to involve a union of the British Empire and America imposing peace on the world. It struck me that Rhodes and Churchill were very much contemporaries and that perhaps the ways in which they thought about these things—with Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, for example —was very similar. But you’re saying that wasn’t a consistent theme through his political life.

Let’s move on to Warren Dockter’s Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy . Tell us a bit about this book and why you’ve chosen it.

I’ve chosen it because it relates to the point I was making earlier about some of the complexities of Churchill’s views. It is quite easy to say that Churchill was anti-Indian, but actually, you need to refine this. Churchill was in many respects violently anti-Hindu and was influenced by a key book by Katherine Mayo called Mother India that came out in the 1920s and perpetuated various fairly unpleasant stereotypes about Hindus.

There was a degree to which Churchill was somewhat concerned about the fate of the so-called Untouchables. It wasn’t that he was purely unpleasant but, at the same time, he was more favourable towards Muslims in India. Now, of course, there’s a famous quotation from The River War , his book about the Sudan war in the 1890s, where he says something along the lines that ‘Islam is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia is in a dog.’ Again, he’s got this image of being totally anti-Islam.

“He commented that the Hindu-Muslim divide was the bulwark of British rule in India; in other words, divide and rule”

Warren’s book explores this in interesting ways. He shows the complexities of it. Everybody who attempted to govern the British Empire had to take account of the fact that the British Empire was—to put it one way—the world’s largest Muslim power.

I remain a bit sceptical about how sincere any of Churchill’s efforts to cultivate Muslims were, and particularly his contacts among the princes. I think he was in theory willing to work with them. But he also made a comment in 1939 in the cabinet that the Hindu-Muslim divide was the bulwark of British rule in India; in other words, divide and rule. You can’t look at all these contacts with Muslims, see him being polite to them and conclude that he must have been a really nice, open-minded, progressive guy. There were deeper things going on. But I think it is an important story.

He was Colonial Secretary just after the First World War, and in that role was instrumental in delineating the borders of Jordan, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East as it is now. Does this book tell us something particular about how he thought about that part of the world or what he thought he was doing at that time?

It shows the complexity of the Islamic world, containing Sunni and Shia, and people of various different ethnicities. It’s a very large part of the world. One would be hard pushed to describe Churchill as pro-Arab. He made various unpleasant comments about them, particularly in relation to the Arabs of Palestine. At the same time, he was somebody who was prey to rather romantic visions of the Middle East. He was friendly with T.E. Lawrence, which was obviously crucial in that respect. As Warren shows in his book, Churchill was quite prone to dressing-up games, getting into Arab clothing and hanging about with people like Lawrence and Wilfred Blunt. There was an orientalist appeal that this had for him.

I’ve seen suggestions that Dockter makes the case that, relatively speaking, Churchill was ‘progressive’ in his policy making towards various parts of the Middle East and Islamic World, compared to the orientalist prejudice of many of his contemporaries. It sounds from what you’ve said that you’d treat such claims with a certain amount of scepticism.

I’d be a little bit cautious and I think that Warren would hold back from saying that Churchill was ‘progressive’ as such. I think he’s trying to show, rightly, a more complex picture.

And I do think that—partly through Churchill’s own fault—he gets it in the neck for decisions that were taken in the Middle East in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Churchill gets the blame for having drawn these lines in the sand and created supposedly unsustainable states at the Cairo Conference of 1921. But there are a lot of things that have gone wrong in the Middle East over the past hundred years, only some of which can be blamed on Churchill. Part of the reason why he gets blamed so much is because he was such a showman that he wanted to associate himself with these decisions, whatever they were, even if he wasn’t really the driving force.

Decisions had to be made. Churchill said, ‘Let’s have a conference in Cairo’. So, everybody made their way out to Cairo. This became a famous episode. But if he’d just let the experts get on with it and sign a few memos, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. He’s paid the price for something which he himself wanted to do. He wanted to be a celebrity politician. He wanted to get the credit for decisions. In some ways that’s been positive for his reputation and in some ways it’s been negative.

Let’s move on to David Reynolds’ In Command of History . This is about his writing career between his two premierships, from when he lost power at the end of World War II to his return as prime minister in 1951. Is that right?

Yes. One of the reasons I admire this book so much is the technical feat of writing it. The genius is really in the structure. Writing a book about writing a book is a very difficult thing to do when what you’re trying to do is cast light on the historical episodes that the book is about. Reynolds has succeeded brilliantly in doing that and getting the balance right. It’s hard to see how it could have been done better. It’s not too long. He had to be selective because there’s an enormous amount of material and he couldn’t cover everything. But I think he basically chose the right bits. Fundamentally, it’s a book about the way in which Churchill tried to manipulate his account of history in order to make himself look better. That’s what it boils down to. The only criticism I have of the book—and it’s not really a very big one—is that with the title, which is obviously great, there is a slight risk of suggesting that Churchill was always successful in getting his interpretation accepted.

Churchill had the great advantage of having access to lots of original documents, which nobody else had access to and, therefore, it was quite difficult for anybody else to refute his account. But people weren’t stupid. There was a lot of publicly available information that people could use to dispute Churchill’s interpretation and they did. One has to be a bit cautious about thinking that ‘In Command of History’ means he laid down this version and then that became the totally authoritative, uncontested version until such time as the archives were open to everyone.

Obviously the Bengal famine was something that he skirted over, but is there a very broad interpretation of events that he gives, that has subsequently been overturned?

One of the important points in the book is that, in the first volume, The Gathering Storm , David rightly points out that you could read it without really knowing that Churchill spent a huge chunk of the first part of the decade campaigning against the ‘Government of India Bill’. Because Churchill generated so many memoranda, so many speeches over the years, it became fairly easy for him to construct a story where he spotted the danger of Nazi Germany earlier than everybody else and then consistently spent all the time up until 1939 talking about this while—supposedly—barely anybody else paid the slightest bit of attention.

Those are the foundations of the heroic narrative, that he was a uniquely farsighted prophet. Historians would now emphasise—and indeed have been doing for about 50 years, if not longer—that Churchill was concerned to obtain political office and that many of his actions and exactly what he said at particular moments was shaped by that. You can go through his speeches and have fun finding the bits where he said really nice things about Neville Chamberlain, for example.

Churchill, from his own point of view, wouldn’t have denied that he was seeking office. He would have asked how he was going to do anything or get what he wanted unless he held office. And, sure enough, he had to hold office, as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1940, before he could obtain the highest office, that of prime minister.

“He would insist to the publishers, ‘Well, I could finish this volume if I had a holiday in Morocco!’ For which they, of course, were expected to pay…”

The book also shows how accounts of particular episodes during the war were shaped by the desire not to offend the Americans post-war, or not to offend Eisenhower. He might have been quite critical of some things Ike did during the war, but that was not the sort of thing to which he was going to draw attention.

This book is also interesting on the technique by which the book was actually written. Churchill was a bit of a nightmare author. He was always late and the book got larger and larger. There were always corrections up until the last minute. He would insist to the publishers or to Time-Life , who were serialising it, ‘Well, I could finish this volume if I had a holiday in Morocco!’ For which they, of course, were expected to pay…

As well as creating this heroic image of himself through the 1930s and during World War II, did Churchill’s book serve almost as manifesto for him taking over again in the early 1950s and completing undone business, or is that overdoing it a bit?

Let’s move on to Christopher M. Bell’s book, Churchill and the Dardanelles . 

The Dardanelles was one of the most controversial episodes of Churchill’s career. Some people might still argue that, if it wasn’t for a few small things going wrong, then it could have been a great success. Again, it’s one of those episodes where Churchill, personally, attracted more opprobrium than was perhaps fully justified. But, at the same time, he walked into the trap. He was exonerated to an extent by the Dardanelles Commission, during the war itself, and he went to great lengths to provide evidence and persuade the commissioners of his righteousness. And it was true that he hadn’t single-handedly ordered this, that it had to have the approval of Asquith as prime minister and all sorts of military figures and other ministers.

“The Dardanelles was one of the most controversial episodes of Churchill’s career.”

His role in the Dardanelles was pretty fundamental but, again, the single hero/villain picture is too simplistic. The book does a very good job of looking at press coverage and shows the ways in which parts of the press, particularly the Morning Post , which by this time had turned against Churchill, were really out to get Churchill and were gearing up to attack him well before things had started to go wrong. Essentially they had some quite weird agendas of their own. At this point he was a Liberal and was seen as a traitor to the Conservative cause.

That was the motivation of the Morning Post , was it, that he was this turncoat?

Reading between the lines. Nobody says, ‘I’m going to do him in because he’s a turncoat’. They say, ‘He’s egotistical, he’s unreliable, he doesn’t listen to military expertise’ et cetera. But it gets so vitriolic that you think, ‘Well, what’s the agenda here, really?’ Chris Bell does a very good job of being very balanced, neither underplaying or overdoing the criticism of what was an absolutely foundational episode and, obviously, very critical for the interpretation of Churchill’s career.

Why did Churchill expend so much time and effort defending himself over the Dardanelles? After the failure of the expedition, he did the honourable thing, resigned and went to fight in the trenches—at least briefly. Why did this episode get under his skin so badly?

I think that he had a deep suspicion that he’d actually really ballsed everything up. If you wanted a psychological reading, based on speculation, you could argue that his sense of guilt was going to be alleviated if he could prove that actually everything was all somebody else’s fault. He was looking for someone else to validate that view. We all do this. We try and explain to ourselves and to anyone who will listen that it couldn’t possibly be us and that, if we did make a mistake, it was entirely understandable at the time, and it was probably somebody else’s fault we did make a mistake, because we didn’t have the right information, or whatever.

I think there’s a powerful urge to self-justification, which we are all prey to and you can imagine how that might operate if you have played a significant role in a colossal military error. I think that did play on his mind and it almost became an obsession: ‘It wouldn’t have gone wrong, if only I’d really been properly listened to’ or ‘if only people had had the courage or conviction to carry on.’ It was as if he was arguing that it would have worked if only they had doubled down. Then it would have been worth it. That would have shown it to be justified.

There’s obviously a direct political motivation. As you mention, he goes to the trenches, but he’s pretty keen to come back, really, not through any lack of physical bravery, but simply because, at a deep level, what he’s really interested in is politics, rather than military affairs. So there’s a practical reason why he needs to justify himself, or thinks that he does. But I think there’s also the more profound psychological motivation to absolve himself.

Lots of people criticized him heavily for it, not just at an official level, but among the population at large. He was held personally responsible for it, wasn’t he?

It’s very difficult to separate out what the papers are saying from what people thought. If you look at World War II, where you start to get Mass Observation diaries, for example, you do see people recalling, or at least being aware of Gallipoli. How much that necessarily had an impact at the time is a bit unclear. There was a famous occasion in, I think, 1923, when he was making a speech and somebody from the audience shouted out, ‘What about Gallipoli?!’ But it wasn’t as if everywhere he went he encountered hecklers who shouted, ‘What about Gallipoli?!’.

Let’s move on to the final book, which is Violet Bonham Carter’s Winston Churchill As I Knew Him . I think this was published in the year he died, but she was a friend of his in his early political career. Is that right?

Yes, throughout his political career, really. She was one of the few close female friends that he had. That’s not to say that he didn’t get on well with women, but most of his close friends were men. That’s not particularly unusual for somebody of his generation or, indeed, probably for many men today. She was, of course, also the daughter of H.H. Asquith and met Churchill early on in his career. She gives this account in the book of the first time they met. At that dinner he says something like, ‘We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm.’ She captures various memories, which otherwise might not have been recorded.

It was clearly something of a labour of love. It was being prepared for publication before he died. It only takes the story up to 1915. She did think of writing another volume, but never got round to it. It’s full of personal anecdotes and a considerable amount of charm. She was a very determined person. She knew her mind. She didn’t mind telling Churchill off when she thought that he was making mistakes.

There’s a lovely bit of evidence I found in her archive. It was Churchill’s 80th birthday and they were going to publish an edited book, where different people who knew Churchill would provide their memories and reflections. She did contribute. She was the only woman in the book and the editors wrote to her to say they’d like her to write a chapter called ‘Winston Churchill: the Woman’s Perspective’. She refused to do that, saying that it would be as ridiculous to have a chapter called ‘Churchill: the Woman’s Perspective’ as it would be to have a chapter called ‘Churchill: the Man’s Perspective’. She told them she was going to write something else. They got this letter and they wrote back saying, ‘Oh, all right. We accept you’ll write something else. It’s a pity because we would so much have liked to have had ‘Churchill: the Woman’s Perspective’.’ And she writes back and explains it all again which, I have to say, I admire.

“When they met, Churchill said, ‘We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm’”

But she could be over the top in making a fuss about things. Martin Gilbert, who was Churchill’s official biographer, but in the early 1960s was a researcher, once made the mistake of spelling her surname with a hyphen. And she told him, ‘There’s no hyphen in my name. I’m very very surprised that you should have made this basic mistake.’ She could have been a bit more relaxed about that!

The other thing to say is that nobody quite knows whether, when she first met Churchill, she expected or hoped that he would propose to her. Was she in love with him? If she was, she clearly got over it. We don’t know. When she was writing her own work on Churchill she had a sort of rivalry with Randolph, Churchill’s son, who had started the official biography at the same time. She wrote to him saying, ‘I had all these letters from your father from the early period, but I’ve destroyed them because they’re too personal or too intimate.’ Of course, she may have meant intimate in the political sense. But it’s very sad that that happened and one can only wonder what gossip was in there that we would very much like to have today.

How does her portrait of him compare with his self-portrait in My Early Life ? Did she know him before he was married to Clementine? Does she talk about him largely as a friend in private life, or as a politician, or both?

I think she may have met him as early as 1906, so before he’d really properly met Clementine. Clementine and Winston had a whirlwind courtship in 1908.

How to compare them? You’ve got to remember, there’s a little bit of tension because, rather than just being somebody who wants to give Churchill the best possible write-up, the person she is really concerned about defending is her father. I don’t think there are any particularly obvious points in the book where there is a clash between the two, or at least she manages to nuance it. But, if she had to make a choice between saying something that reflected badly on her father or something that reflected badly on Churchill, then she wouldn’t be afraid to say something critical of Churchill. Whereas Asquith is untouchable. I think that is, actually, an important dynamic.

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But it’s basically an affectionate portrait by somebody who was, on the whole, politically sympathetic to him, particularly during his Liberal phase. She was a lifelong Liberal and the respect that he had for her, which was very genuine, was well illustrated in the general election of 1951. She ran as a Liberal in Colne Valley and he succeeded in getting the Conservative candidate to stand aside. In fact she lost anyway, but he was so determined that she should be elected that he was willing to put the fundamental interest of the Conservative Party to one side.

That was partly a political strategy on his part, because he wanted to appeal to Liberal voters and former Liberal voters and to win them back from Attlee. He wants to play up his own former Liberal credentials and he wants to highlight Liberals and former Liberals whom he’s associated with. But his willingness to challenge the bureaucracy of his own party over this does show the very considerable respect he had for her.

What kind of a book is it? Is she quoting evidence to support points she’s making, or is it a simple memoir , her own recollection at the time of writing?

It’s more of a memoir. She had a researcher working for her on it, so she didn’t just sit there and write it off the top of her head. She definitely made sure she had her factual points of orientation and got her dates right. And she had kept extensive diaries and letters, which have subsequently been published. You do get some discrepancies. The glow-worm quote isn’t in the diary. So, you do wonder, did she just forget to write it in her diary, but remember it clearly and reproduce it years later? Or did her mind play some weird trick on her, or did he say it on some other occasion? One always gets little questions like that.

And in what sense is she using her memory of Churchill up until 1911 to defend her father politically?

If Churchill can be shown to have been virtuously promoting Liberal reforms, that reflects well on her father. I’m certainly not saying she wrote the book on Churchill in order to vindicate Asquith. But it’s a benefit of the book, in a way, because it means she’s not going to be an absolutely uncritical or slavish admirer of Churchill, whether or not she makes all the right criticisms. I think that, for that reason, it becomes a better book because it has that element of distance, while still being admiring.

Finally, I’m curious to get your views on the Churchill book publishing phenomenon—as an insider. Do you see it just increasing with ever greater strength from year to year, or will it reach saturation? What keeps it going?

I think the books I’ve cited show it’s possible to take an original approach to Churchill and take an angle which nobody has ever done before. But there isn’t an inexhaustible supply of people who are willing and able to do that systematically and create new insights.

At the other end, there is a market for what you might call the ‘Churchill’s laundry lists’ angle. Or, if you want to write a book about some aspect of World War II you call it ‘Churchill’s Bomb-Sight Developers’ or something like that. There’s a certain amount of mediocre work that continues to be promoted. And then there are some things that are OK as ‘curiosities’—I won’t name any titles, it would be unfair. They are perfectly alright as far as they go, but they don’t really advance our understanding very much.

Every couple of years another really good book on Churchill comes out and, at the same time, huge numbers that are somewhat indifferent. I expect it will continue in a similar vein for the foreseeable future.

One final question. Is there a particular one volume biography that you would recommend? I’m only aware of Roy Jenkins’ and Andrew Roberts’ , but there may be others.

I would probably recommend Paul Addison’s Churchill: The Unexpected Hero , particularly bearing in mind that not everybody wants to read an awful lot about Churchill and that it is a fairly short one. It’s very scholarly, but very accessible. I think Paul, who died this year, was an excellent historian, who deserves more recognition. When I was running a course on Churchill, that was the book I told my students to read over the summer. That and My Early Life and they’d be well set up with a basic understanding for the start of the year.

That would be my recommendation, rather than an intimidating doorstopper, although Roy Jenkins’ book understandably—and rightly—has a lot of fans.

August 3, 2020

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Richard Toye

Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University of Exeter. He previously worked at the University of Cambridge. He has written widely on modern British and international political and economic history. His critically acclaimed book Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness won him the 2007 Times Higher Young Academic Author of the Year Award.

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Winston Churchill

(1874-1965)

Who Was Winston Churchill?

Early years.

Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.

From an early age, young Churchill displayed the traits of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a British statesman from an established English family, and his mother, Jeanette "Jennie" Jerome, an independent-minded New York socialite.

Churchill grew up in Dublin, Ireland, where his father was employed by his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer-Churchill.

Churchill proved to be an independent and rebellious student; after performing poorly at his first two schools, Churchill in April 1888 began attending Harrow School, a boarding school near London. Within weeks of his enrollment, he joined the Harrow Rifle Corps, putting him on a path to a military career.

At first, it didn't seem the military was a good choice for Churchill; it took him three tries to pass the exam for the British Royal Military College. However, once there, he fared well and graduated 20th in his class of 130.

Up to this time, his relationship with both his mother and father was distant, though he adored them both. While at school, Churchill wrote emotional letters to his mother, begging her to come see him, but she seldom came.

His father died when he was 21, and it was said that Churchill knew him more by reputation than by any close relationship they shared.

Military Career

Churchill enjoyed a brief but eventful career in the British Army at a zenith of British military power. He joined the Fourth Queen's Own Hussars in 1895 and served in the Indian northwest frontier and the Sudan, where he saw action in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

While in the Army, he wrote military reports for the Pioneer Mail and the Daily Telegraph , and two books on his experiences, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899).

In 1899, Churchill left the Army and worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post , a conservative daily newspaper. While reporting on the Boer War in South Africa, he was taken prisoner by the Boers during a scouting expedition.

He made headlines when he escaped, traveling almost 300 miles to Portuguese territory in Mozambique. Upon his return to Britain, he wrote about his experiences in the book London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900).

Parliament and Cabinet

In 1900, Churchill became a member of the British Parliament in the Conservative Party for Oldham, a town in Manchester. Following his father into politics, he also followed his father's sense of independence, becoming a supporter of social reform.

Unconvinced that the Conservative Party was committed to social justice, Churchill switched to the Liberal Party in 1904. He was elected a member of Parliament in 1908 and was appointed to the prime minister's cabinet as president of the Board of Trade.

As president of the Board of Trade, Churchill joined newly appointed Chancellor David Lloyd George in opposing the expansion of the British Navy. He introduced several reforms for the prison system, introduced the first minimum wage and helped set up labor exchanges and unemployment insurance.

Churchill also assisted in the passing of the People's Budget, which introduced taxes on the wealthy to pay for new social welfare programs. The budget passed in the House of Commons in 1909 and was initially defeated in the House of Lords before being passed in 1910.

In January 1911, Churchill showed his tougher side when he made a controversial visit to a police siege in London, with two alleged robbers holed up in a building.

Churchill's degree of participation is still in some dispute: Some accounts have him going to the scene only to see for himself what was going on; others state that he allegedly gave directions to police on how to best storm the building.

What is known is that the house caught fire during the siege and Churchill prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing the flames, stating that he thought it better to "let the house burn down," rather than risk lives rescuing the occupants. The bodies of the two robbers were later found inside the charred ruins.

Wife and Children

In 1908, Winston Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier after a short courtship.

The couple had five children together: Diana, Randolph, Sarah, Marigold (who died as a toddler of tonsillitis) and Mary.

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First Lord of the Admiralty

Named First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill helped modernize the British Navy, ordering that new warships be built with oil-fired instead of coal-fired engines.

He was one of the first to promote military aircraft and set up the Royal Navy Air Service. He was so enthusiastic about aviation that he took flying lessons himself to understand firsthand its military potential.

Churchill also drafted a controversial piece of legislation to amend the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, mandating sterilization of the feeble-minded. The bill, which mandated only the remedy of confinement in institutions, eventually passed in both houses of Parliament.

World War I

Churchill remained in his post as First Lord of the Admiralty through the start of World War I , but was forced out for his part in the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli . He resigned from the government toward the end of 1915.

For a brief period, Churchill rejoined the British Army, commanding a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front and seeing action in "no man's land."

In 1917, he was appointed minister of munitions for the final year of the war, overseeing the production of tanks, airplanes and munitions.

After World War I

From 1919 to 1922, Churchill served as minister of war and air and colonial secretary under Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

As colonial secretary, Churchill was embroiled in another controversy when he ordered air power to be used on rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq, a British territory. At one point, he suggested that poisonous gas be used to put down the rebellion, a proposal that was considered but never enacted.

Fractures in the Liberal Party led to the defeat of Churchill as a member of Parliament in 1922, and he rejoined the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, returning Britain to the gold standard, and took a hard line against a general labor strike that threatened to cripple the British economy.

With the defeat of the Conservative government in 1929, Churchill was out of government. He was perceived as a right-wing extremist, out of touch with the people.

In the 1920s, after his ouster from government, Churchill took up painting. “Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time,” he later wrote.

Churchill went on to create over 500 paintings, typically working en plein air , though also practicing with still lifes and portraits. He claimed that painting helped him with his powers of observation and memory.

Sutherland Portrait

Churchill himself was the subject of a famous - and famously controversial - portrait by renowned artist Graham Sutherland.

Commissioned in 1954 by members of Parliament to mark Churchill's 80th birthday, the portrait was first unveiled in a public ceremony in Westminster Hall, where it met with considerable derision and laughter.

The unflattering modernist painting was reportedly loathed by Churchill and members of his family. Churchill's wife Clementine had the Sutherland portrait secretly destroyed in a bonfire several months after it was delivered to their country estate, Chartwell , in Kent.

'Wilderness Years'

Through the 1930s, known as his "wilderness years," Churchill concentrated on his writing, publishing a memoir and a biography of the First Duke of Marlborough.

During this time, he also began work on his celebrated A History of the English-Speaking Peoples , though it wouldn't be published for another two decades.

As activists in 1930s India clamored for independence from British rule, Churchill cast his lot with opponents of independence. He held particular scorn for Mahatma Gandhi , stating that "it is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer ... striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace ... to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."

• World War II

Although Churchill didn't initially see the threat posed by Adolf Hitler 's rise to power in the 1930s, he gradually became a leading advocate for British rearmament.

By 1938, as Germany began controlling its neighbors, Churchill had become a staunch critic of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement toward the Nazis.

On September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the war cabinet; by April 1940, he became chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee.

Later that month, Germany invaded and occupied Norway, a setback for Chamberlain, who had resisted Churchill's proposal that Britain preempt German aggression by unilaterally occupying vital Norwegian iron mines and seaports.

Prime Minister

On May 10, 1940, Chamberlain resigned and King George VI appointed Churchill as prime minister and minister of defense.

Within hours, the German army began its Western Offensive, invading the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Two days later, German forces entered France. As clouds of war darkened over Europe, Britain stood alone against the onslaught.

Churchill was to serve as prime minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945, leading the country through World War II until Germany’s surrender.

Battle of Britain

Quickly, Churchill formed a coalition cabinet of leaders from the Labor, Liberal and Conservative parties. He placed intelligent and talented men in key positions.

On June 18, 1940, Churchill made one of his iconic speeches to the House of Commons, warning that "the Battle of Britain " was about to begin. Churchill kept resistance to Nazi dominance alive and created the foundation for an alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union.

Churchill had previously cultivated a relationship with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, and by March 1941, he was able to secure vital U.S. aid through the Lend Lease Act , which allowed Britain to order war goods from the United States on credit.

After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Churchill was confident that the Allies would eventually win the war. In the months that followed, Churchill worked closely with Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to forge an Allied war strategy and postwar world.

In a meeting in Tehran (1943), at the Yalta Conference (1945) and the Potsdam Conference (1945), Churchill collaborated with the two leaders to develop a united strategy against the Axis Powers and helped craft the postwar world with the United Nations as its centerpiece.

As the war wound down, Churchill proposed plans for social reforms in Britain but was unable to convince the public. Despite Germany's surrender on May 7, 1945, Churchill was defeated in the general election in July 1945.

'Iron Curtain' Speech

In the six years after Churchill’s defeat, he became the leader of the opposition party and continued to have an impact on world affairs.

In March 1946, while on a visit to the United States, he made his famous "Iron Curtain" speech , warning of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. He also advocated that Britain remain independent from European coalitions.

With the general election of 1951, Churchill returned to government. He became prime minister for the second time in October 1951 and served as minister of defense between October 1951 and March 1952.

Churchill went on to introduce reforms such as the Mines and Quarries Act of 1954, which improved working conditions in mines, and the Housing Repairs and Rent Act of 1955, which established standards for housing.

These domestic reforms were overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises in the colonies of Kenya and Malaya, where Churchill ordered direct military action. While successful in putting down the rebellions, it became clear that Britain was no longer able to sustain its colonial rule.

Nobel Prize

In 1953, Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II .

The same year, he was named the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values," according to the Nobel Prize committee.

Churchill died on January 24, 1965, at age 90, in his London home nine days after suffering a severe stroke. Britain mourned for more than a week.

Churchill had shown signs of fragile health as early as 1941 when he suffered a heart attack while visiting the White House. Two years later, he had a similar attack while battling a bout of pneumonia.

In June 1953, at age 78, he endured a series of strokes at his office. That particular news was kept from the public and Parliament, with the official announcement stating that he had suffered from exhaustion.

Churchill recuperated at home and returned to his work as prime minister in October. However, it was apparent even to the great statesman that he was physically and mentally slowing down, and he retired as prime minister in 1955. Churchill remained a member of Parliament until the general election of 1964 when he did not seek reelection.

There was speculation that Churchill suffered from Alzheimer's disease in his final years, though medical experts pointed to his earlier strokes as the likely cause of reduced mental capacity.

Despite his poor health, Churchill was able to remain active in public life, albeit mostly from the comfort of his homes in Kent and Hyde Park Gate in London.

As with other influential world leaders, Churchill left behind a complicated legacy.

Honored by his countrymen for defeating the dark regime of Hitler and the Nazi Party , he topped the list of greatest Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll, outlasting other luminaries like Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare .

To critics, his steadfast commitment to British imperialism and his withering opposition to independence for India underscored his disdain for other races and cultures.

Churchill Movies and Books

Churchill has been the subject of numerous portrayals on the big and small screen over the years, with actors from Richard Burton to Christian Slater taking a crack at capturing his essence. John Lithgow delivered an acclaimed performance as Churchill in the Netflix series The Crown , winning an Emmy for his work in 2017.

That year also brought the release of two biopics: In June, Brian Cox starred in the titular role of Churchill , about the events leading up to the World War II invasion of Normandy. Gary Oldman took his turn by undergoing an eye-popping physical transformation to become the iconic statesman in Darkest Hour .

Churchill's standing as a towering figure of the 20th century is such that his two major biographies required multiple authors and decades of research between volumes. William Manchester published volume 1 of The Last Lion in 1983 and volume 2 in 1986, but died while working on part 3; it was finally completed by Paul Reid in 2012.

The official biography, Winston S. Churchill , was begun by the former prime minister's son Randolph in the early 1960s; it passed on to Martin Gilbert in 1968, and then into the hands of an American institution, Hillsdale College , some three decades later. In 2015, Hillsdale published volume 18 of the series.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Winston Churchill
• Birth Year: 1874
• Birth date: November 30, 1874
• Birth City: Blenheim Palace, Woodstock
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Winston Churchill was a British military leader and statesman. Twice named prime minister of Great Britain, he helped to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.
• World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Harrow School
• Brunswick School
• Royal Military College (Academy) at Sandhurst
• St. George's School
• Interesting Facts
• Winston Churchill was a prolific writer and author and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
• Churchill was a son of a British statesman father and an American socialite mother.
• In 1963 President JFK bestowed Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship, the first time a president gave such an award to a foreign national.
• Death Year: 1965
• Death date: January 24, 1965
• Death City: Hyde Park Gate, London
• Death Country: England

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Winston Churchill Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/winston-churchill
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 22, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
• I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
• A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
• Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities ... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

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Best Books Hub

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20 Best Books on Churchill (2022 Review)

September 20, 2020 by James Wilson

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Winston Spencer-Churchill is one of the most famous classic personalities in modern history. He is famous for being an army general, politician and writer. Sir Churchill was elected as Britain’s Prime Minister when he led the country successfully through the World War Two.

Churchill belonged to a British-American family. He joined the army, rising to Army General and later entered politics. When the war ended, he devoted his time to the arts, namely painting, writing and history. His writings were famous throughout the country and he was responsible for penning many historical events for the generations to come.  His efforts earned him the 1953 Noble Award for Literature.

What are the Best Churchill Books to read?

Best Books on Churchill: Our Top 20 Picks

Understandably he has been a very popular topic for future writers to record his life and work in their writings. A complete narration of all the works is an exhaustive topic; however, books on this great personality are mentioned below:

1. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

The Last Lion is a three part series based on the complete life of Sir Winston Churchill. This biography starts from right at the beginning, from his childhood and showing how he came to be amongst the greatest leaders of the world. It is detailed narration of how his personality shaped up.

The author has done complete justice to the literacy level of Churchill himself. The narration is quite compelling and keeps the reader engaged. The curiosity of how leaders are made is enough to spell-bound an interested reader.

Once readers read this first part, it is difficult to put it down. They are bound to go for the next volumes to know what happens next. The series is one of the best in the market on Churchill’s life.

• Authors : William Manchester (Author)
• Publisher : Little, Brown and Company; 1st Edition (May 30, 1983)
• Pages : 992 pages

2. Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

Generally most of the books and records of Sir Churchill cover his role in the World War II or his talents. However, this is one of those rare writings which cover his earlier military life.

He covered the Boer War as a journalist but was unfortunately captured as a prisoner. His life as a POW and his daring escape is what forms the main content of this volume. His escapade was nothing short of thrilling, covered perfectly in the author’s engaging words.

This book is a great recommendation for those who want to find out the lesser known events of a very popular historic figure.  The events are aptly covered in the thrilling tale of war, escape and adventure.

• Authors : Candice Millard (Author)
• Publisher : Anchor; Illustrated Edition (May 30, 2017)
• Pages : 416 pages

3. Churchill: Walking with Destiny

Whilst many biographies on historical personalities focus on the events and the role of various people in shaping it, this one stands out for its different focus. The author has penned down Sir Winston’s own views and feelings for the major events of his life. It is truly a captivating biography.

The author was provided special access to Churchill’s historic records and diaries which enabled him to produce such a unique biography. It introduces readers to the actual person rather than being the common narration of the great leader. The feelings and thoughts humanise the series of events we all know all too well.

This book is specially recommended for those who prefer the human touch to their literature rather than a historic list of chronological events.

• Authors : Andrew Roberts (Author)
• Publisher : Viking; Illustrated Edition (November 6, 2018)
• Pages : 1152 pages

4. The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History

A highly unique record of the great life of Sir Churchill, this book combines real events and presents them mixed with amazing wit and life. A rare combination of dry history and fresh humour, it is an amazing read for book lovers.

This literature debunks several popular myths and misconceptions surrounding the great Winston Churchill. His role in World War Two and the life he led after has been penned in quite a refreshing tone. His contributions to politics, war, journalism, and social causes have all been elaborated in satisfying detail.

The humorous and fresh tone of the writing is what makes this book a must-have for history lovers. It brings home the fact that history is never boring!

• Authors : Boris Johnson (Author)
• Publisher : Riverhead Books; Reprint Edition (October 27, 2015)
• Pages : 400 pages

5. Churchill: A Life

The official biography of Sir Winston Churchill, this book is the main go-to writing which anyone with an interest in the great man’s life should go through. It has been compiled after years of attentive research and careful working. It is quite lengthy as it includes several details necessary to understand the life Churchill had.

The biography goes into interesting details of Sir Winston’s life, right from his youth. His childhood has been immortalised to give readers a good understanding of what shaped one of the greatest men we know in history.

As biographies go, even this volume may become boring for some readers. However, the full eventful and successful life of Sir Winston Churchill could not have been penned down better.

• Authors : Martin Gilbert (Author)
• Publisher : Holt Paperbacks; First U.S. edition. (October 15, 1992)
• Pages : 1088 pages

6. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

The last volume of this three part series is based on the events of the Second World War and its after-effects. It is the final book and shows the end of the great life he led. It portrays the human side of what readers had previously only known as a staunch statesman and a talented artist.

The book takes its readers through how Churchill dealt with being a Prime Minister at a very sensitive time for Britain. His stance on various political moves is narrated in detail. It is the perfect ending for the series.

This series is unique in the human touch it gives rather than a simple narration. It keeps the readers from putting the books down until they are done with the last line.

• Authors : Paul Reid (Author), William Manchester (Author)
• Publisher : Little, Brown and Company; Illustrated Edition (November 6, 2012)
• Pages : 1183 pages

7. The Gathering Storm, 1948 (Winston S. Churchill The Second World Wa Book 1)

This is the first of a six volume series depicting the various stages of Churchill’s great life. The first volume portrays the events of the World War II and Sir Winston’s important role in resisting the Nazi infiltration.

The most interesting aspect of this literary work is the inclusion of authentic records of the events in Churchill’s own words. His letters and memoirs have been immortalised in this volume, giving a high level of interest and authenticity of the work.

This book is highly recommended to those who prefer reading authentic records of historic events in the people’s own words. It will definitely lead to interest in the complete six book series set.

• Authors : Winston S. Churchill (Author)
• Publisher : RosettaBooks (June 30, 2010)
• Pages : 750 pages

8. Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

This book covers a challenging and major part of Churchill’s life, namely his political career. He had to make several tough calls and make many important decisions, all of which impacted the whole nation. His potential as a tough statesman is what covers the pages of this amazing volume.

Churchill faced three main challenges as a leader: Nazis, Soviet Communism and Britain’s socialism. How he faced these and rose above the challenges to make a mark upon the history pages is a fascinating story.

This book correctly portrays how fact is stranger than fiction. It shows us how Winston took important decisions in tough times which successfully led his country to a remarkable victory in the Second World War.

• Authors : Larry P. Arnn (Author)
• Publisher : Thomas Nelson; BCE Edition (October 13, 2015)

9. Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

This book not only covers Churchill and his life’s struggles but also talks about a great personality who went through his own challenges around the same timeline i.e. George Orwell.

These men have had their tough shares in the political background of the two world wars. Both have had their lives endangered and survived through it, giving them a chance to leave a stronger legacy that they could if the unfortunate turn of events, Orwell being shot in the neck during wartime and Churchill being hit by a car, had claimed their lives earlier. Their triumphs and challenges have been portrayed for readers, which humanises these great men.

Instead of focusing solely on Winston Churchill, the added details of Orwell’s life captivate the true history fan.

• Authors : Thomas E. Ricks (Author)
• Publisher : Penguin Books; Reprint Edition (May 23, 2017)
• Pages : 348 pages

10. Churchill

There is no shortage of biographies of the great Sir Winston Churchill. This biography is one of the many written depicting the life he led, from childhood until his death. It is shorter than most similar volumes but in no way short of touching upon the important aspects.

The writer has very creatively managed to summarise the great life of Churchill, and covered all the important events, including his early military life, he political roles, his leadership through one of Britain’s most trying times and finally his devotion to arts and writing. The short and brisk nature of the biography keeps the reader engaged, without compromising on quality or content.

This is a good recommendation for students or busy professionals who have an interest in history and famous personalities.

• Authors : Paul Johnson (Author)
• Publisher : Penguin Books; Illustrated Edition (October 26, 2010)
• Pages : 192 pages

11. The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill

This book is another of the many volumes that compile the famous sayings and speech of the great Winston Churchill. However this one is different in the fact that it lists them with context and topic for easy reference.

While most compilations are more of just information and entertainment, this book is useful for those working on the great leader’s life, be it as a student, a debater, for a speech or simple fact compilation. The organisation really helps the user navigate through it easily.

Churchill is famous for his wit and humour, not to mention his amazing flow of words. This books pays tribute to him in a unique and informative manner and helps the modern historian in their own workings.

• Authors : James C. Humes (Author), Richard M. Nixon (Foreword)
• Publisher : Harper Perennial; Harper Perennia Edition (January 1, 1995)
• Pages : 256 pages

12. The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill (The Wicked Wit of series)

In the backdrop of the dark times, Winston Churchill was famous for having a steady and bold head on his shoulders. He survived through the tough times with his brilliant wit and famous humour.

This book complies several of his famous quotes, puns and sayings, which explore his witty and fresh side. Without many details or any historical facts, this book simply showcases the wicked humour Sir Churchill had and how he displayed it through his words.

For anyone looking for pure entertainment and genuine work of literary brilliance, this is a great recommendation. It is impossible to disappoint even those who are unaware of the life of Winston Churchill. It is short and crisp, never losing it firm grip on the reader’s attention.

• Authors : Dominique Enright (Author)
• Publisher : Michael O’Mara; Revised Edition (September 1, 2011)
• Pages : 160 pages

13. Churchill: The Power of Words

Compiled by Sir Churchill’s chosen biographer, this book compiles the great man’s own speeches and writings in the aptly named volume. It includes well-chosen speeches which lead the reader through his life’s events.

Winston Churchill was a man of words, and his writings are well-liked in the literary world. This book presents a fair tribute to the writer, whether through his famous speeches or his popular articles. They are presented in chronological order, leading the readers through a satisfying time lapse of his life.

This is a very interesting read for book-lovers who prefer having authentic sources for the information in history books. The beautiful net of words spun by Churchill himself is just the cherry on top of the very famous life-events.

• Authors : Winston Churchill (Author), Martin Gilbert (Editor)
• Publisher : Da Capo Press; Illustrated Edition (October 1, 2013)
• Pages : 536 pages

14. The World Crisis, 1911-1918

While most of the records on Sir Churchill focus on his role during the Second World War, many forget that he also had an impactful role during the First War. This books identifies and talks about just that, in the very own words of the great man himself.

Churchill’s leadership during the political unrest, the wartime, the famines and all, are portrayed very interestingly in this volume. The first-hand account of the lesser remembered war is a must-read for history lovers.

This book not only gives an interesting insight to the beginning of the twentieth century in all its details, but also exemplifies the true writing potential of the great statesman. Highly recommended for Churchill fans.

• Authors : Winston S. Churchill (Author), Martin Gilbert (Introduction)
• Publisher : Free Press; Reissue Edition (October 6, 2005)
• Pages : 880 pages

15. Memoirs of the Second World War

There is nothing like learning about history, than in the words of those who lived it. This book more that proves this fact. It is written by none other than Churchill himself.

Churchill saw first-hand how tragic the Second World War was. And he made it a point to pen down all the events, and his role and feelings throughout it, to ensure he recorded the important facts in history. The way he has immortalised the Second World War is as unique as the man himself.

For history loves and fans of Sir Winston, there are many books available that immortalise the life history of the great leader. However, this unique memoir beats them all due to its authenticity and the engaging words of a great writer, Sir Churchill himself.

• Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Company; Reprint Edition (September 17, 1991)
• Pages : 1065 pages

16. No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money

Although Churchill belonged to a wealthy family, his own life was not as smoothly in terms of finance, as one would expect. Behind the strong, firm and empowering man, there was a life of financial troubles and smart planning to get through.

This is a unique book which focuses on one of the lesser known sides to Sir Winston’s story. It reveals some very private matters of his life that had been buried under the more famous larger than life persona.

The different topic it covers and the good writing style is a good attraction for those looking for unique books. It caters to history lovers who want to sketch complete pictures f their favourite classic personalities.

• Authors : David Lough (Author)
• Publisher : Head of Zeus (June 1, 2016)
• Pages : 528 pages

17. Churchill By Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations

Sir Winston Churchill was a true man of words. His writings and published works eventually led him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. His wit and humour are famous amongst the classic books.

This book compiles some of his most famous sayings and words. It is merely a list, but one of the most entertaining and engaging ones for books lovers. No true fan can rest without going through his well-known witty remarks.

Even if you are not interested in history and its facts, this compilation is a must-have for you, not just for entertainment but for an amazing insight into one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. It will definitely keep you engaged until the last word.

• Authors : Richard Langworth (Editor)
• Publisher : PublicAffairs; Illustrated Edition (May 24, 2011)
• Pages : 656 pages

18. Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill

Any true Churchill fan would include one adjective when describing their favourite leader and that is Style! Wrapping up all that personality and wit into a truly attractive stylish exterior is something very few people can carry, and Churchill was one of those. This book is fine tribute to all that uniqueness.

From his main house, to all his preferred clothing styles, food, drinks, cigars, travelling etc., everything was a sight to behold. This book not only gives interesting details of all that glamour, but also supports them with some very sought after pictures.

This one is for those true fans who want to leave nothing to imagination when getting to know their leader better.

• Authors : Barry Singer (Author)
• Publisher : Harry N. Abrams; Illustrated Edition (May 1, 2012)
• Pages : 240 pages

19. The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill

For all the hardships and grave happenings through his life, Sir Winston had a unique wit and humour that many readers love. He is known well in the literary circle for his unmatched choice of words.

This compilation is perfect for his fans that look beyond the history and love him as an artist. It is not narrative rather it simply compiles his many words and speeches, portraying the amazing intellect and humour of Churchill. Readers would love and enjoy he time going through this masterpiece.

Whether you want it for your own collection, or are looking for a gift for a loved one, this book is perfect for any Churchill fan to include in their library.

• Authors : Max Morris (Editor)
• Publisher : Skyhorse (March 21, 2017)

20. Secrets of Churchill’s War Rooms

When Winston Churchill was elected the Prime Minister in 1940, the World War II was ust beginning. He knew he had to lead his country through it. For this Churchill allocated the famous War Rooms, where he ran his country from.

The rooms have been locked up in secrecy ever since the war ended. Only recently were they unlocked and displayed to the general public. This book walks us through these rooms, detailing the events and the famous talks and discussions held in them during the tough times.

A truly interesting feature is the pictures included which fascinate the avid readers. These pictures go beyond the areas open to public, taking us through the realities of the wartime leadership.  A fascinating read for Churchill fans.

• Authors : Jonathan Asbury (Author)
• Publisher : Imperial War Museums (January 15, 2017)
• Pages : 288 pages

Choosing the Best Churchill Books

Although the literary world is over-loaded with books on one of the greatest leaders of the world, none of which could possibly do justice to the breadth of his amazing personality, there are a choice few that come close to the feat. A true biography of such an eventful life is near-miracle. There are several lessons to be learnt from Sir Churchill’s life, whether it be as a leader, as an army general or as an artist.

The above-mentioned works come close to showing what a full life Sir Winston Churchill led. These are the few must-haves as a start to getting to know him as a living person.

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Churchill: A Biography Paperback – Illustrated, November 5, 2002

• Print length 1024 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Plume
• Publication date November 5, 2002
• Dimensions 6 x 1.8 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0452283523
• ISBN-13 978-0452283527
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

“One might wonder whether anything fresh remains to be said about Winston Churchill, but Roy Jenkins uniquely combines the skills of a master biographer with the insights of a practical politician and draws a fresh portrait of the great Englishman with authority, elegance, and wit. This is far and away Churchill's best one-volume biography.”— Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

“This is a splendid addition to Churchillian lore, a chronicle full of revealing personal anecdotes, delightful wartime vignettes, and fascinating new insights into the critical 1939-1945 years.”— Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“Wryly astute...shrewd.”— The Washington Post   “Jenkins catches Churchill’s studied self-inspection with the sure-shot sharpness of an expert portraitist.”— Simon Schama,  The New York Review of Books   “Churchill stands forth with Shakespearean bravura as the necessary hero for the most testing moment of national (and world) crisis. A satisfying summation of an unsurpassed life.”— The San Diego Union-Tribune   “Lord Jenkins of Hillhead is an outstanding biographer...it has the narrative power, sweep and sparkle of the author in his prime.” — The Times

About the Author

Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

A Doubtful Provenance

Churchill's provenance was aristocratic, indeed ducal, and some have seen this as the most important key to his whole career. That is unconvincing. Churchill was far too many faceted, idiosyncratic and unpredictable a character to allow himself to be imprisoned by the circumstances of his birth. His devotion to his career and his conviction that he was a man of destiny were far stronger than any class or tribal loyalty. There have been politicians of high duty and honour — Edward Halifax and Alec Douglas-Home immediately spring to mind — who did see life through spectacles much bounded by their landed background. But Churchill was emphatically not among them. Apart from anything else, he never had any land beyond his shaky ownership (and later only occupation) of the 300 acres surrounding Chartwell, the West Kent house only twenty-four miles from London which he bought in 1922 and just managed, with financial subventions from friends, to cling on to for the remaining four decades of his life.

    The second reason was that the Marlborough heritage was not one which stood very high in esteem, record of public service or secure affluence. The family had a memorable swashbuckling founder in John Churchill, the victor in the first decade of the eighteenth century of the battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenaarde and Malplaquet, who acquired a fine mansion among other rewards. But even this first Duke, although he inspired Winston Churchill to write four resonant volumes of praise (and of refutation of the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay's criticism) just over 200 years after his death, was as famous for ruthless self-advancement as he was for martial prowess; and the house, as its name of Blenheim Palace implies and as its size-enhancing Vanburgh architecture was dedicated to achieving, was showy even by the standards of the time.

    Subsequent holders of the dukedom contributed little distinction and much profligacy. In 1882, when the seventh in the line had been reached, Gladstone, who in general had an excessive respect for dukes, claimed that none of the Marlboroughs had shown either morals or principles. Certainly no lustre to the family name was added by the second, third or fourth Dukes. The fifth was a talented gardener, but he seriously dissipated the Marlborough fortune and had to abandon the fine subsidiary estate (now the site of Reading University) where he had exercised his botanical skills. The sixth was almost equally extravagant. The seventh, who was the father of Lord Randolph and hence the grandfather of Winston Churchill, made the nearest approach to respectability and a record of public service. He was an MP for ten years, Lord President of the Council under both Derby and Disraeli in 1867-8, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the last four years of Disraeli's second government.

    As a father this seventh Duke's record was at once more dramatic and more mixed. On the one hand he produced a two-generation dynasty which made the name of Churchill resound throughout Britain's national life in a way that it had not done since the death of the first Duke in 1722. On the other, the resonance, in the case of Lord Randolph, had a distinctly meretricious note to it. And Lord Randolph's elder brother was, in the words of an eminent modern historian, ‘one of the most disreputable men ever to have debased the highest rank in the British peerage’. He appropriately bore the name of Blandford, the title of the Marlborough heir, for most of his relatively short life, during which he was expelled from Eton, got caught up in two sexual scandals, one of which involved him in a violent quarrel with the Prince of Wales (in which quarrel the fault may not have been unilateral), and sold off, as a short-term staunching operation, the formidable Marlborough picture collection. About his only constructive act was to install electric light and a rudimentary form of central heating at Blenheim. That was paid for by his second wife, who as a rich American provided sustaining dollars and began a strong Churchill family tradition of looking matrimonially westward. This example was followed by both his son, the ninth Duke, Winston Churchill's cousin and near contemporary, who married two transatlantic heiresses, and by his younger brother (Lord Randolph Churchill), who married one (Winston Churchill's mother). The fortune of the father of Lady Randolph was however a little precarious. Furthermore he was unwilling to contribute much of it to the sustenance of the Churchill family.

    Since the eighth Duke there have been another three Marlboroughs. Of these subsequent three, while they rose somewhat above the level of the eighth Duke, it is difficult to find much that is positive to say. Winston Churchill's family background, while nominally of the highest aristocracy, was subtly inferior to that of a Cavendish, a Russell, a Cecil or a Stanley.

    He was born on 30 November 1874 and, mainly by accident, at the very core of this slightly doubtful purple — in Blenheim Palace, although in a singularly bleak-looking bedroom. The accident arose out of his being two months premature. He should have been born in January in the small but fashionable house in Charles Street, Mayfair which his father had rented to receive him, or more purposefully perhaps to use as a base for the somewhat rackety metropolitan life of which Lord Randolph and his bride of only seven and a half months' standing were equally fond. This house not being ready, they had taken autumn refuge in Blenheim, and, as Lord Randolph put it in a letter to his mother-in-law in Paris, ‘She [Lady Randolph] had a fall on Tuesday walking with the shooters, and a rather imprudent and rough drive in a pony carriage brought on the pains on Saturday night. We tried to stop them, but it was no use.’ Neither the London obstetrician nor his Oxford auxiliary could arrive in time, although it was over twenty-four hours to the birth from the onset of the labour pains, and the baby was born very early on the Monday morning with the assistance only of the Woodstock country doctor. Both mother and baby survived this paucity of attention perfectly healthily — as did the local doctor, who whether as a result or not was able himself to migrate to a London practice a decade or so later.

    Everything to do with Winston Churchill's arrival in the world was done in a hurry. Perhaps Lord Randolph's most remembered phrase (and phrases were his strongest suit) was his description of Gladstone as ‘an old man in a hurry’. His own style was at least equally that of a young man in a hurry, almost in a constant frenzy of impatience, and perhaps rationally so, for, although thirty-nine years his junior, he predeceased Gladstone by three years. The hurry was pre-eminently true of his courtship of Miss Jennie Jerome. They first met at a Cowes regatta shipboard party on 12 August 1873 and became engaged to be married three days later.

    There then intervened the only period of semi-stasis in the saga. The Jerome family were in fact a very suitable American family for a Marlborough alliance. Leonard Jerome was a New York financial buccaneer. Winston Churchill, in his still highly readable although hagiographic 1905 biography of his father, was to describe Jerome as having ‘founded and edited the New York Times ’. This owed more to family piety than to truth. Jerome had briefly in the course of some financial deals been a part proprietor of the Times . But what he was strong in was not newspaper publishing but horse racing, having founded both the Jerome Park track and the Coney Island Jockey Club. There was a touch of Joseph P. Kennedy about him. There was even a suggestion that he named his second daughter after Jenny Lind, the ‘Swedish nightingale’ (although the spelling was different), who was his current principal inamorata . He was pleased at the idea of this second daughter marrying an English duke's son (even if he was not the heir), but not to the extent of being willing, in the joke which John F. Kennedy was to make about his father's financing of the 1960 Presidential campaign, ‘to pay for a landslide’. The seventh Duke was at first opposed to the whole idea of the union, being unimpressed by the uncontrolled precipitateness of his son's passion, and believing moreover that ‘this Mr J. seems to be a sporting, and I should think vulgar kind of man’, who was evidently ‘of the class of speculators; he has been bankrupt twice; and may be so again’. Over the autumn the Duke was brought reluctantly to overcome these objections of principle by his son's determination. He was the first but by no means the last of the Marlboroughs to have to deal with the fathers of American heiresses and he set a pattern of believing that the least consuegros could do for the honour of such a noble alliance was generously to finance it.

    There were however two difficulties. First, Leonard Jerome, true to the Duke's descriptions of the hazards of his occupation, was in a speculative downturn. He had been badly mauled by the plunge of the New York stock exchange of that year (1873). Second, he claimed to hold advanced New World ideas about the financial rights of married women. (This was before the British Married Women's Property Act of I882 gave women any property rights against their husbands.) The Duke assumed that whatever settlement could be obtained would be under the exclusive control of his son. Jerome thought it should be settled on his daughter. This led to a good deal of haggling which went on into the spring of 1874. Eventually a compromise was reached, by which Jerome settled a sum of £50,000 (approximately £2.5 million at present values), producing an income of £2,000 a year, with a half of both capital and income belonging to the husband and a half to the wife. The Duke settled another £1,100 a year for life on Randolph which gave the couple the equivalent of a present-day income of a little more than £150,000 a year, a sum which guaranteed that they would live constantly above their income and be always in debt.

    As soon as this settlement was reached they were married, on 15 April 1874. It cannot be said that the wedding took place en beauté . It was not at Woodstock, or in a suitable London church, or a Fifth Avenue equivalent. It was in the British Embassy in Paris. The Jeromes attended and were among the very few witnesses, but neither Marlborough parent did; Blandford represented the family. However there was no ostracism at home. The couple were welcomed at Blenheim and in May were given a public reception in Woodstock, for which small family borough Lord Randolph had been first and fairly narrowly elected a member of Parliament at the general election of February 1874. He was twenty-five years of age at the time both of his election and of the birth of Winston Churchill. Jennie Churchill was twenty.

    She had passed most of her adolescence in Paris, which Mrs Jerome appeared to prefer to New York, was considered a beauty and had already attracted much admiration before she met Lord Randolph. Her looks were undoubtedly striking, but what emerges most clearly from many photographs is that she quickly assumed an appearance which was hard, imperious and increasingly self-indulgent. Her performance as a wife, and indeed as a mother, was at least as mixed as that of the seventh Duke of Marlborough as a father. She and Randolph undoubtedly began upon a basis of mutual passion. Although they both liked a fashionable London life she accepted with calmness and even contentment the three years of virtual exile to Dublin which followed from her husband's 1876 quarrel (over a lady, but on his brother's, not his own, part) with the Prince of Wales. Her second son, Jack, was born in the Irish capital at the beginning of 1880. There has long been a strong suggestion that this boy had a different father from Winston Churchill, although this did not prevent the two brothers being close at various periods of their lives, notably in South Africa at the turn of the century and at the peak of Winston Churchill's career in the Second World War, when he accommodated the widowered Jack in 10 Downing Street. The most romantic candidate for alternative parenthood was Count Charles Kinsky, an Austrian diplomat of high aristocratic connection and of a proud elegance reminiscent of Sargent's portrait of Lord Ribblesdale. Lady Randolph was much taken up with him in the early and mid-1880s but the dates are wrong for giving him a procreative role; he did not arrive in London until 1881. If the legitimacy of Jack Churchill is challenged, a more likely candidate seems to be the Dublin-based Colonel John Strange Jocelyn, who succeeded his nephew as the fifth Earl of Roden later in the year 1880. He was thirty years older than Lady Randolph, but that was no necessary bar.

    She looked after her husband rather well during a protracted illness which effectively took him out of politics from the spring to the autumn of 1882, and very well during the last tragic three years or so of disintegration before his death at the beginning of 1895. But the couple were effectively estranged over much of the 1880s, including the years of his short political apogee. She, like Queen Victoria, did not know of his disastrous 1886 resignation from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer until she read it in The Times . During these years she had many suitors, more than a few of them probably lovers. They included apart from those mentioned, the Marquis de Breteuil, Lord Dunraven, the French novelist Paul Bourget and King Milan of Serbia. George Moore, the Anglo-Irish novelist, said she had 200 lovers, but apart from anything else the number is suspiciously round. She claimed to have firmly rejected the overtures of Sir Charles Dilke, which however did not prevent Lord Randolph, who appeared mostly to be more tolerant, from attempting to assault him.

    After Lord Randolph's death her choice of partners became more bizarre as well as more public. In 1900, at the age of forty-six, she insisted on marrying George Cornwallis-West, a Scots Guards subaltern who was twenty years her junior. The marriage lasted fourteen years before ending in divorce. Cornwallis-West clearly had considerable drawing power, for he then married Mrs Patrick Campbell. Three years later Lady Randolph made a third marriage to Montague Porch, an hitherto quiet Somerset country gentleman who had been a Colonial Service officer in Nigeria and who was even younger than Cornwallis-West. She died in 1921, aged sixty-seven. Porch survived until 1964.

    Was Jennie Churchill a better mother than a wife? Her elder son's most famous comment on their early relationship sounds a note at once admiring and wistful. After citing an adulatory passage (in which the most striking phrase was nonetheless ‘more of the panther than of the woman in her look’) written by the future Lord D'Abernon after first seeing her during the Irish period, Winston Churchill commented: ‘My mother made the same brilliant impression upon my childhood's eye. She shone for me like the Evening Star. I loved her dearly — but at a distance.’ This was in My Early Life (that is up to 1906) which he published in 1930, and is probably the most engaging of all his books, using a light and sparkling note of detached irony. The fact that these sentences were written and published nearly fifty years after the period to which they refer gives them a greater not a lesser validity.

    They are moreover borne out by the correspondence of the period. Throughout his two years at his first preparatory school (St George's, Ascot, which appears from the disparately independent testimonies of Churchill himself and of the art critic Roger Fry to have been a place of appalling brutality even by the flogging standards of the age), his subsequent three and a half years at a much gentler Brighton establishment, and then his nearly five years at Harrow, there is a constant hoping for visits which did not take place, of wishing for more attention in the future, and of being shunted around rather than of being automatically welcomed at home for short or long holidays.

    The forms of letter address are also interesting. Churchill most frequently began his ‘My darling Mummy’ and ended more variously. A fairly typical second-year Harrow example was ‘Good Bye, my own, with love I remain, Your son Winston S Churchill’. She habitually wrote to him, not too infrequently but mostly shortly, ‘Dearest Winston’ and ended ‘Yr loving Mother JSC’.

    There were two competitors for writing to him at least equally or more affectionate letters. The first was the Countess of Wilton, in the relevant years a lady in her mid- to late forties, who wrote often, mostly starting ‘Dearest Winston’ and ending, more significantly ‘With best love, Yr ever affecte, deputy mother, Laura Wilton’. The other was Churchill's nurse, Mrs Everest, who was engaged to look after him (and later his brother Jack) within a month or so of his birth. Elizabeth Everest was from the Medway Towns, and one of her lasting influences was to make Churchill feel that Kent was the best county in England. She would have approved (more than Clementine Churchill did) of his acquiring Chartwell twenty-seven years after her death. Before coming to the Churchills she had looked after the small daughter of a Cumberland clergyman, whom Winston retrieved after twenty years to join him at her graveside.

    Mrs Everest obviously possessed among other attributes great descriptive power, for she made life in that northern parsonage so vivid to Churchill that, although vicarious, it was one of his most permanent early memories. There is no evidence that a spousely Mr Everest had ever existed, so that her ‘Mrs’ was purely honorary, like that of many a housekeeper of the period. Although she had a sister (who was married to a prison warder in the Isle of Wight), to whose house she once took Winston to stay, thus giving him, it has been suggested, his only experience of humble life, she was able to concentrate almost all her affection upon the two Churchill boys. She was the central emotional prop of Winston's childhood, and mutual dependence continued throughout his adolescence. The Randolph Churchills had not kept her on after the end of Jack's childhood, but Winston at least maintained strong contact and visited her several times in her final illness.

    Mrs Everest's letters to Churchill typically began (21 January 1891, when he was sixteen) ‘My darling Winny’ and ended ‘Lots of love and kisses Fm your loving old woom’. A typical topping and tailing from him to her (from Harrow, July 1890) was ‘My darling Old Woom’ and ‘Good Bye darling, I hope you will enjoy yourself, with love from Winny’. One other person who used ‘Winny’ (or ‘Winnie’) was Count Kinsky. On 5 February 1891 he wrote a letter from the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in Belgrave Square of which the content, as well as the salutations, was not without interest: ‘I am sending you all the stamps I could scrape together for the moment. Do you want some more later on? If so say so. How is your old head? I hope all right again. I am off to Sandringham tomorrow until Monday. If I have a good thing racing you shall be on. I am going to lunch with Mama now so must be off. Be a good boy and write if you have nothing better to do ... Yours ever, CK’.

    Winston Churchill's non-relationship with his father was even more wistful than was his semi-relationship with his mother. Lord Randolph was too exhilarated by politics during his period of success and too depressed by them (and by his health) during his decline to have much time for parenthood. It is one of the supreme ironies that now, more than a century after his death, he should be best known as a father. In life it was always an intensely personal fame, sought and achieved, which was his forte, just as parenthood or any other form of domestic activity certainly was not. The most poignant comment on Winston Churchill's relations with his father is that which he is reported to have made to his own son, another and by no means wholly satisfactory Randolph, in the late 1930s, when that Randolph was twenty-six or twenty-seven. They had a long and maybe fairly alcoholic dinner together, alone at Chartwell. Towards the end Churchill said: ‘We have this evening had a longer period of continuous conversation together than the total which I ever had with my father in the whole course of his life.’

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plume; First Edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1024 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0452283523
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0452283527
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.2 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.8 x 9 inches
• #2,602 in Historical British Biographies
• #9,333 in Political Leader Biographies
• #17,607 in World War II History (Books)

About the author

Roy jenkins.

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Customers find the writing quality perceptive and competent. However, they find the book boring and fails to bring important context to the story. Opinions are mixed on the writing style, with some finding it well-written and others saying it's not well-done and impossible to understand without more definitions.

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Customers find the writing quality of the book perceptive, competent, and detailed. They also say the depth and quantity of the research is memorable. Overall, readers describe the book as wonderful and readable.

"...There is a perceptive and competent biography by his life-long friend, Violet Bonham Carter, the diaries of his physician, Lord Moran, and the..." Read more

"...prose and very well thought through and he is obviously quite knowledgeable on his subject ...." Read more

"...Jenkins combines encyclopedic research with knowledge of British parliamentary history and marvelous insights of many of the characters...." Read more

"...While the depth and quantity of the research is memorable , little of it is new, and much of it requires a thorough grounding in English history to..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some mention the book is very well written and gives the flavor of Churchill as a writer, while others say it's not well written, the glossary is woefully incomplete, and the names and titles are tedious.

"...Still, Jenkins has written an extemely valuable and readable effort , the best one volume biography in my opinion, and the best we are ever likely..." Read more

"...The glossary is woefully incomplete for the unprepared reader. An awful lot is lost in the 'translation' from English to American...." Read more

"...His style and prose and very well thought through and he is obviously quite knowledgeable on his subject...." Read more

"Although I found the text a bit plodding at times , I felt compelled to read the entire book, because Churchill was such a commanding figure of the..." Read more

Customers find the book boring and fail to bring important context to the forefront.

"...to slog thru up to 1908 and even the upcoming world wars is not enough to get me excited ...." Read more

"... Too much like a boring history class to get me to read it. I threw it in the trash." Read more

"...It is not only boring , it fails to bring important context to the forefront...." Read more

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Top 5 books about Winston Churchill, selected by historian David Reynolds

Generations of biographers have been attracted to Churchill. Historian and broadcaster David Reynolds is the latest – here's his top five

Image: Yousuf Karsh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From comprehensive biographies to introductions for children, historian and broadcaster David Reynolds selects five books about former prime minister Winston Churchill.

Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts

A huge but highly readable life by a master of heroic biography. Not uncritical, but depicting what others consider Churchill’s failures to be learning experiences that fortified him along destiny’s road.  

Churchill  by Roy Jenkins 

Now two decades old and not a work of original research, but valuable because of the author’s own insights as a parliamentarian, a former chancellor and an accomplished author – not to mention their shared appreciation of food and drink. 

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Churchill: The Unexpected Hero by Paul Addison

Ideal for those who want a fairly short introduction to this very big man, authored by a professional historian who had a deep knowledge and understanding of 20th-century British politics and society. 

First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill by Sonia Purnell

Clementine called Winston her “life’s work”. This vivid and moving book shows what it cost her (and her children), what she did for him and also what their marriage did for her.  

Winston Churchill  by Katie Daynes 

This very short introduction – from the Usborne Famous Lives series for those aged nine to 13 – is a good place to start for budding Churchllians. 

David Reynolds is a historian and broadcaster .

Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill And The Leaders Who Shaped Him by David Reynolds is out on 12 October (Harper Collins, £25).

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Discover the 9 Best Winston Churchill Books to Read Now

Winston Churchill is one of the most iconic historical figures of the 20th century, known for his leadership during World War II and his contributions to British politics. He was also a prolific writer, authoring numerous books on history, politics, and his own life. In this article, we’ll explore the best books about Churchill to read now and gain a deeper understanding of this legendary figure.

Understanding Winston Churchill: A Brief Overview

Before diving into the books themselves, it’s essential to have a basic understanding of Churchill’s life and legacy. Born in 1874, Churchill’s political career spanned more than half a century, and he served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice. Over the course of his life, he wrote over 40 books and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.

The Life and Times of Winston Churchill

Churchill’s life was full of fascinating twists and turns. He was a war correspondent, a soldier, a painter, and a writer, among other professions. Overcoming personal and political obstacles, he rose to become one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Learning about Churchill’s life can help us understand the man behind the myths and legends.

Churchill was born into a wealthy family, but his childhood was far from idyllic. He struggled in school and had a strained relationship with his parents. However, he showed an early interest in military history and strategy, which would shape his future career. He served in the military during World War I, where he gained valuable experience and earned several medals for bravery.

After the war, Churchill continued his political career, serving in various positions in the government. He was a controversial figure, known for his sharp wit and his willingness to speak his mind. He was also a prolific writer, publishing books on a wide range of topics, including his own life and experiences.

The Impact of Churchill’s Leadership on World History

Churchill’s leadership during World War II is widely regarded as one of his greatest achievements. His speeches, actions, and decisions helped inspire and guide the Allied forces to victory. But his impact on world history goes beyond that. He was also instrumental in shaping the post-war world order and in resisting the threat of communism during the Cold War.

Churchill’s leadership style was characterized by his strong will and his ability to inspire others. He was known for his stirring speeches, which rallied the British people during their darkest hours. He was also a skilled diplomat, forging alliances with other world leaders and negotiating treaties that helped maintain peace and stability.

Despite his many accomplishments, Churchill was not without his flaws. He was criticized for his handling of certain situations, such as the Gallipoli campaign during World War I. He was also known for his imperialist views, which were controversial even in his own time.

However, Churchill’s legacy remains a powerful one. He is remembered as a great leader, a brilliant writer, and a symbol of British strength and resilience. His life and achievements continue to inspire people around the world to this day.

Top Biographies of Winston Churchill

Biographies are a great way to dive deeper into Churchill’s life and get a more nuanced understanding of his personality, motivations, and accomplishments. Here are three of the most highly regarded biographies of Churchill:

The Last Lion Trilogy by William Manchester

Manchester’s trilogy is widely considered to be the definitive biography of Churchill. The three volumes cover his life from birth to death and offer a detailed and engaging account of his life and legacy. Manchester’s prose is vibrant and engaging, and he paints a compelling portrait of this complex and fascinating man.

One of the most interesting aspects of Manchester’s biography is the way he explores Churchill’s early years. He delves into Churchill’s difficult relationship with his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and how this shaped his views on politics and society. Manchester also examines Churchill’s experiences as a young soldier and war correspondent, which would later inform his leadership during World War II.

Manchester’s biography is also notable for its attention to detail. He provides a wealth of information about Churchill’s personal life, including his marriage to Clementine Hozier and his relationships with his children. Manchester also delves into Churchill’s hobbies and interests, such as painting and bricklaying, which provide a fascinating glimpse into the man behind the legend.

You can find this book here .

Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Gilbert’s biography is another comprehensive and well-regarded book on Churchill . It draws on a vast array of sources, including Churchill’s own writings and the archives of his family, friends, and colleagues. Gilbert offers insights into not only Churchill’s public life but also his personal struggles and relationships, making for a rich and layered portrait of the man.

One of the most interesting aspects of Gilbert’s biography is his exploration of Churchill’s political career. He examines Churchill’s time as a Member of Parliament, his tenure as Prime Minister, and his role in shaping British foreign policy. Gilbert also delves into Churchill’s relationships with other world leaders, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, and how these relationships influenced his decisions.

Gilbert’s biography is also notable for its examination of Churchill’s personal life. He explores Churchill’s relationship with his wife and children, as well as his struggles with depression and alcoholism. Gilbert’s careful attention to detail and his use of primary sources make this biography an essential read for anyone interested in Churchill’s life and legacy.

Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard

While not a comprehensive biography, Millard’s book offers a fascinating look at Churchill’s early life. It focuses on his experiences as a young soldier and war correspondent in South Africa during the Boer War, where he demonstrated the courage and determination that would characterize his later career. Millard’s writing is vivid and engaging, and she brings this lesser-known period of Churchill’s life to vivid life.

One of the most interesting aspects of Millard’s book is the way she explores Churchill’s personality and character. She examines his strengths and weaknesses as a leader, and how his experiences in South Africa shaped his worldview. Millard also delves into Churchill’s relationships with other soldiers and journalists, and how these relationships influenced his career.

Millard’s book is also notable for its examination of the Boer War itself. She provides a detailed account of the conflict, including its causes and consequences, and how it shaped the political landscape of South Africa. Her vivid descriptions of the battles and the people involved bring this fascinating period of history to life.

Churchill’s Own Writings

Churchill was not only a fascinating subject for biography, but also a talented writer in his own right. His books offer insights into his thinking, his beliefs, and his worldview. Here are three of his most notable works:

The Second World War Series

Churchill’s six-volume memoir of his experiences during World War II is an essential read for anyone interested in the conflict. Churchill offers a firsthand account of the war from his unique perspective as Prime Minister, providing insights into his leadership style and decision-making process.

The Second World War Series is not only a historical account of the events that took place during the war, but it also offers a glimpse into Churchill’s personal life. He recounts his meetings with other world leaders, his interactions with his family, and his thoughts on the war’s impact on the world. Churchill’s writing style is engaging and informative, making this series a must-read for anyone interested in history or politics.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

This four-volume history of the English-speaking peoples from ancient times to the 20th century was one of Churchill’s most ambitious projects. He wrote it during the 1930s and 1940s, and it offers insights into his views on the importance of Anglo-American civilization and his vision for the future of the English-speaking world.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is not just a dry history book. Churchill’s writing is lively and engaging, and he brings the characters and events of history to life. He also includes his own opinions on the events he describes, making this book a fascinating insight into Churchill’s worldview. The book covers a vast span of history, from the Roman conquest of Britain to the American Revolution, and it is a great read for anyone interested in the history of the English-speaking world.

My Early Life: A Roving Commission

This memoir covers Churchill’s early years up until his entry into Parliament in 1900. It offers a vivid and engaging account of his upbringing, education, and adventures as a young man, including his service in the British Army and his travels throughout the world.

My Early Life: A Roving Commission is a charming and entertaining book, full of anecdotes and stories from Churchill’s early years. He writes about his childhood, his schooling, and his love of adventure. He also describes his experiences in the military, including his capture and daring escape during the Boer War. This book provides a fascinating insight into the early life of one of the most important figures of the 20th century.

Books on Churchill’s Leadership and Decision-Making

Churchill was not only a fascinating character but also a skilled leader and decision-maker. These books offer insights into his leadership style and his approach to decision-making:

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

Larson’s book focuses on Churchill’s leadership during the Blitz, the sustained bombing of London by German forces in 1940-41. It offers a compelling and insightful portrait of Churchill’s leadership style during this challenging time, highlighting his resilience, his determination, and his ability to rally the nation in the face of adversity.

Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Giles Milton

This book highlights one of Churchill’s lesser-known contributions to the war effort: his support for a secret organization tasked with waging unconventional warfare against the Nazis. It offers a unique perspective on Churchill’s strategic thinking and his willingness to take bold and unconventional approaches to achieve victory.

The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History by Boris Johnson

Johnson’s book offers a lively and engaging portrait of Churchill, focusing on his personality, his quirks, and his role in shaping history. While not a scholarly work, it offers insights into Churchill’s character and leadership style that can help readers understand why he was such an influential figure.

Whether you’re a history buff, a fan of Churchill’s writing, or simply curious about this fascinating figure, there’s a wealth of books available that can help you gain a deeper understanding of his life and legacy. Whether you choose to read a comprehensive biography, one of Churchill’s own works, or a book about his leadership style, you’re sure to come away with a new appreciation for the man who helped shape the course of world history.

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11 Best Books On Winston Churchill

“I never gave them courage. I was able to focus theirs.”

Few figures can match the magnitude of Winston Churchill. A massive figure both as a statesman and as a man, Churchill is a figure who has unified and divided people ever since making his first mark in history. A volatile and later disgraced MP who rose to lead his country to victory out of the darkest of days against Fascism, Churchill’s views, morals and private personal characteristics have enthralled and fascinated readers for over fifty years after his death. Join us at What We Reading for the 11 best books on Winston Churchill!   

My Early Life 1874-1904 – Winston Churchill

Who better to start off with than the man himself? In My Early Life 1874-1904 , Churchill takes readers through the opening thirty years of his life as a way of giving readers insight into the makings of one of modern history’s most defining figures. 

The book covers Churchill’s early years, his schooling, his experiences as a war correspondent in South Africa during the Boer War and his first encounters as a young Member of Parliament. Not only is this a valuable resource shedding light on a criminally underrepresented portion of history, but it is also a beautiful read into Churchill’s influences and motivations in his formative years.  

Winston Churchill As I Knew Him – Violet Bonham Carter

Daughter of former Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and grandmother to the Academy Award-winning actor, Violet Bonham Carter was an acclaimed British politician and diarist. As a leading opposer of appeasement and a huge figure in her own right, she was Winston Churchill’s closest female friend, besides his wife. 

Mainly covering the period during the years of the First World War, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him is a personal collection of unique and private moments from the man himself, showcasing his vulnerabilities and insecurities from one of the darkest points of his life. 

Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes – Tariq Ali

Winston Churchill is a figure whose attitudes and ideals have been increasingly scrutinised as time has gone on. A fierce advocate for Imperialism and the preservation of the British Empire during his life, his darker beliefs are put under the spotlight in Tariq Ali’s Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes .

This 2022 historical nonfiction book covers some of the lesser-known actions conducted by the former PM that was entrenched in the sorts of values most would consider racist today. From suppression of women’s suffrage, the Bengal Famine, war crimes in Kenya, the advocacy of poison gas against local tribesmen and the 1955 election slogan ‘keep Britain white’, Ali’s 2022 biography is essential for understanding Churchill from all angles. 

The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History – Boris Johnson

One former British PM details the life and times of another in Boris Johnson’s The Churchill  Factor: How One Man Made History . 

This political biography , released to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of his death, details how Churchill’s eccentricities helped to fashion a career that shaped his world, and our one today. There is obviously quite a lot of awe-struck about the book, but Boris Johnson’s admiration for Churchill gives the book so much character and serves to illustrate the influence and legacy Britain’s wartime leader has left behind. 

Churchill: Walking With Destiny – Andrew Roberts 

Possibly one of the most acclaimed books on Winston Churchill ever written, Walking With Destiny comes from the skilled mind of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and The Storm of War. 

In the book, Roberts gets given access to never-before-seen transcripts, memoirs, notes from King George VI and personal letters that had previously been withheld from the public to present Churchill in a new light. Walking With Destiny details the fuels and motivations behind the man, attempting to shed light on how one man proved himself to be one of the most unwavering in contemporary history. 

Check Out The Best Books On Franklin D Roosevelt

The Splendid And The Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz – Erik Larson

The summer of 1940 was a period in British history known as ‘ the Blitz ’. In an effort to drain British war efforts and pummel morale to the point of surrender, the German Luftwaffe’s constant bombing raids over British cities have gone down in infamy as the country’s ‘darkest hour’. 

Nominated for Best History & Biography (2020) in the Goodreads Choice Awards, Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile details how Churchill’s defiance in the face of the worst odds imaginable was forged and passed on to the British people. Featuring diary entries, archival evidence and newly classified intel, this WW2 book follows Churchill and his family during their day-to-day existence, detailing everything from his wife’s illicit lover to the members of the PM’s ‘secret circle’. 

The Wicked Wit Of Winston Churchill – Dominique Enright

Along with his staunch ideals, Winston Churchill has gone down in history as one of the quintessential sharp-tongued, snarky Englishmen. 

Dominique Enright’s 2001 book The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill features the best collection of quips, questions, remarks and comebacks from his lifetime. From his quick wit to his profound understanding of humanity and the horrors of war, it is one of the most invaluable books on Winston Churchill for those looking for a quick read to better understand the complexities of his character.

Churchill: A Life – Martin Gilbert 

Consisting of eight volumes that took over a quarter of a century to write, Churchill: A Life is the single edition of acclaimed historian Martin Gilbert’s work on Britain’s WW2 PM. 

The official biographer of Winston Churchill, Gilbert takes readers through his entire life, how his steadfast beliefs helped steer Britain through its most vulnerable days, but also how he showed himself to be a trailblazer when it came to technology and warfare. Helping to pioneer the use of aircraft, anti-aircraft and tank technology, Gilbert’s work helps showcase how Churchill has become the enduring face of the Second World War. 

Churchill And The Islamic World – Warren Dockter

Churchill and the Islamic World : Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East the 2014 historical biography from Warren Dockter. In it, Dockter examines Churchill’s orientalist views and how they shaped British colonial relations during his lifespan. 

And whilst he might be best remembered for his actions in the Western hemisphere these views and opinions drastically helped shape the modern Islamic world we see today. From securing valuable commodities such as oil, and preventing Russian expansion all the way to preserving British Imperialistic values, Dockter masterfully weaves all of these into one valuable resource here for one of the best books on Winston Churchill.

Churchill And Secret Service – David Stafford

David Stafford’s biography, Churchill and Secret Service , takes readers on a thrilling journey through Winston Churchill’s deep fascination with the world of espionage and secret intelligence.

From The Great Game between Russia and the United Kingdom to his influential role in the Anglo-American coup that toppled Mussadiq in Iran in 1953, Stafford’s absorbing account reveals how Churchill helped establish the contemporary Secret Service. With vivid details and a compelling narrative, Churchill and Secret Service is a must-read for anyone interested in this intriguing aspect of Churchill’s life.

The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America and the Origins of the Cold War – Fraser J Harbutt

Churchill’s remarkable career was characterized by both extraordinary achievements and significant setbacks. While his 1945 election defeat was one of the biggest electoral upsets in British history, Fraser J Harbutt’s The Iron Curtain shows how this disappointment played a key role in solidifying Churchill’s iconic status in the United States.

Through Harbutt’s insightful exploration of Churchill’s contribution to the onset of the Cold War, readers are invited to witness Churchill’s rise as one of the foremost advocates of Western democracy during a time when much of Eastern Europe was being engulfed by Stalin’s Communist regime.

Check Out The Best Battle Of Britain Books

Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).

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Sir winston churchill: a biography, the aim of this page is to give a brief introduction to the career of sir winston churchill, and to reveal the main features of both the public and the private life of the most famous british prime minister of the twentieth century..

Winston Churchill was born into the privileged world of the British aristocracy on November 30, 1874. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a younger son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American business tycoon, Leonard Jerome.

Winston’s childhood was not a particularly happy one. Like many Victorian parents, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill were distant. The family Nanny, Mrs Everest, became a surrogate mother to Winston and his younger brother, John S Churchill.

The Soldier

After passing out of Sandhurst and gaining his commission in the 4th Hussars’ in February 1895, Churchill saw his first shots fired in anger during a semi-official expedition to Cuba later that year. He enjoyed the experience which coincided with his 21st birthday.

In 1897 Churchill saw more action on the North West Frontier of India, fighting against the Pathans. He rode his grey pony along the skirmish lines in full view of the enemy. “Foolish perhaps,” he told his mother, ” but I play for high stakes and given an audience there is no act too daring and too noble.” Churchill wrote about his experiences in his first book The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898). He soon became an accomplished war reporter, getting paid large sums for stories he sent to the press – something which did not make him popular with his senior officers.

Using his mother’s influence, Churchill got himself assigned to Kitchener’s army in Egypt. While fighting against the Dervishes he took part in the last great cavalry charge in English history – at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

The Politician

Churchill was first elected to parliament in 1900 shortly before the death of Queen Victoria. He took his seat in the House of Commons as the Conservative Member for Oldham in February 1901 and made his maiden speech four days later. But after only four years as a Conservative he crossed the floor and joined the Liberals, making the flamboyant gesture of sitting next to one of the leading radicals, David Lloyd George.

Churchill rose swiftly within the Liberal ranks and became a Cabinet Minister in 1908 – President of the Board of Trade. In this capacity and as Home Secretary (1910-11) he helped to lay the foundations of the post-1945 welfare state.

His parliamentary career was far from being plain sailing and he made a number of spectacular blunders, so much so that he was often accused of having genius without judgement. The chief setback of his career occurred in 1915 when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he sent a naval force to the Dardanelles in an attempt to knock Turkey out of the war and to outflank Germany on a continental scale. The expedition was a disaster and it marked the lowest point in Churchill’s fortunes.

However, Churchill could not be kept out of power for long and Lloyd George, anxious to draw on his talents and to spike his critical guns, soon re-appointed him to high office. Their relationship was not always a comfortable one, particularly when Churchill tried to involve Britain in a crusade against the Bolsheviks in Russia after the Great War.

Between 1922 and 1924 Churchill left the Liberal Party and, after some hesitation, rejoined the Conservatives. Anyone could “rat”, he remarked complacently, but it took a certain ingenuity to “re-rat”. To his surprise, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin, an office in which he served from 1924 to 1929. He was an ebullient if increasingly anachronistic figure, returning Britain to the Gold Standard and taking an aggressive part in opposing the General Strike of 1926.

After the Tories were defeated in 1929, Churchill fell out with Baldwin over the question of giving India further self-government. Churchill became more and more isolated in politics and he found the experience of perpetual opposition deeply frustrating. He also made further blunders, notably by supporting King Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936. Largely as a consequence of such errors, people did not heed Churchill’s dire warnings about the rise of Hitler and the hopelessness of the appeasement policy. After the Munich crisis, however, Churchill’s prophecies were seen to be coming true and when war broke out in September 1939 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty. So, nearly twenty-five years after he had left the post in pain and sorrow, the Navy sent out a signal to the Fleet: “Winston is back”.

The War Leader

For the first nine months of the conflict, Churchill proved that he was, as Admiral Fisher had once said, “a war man”. Chamberlain was not. Consequently the failures of the Norwegian Campaign were blamed on the pacific Prime Minister rather than the belligerent First Lord, and, when Chamberlain resigned after criticisms in the House of Commons, Churchill became leader of a coalition government. The date was May 10, 1940: it was Churchill’s, as well as Britain’s, finest hour.

When the German armies conquered France and Britain faced the Blitz, Churchill embodied his country’s will to resist. His oratory proved an inspiration. When asked exactly what Churchill did to win the war, Clement Attlee, the Labour leader who served in the coalition government, replied: “Talk about it.” Churchill talked incessantly, in private as well as in public – to the astonishment of his private secretary, Jock Colville, he once spent an entire luncheon addressing himself exclusively to the marmalade cat.

Churchill devoted much of his energy to trying to persuade President Roosevelt to support him in the war. He wrote the President copious letters and established a strong personal relationship with him. And he managed to get American help in the Atlantic, where until 1943 Britain’s lifeline to the New World was always under severe threat from German U-Boats.

Despite Churchill’s championship of Edward VIII, and despite his habit of arriving late for meetings with the neurotically punctual King at Buckingham Palace, he achieved good relations with George VI and his family. Clementine once said that Winston was the last surviving believer in the divine right of kings.

As Churchill tried to forge an alliance with the United States, Hitler made him the gift of another powerful ally – the Soviet Union. Despite his intense hatred of the Communists, Churchill had no hesitation in sending aid to Russia and defending Stalin in public. “If Hitler invaded Hell,” he once remarked, “I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

In December 1941, six months after Hitler had invaded Russia, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The war had now become a global one. But with the might of America on the Allied side there could be no doubt about its outcome. Churchill was jubilant, remarking when he heard the news of Pearl Harbor: “So we have won after all!”

However, America’s entry into the war also caused Churchill problems; as he said, the only thing worse than fighting a war with allies is fighting a war without them. At first, despite disasters such as the Japanese capture of Singapore early in 1942, Churchill was able to influence the Americans. He persuaded Roosevelt to fight Germany before Japan, and to follow the British strategy of trying to slit open the “soft underbelly” of Europe. This involved the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Italy – the last of which proved to have a very well armoured belly.

It soon became apparent that Churchill was the littlest of the “Big Three”. At the Teheran Conference in November, 1943, he said, the “poor little English donkey” was squeezed between the great Russian bear and the mighty American buffalo, yet only he knew the way home.

In June 1944 the Allies invaded Normandy and the Americans were clearly in command. General Eisenhower pushed across Northern Europe on a broad front. Germany was crushed between this advance and the Russian steamroller. On May 8, 1945 Britain accepted Germany’s surrender and celebrated Victory in Europe Day. Churchill told a huge crowd in Whitehall: “This is your victory.” The people shouted: “No, it is yours”, and Churchill conducted them in the singing of Land of Hope and Glory. That evening he broadcast to the nation urging the defeat of Japan and paying fulsome homage to the Crown.

From all over the world Churchill received telegrams of congratulations, and he himself was generous with plaudits, writing warmly to General de Gaulle whom he regarded as an awkward ally but a bastion against French Communism. But although victory was widely celebrated throughout Britain, the war in the Far East had a further three months to run. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally brought the global conflict to a conclusion. But at the pinnacle of military victory, Churchill tasted the bitterness of political defeat.

The Elder Statesman

Churchill expected to win the election of 1945. Everything pointed to his victory, from the primitive opinion polls to the cartoons in newspapers and the adulation Churchill received during the campaign, but he did not conduct it well. From the start he accused the Labour leaders – his former colleagues – of putting party before country and he later said that Socialists could not rule without a political police, a Gestapo. As it happened, such gaffes probably made no difference. The political tide was running against the Tories and towards the party which wholeheartedly favoured a welfare state – the reward for war-time sacrifices. But Churchill was shocked by the scale of his defeat. When Clementine, who wanted him to retire from politics, said that it was perhaps a blessing in disguise, Churchill replied that the blessing was certainly very effectively disguised. For a time he lapsed into depression, which sympathetic letters from friends did little to dispel.

Soon, however, Churchill re-entered the political arena, taking an active part in political life from the opposition benches and broadcasting again to the nation after the victory over Japan. In defeat Churchill had always been defiant, but in victory he favoured magnanimity. Within a couple of years he was calling for a partnership between a “spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany” as the basis for the re-creation of “the European family”. He was more equivocal about Britain’s role in his proposed “United States of Europe”, and, while the embers of the World War II were still warm, he announced the start of the Cold War. At Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, he pointed to the new threat posed by the Soviet Union and declared that an iron curtain had descended across Europe. Only by keeping the alliance between the English-speaking peoples strong, he maintained, could Communist tyranny be resisted.

After losing another election in 1950, Churchill gained victory at the polls the following year. Publicly he called for “several years of quiet steady administration”. Privately he declared that his policy was “houses, red meat and not getting scuppered”. This he achieved. But after suffering a stroke and the failure of his last hope of arranging a Summit with the Russians, he resigned from the premiership in April 1955.

“I am ready to meet my Maker,” Churchill had said on his seventy-fifth birthday; “whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter”. Churchill remained a member of parliament, though an inactive one, and announced his retirement from politics in 1963. This took effect at the general election the following year. Churchill died on 24 January 1965 – seventy years to the day after the death of his father. He received the greatest state funeral given to a commoner since that of the Duke of Wellington. He was buried in Bladon churchyard beside his parents and within sight of his birthplace, Blenheim Palace.

The Family Man

In the autumn of 1908 Churchill, then a rising Liberal politician, married Clementine Hozier, granddaughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie. Their marriage was to prove a long and happy one, though there were often quarrels – Clementine once threw a dish of spinach at Winston (it missed). Clementine was high principled and highly strung; Winston was stubborn and ambitious. His work invariably came first, though, partly as a reaction against his own upbringing, he was devoted to his children.

Winston and Clementine’s first child, Diana, was born in 1909. Diana was a naughty little girl and continued to cause her parents great distress as an adult. In 1932 she married John Bailey, but the marriage was unsuccessful and they divorced in 1935. In that year she married the Conservative politician, Duncan Sandys, and they had three children. That marriage also proved a failure. Diana had several nervous breakdowns and in 1963 she committed suicide.

The Churchills’ second child and only son, Randolph, was born in 1911. He was exceptionally handsome and rumbustious, and his father was very ambitious for him. During the 1930s Randolph stood for parliament several times but he failed to get in, being regarded as a political maverick. He did serve as Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston between 1940 and 1945, and ultimately became an extremely successful journalist and began the official biography of his father during the 1960s.

Randolph was married twice, first in 1939 to Pamela Digby (later Harriman) by whom he had a son, Winston, and secondly in 1948 to June Osborne by whom he had a daughter, Arabella. Neither marriage was a success.

The life of Sarah, the Churchills’ third child, born in 1914, was no happier than that of her elder siblings. Amateur dramatics at Chartwell led her to take up a career on the stage which flourished for a time. Sarah’s charm and vitality were also apparent in her private life, but her first two marriages proved unsuccessful and she was widowed soon after her third. Her first husband was a music hall artist called Vic Oliver whom she married against her parents’ wishes. Her second was Anthony Beauchamp but this marriage did not last and after their separation he committed suicide.

In 1918 Clementine Churchill gave birth to a third girl, Marigold. But in 1921, shortly after the deaths of both Clementine’s brother and Winston’s mother, Marigold contracted septicaemia whilst on a seaside holiday with the childrens’ governess. When she died Winston was grief-stricken and, as his last private secretary recently disclosed in an autobiography, Clementine screamed like an animal undergoing torture.

The following September the Churchills’ fifth and last child, Mary, was born. Unlike her brother and older sisters, Mary was to cause her parents no major worries. Indeed she was a constant source of support, especially to her mother. In 1947 she married Christopher Soames; who was then Assistant Military Attaché in Paris and later had a successful parliamentary and diplomatic career. Theirs was to be a long and happy marriage. Over the years Christopher became a valued confidant and counsellor to his father-in-law. They had five children, the eldest of whom (Nicholas) became a prominent member of the Conservative party. Christopher Soames died in 1987.

The Private Man

Churchill’s enormous reserves of energy and his legendary ability to exist on very little sleep gave him time to pursue a wide variety of interests outside the world of politics.

Churchill loved gambling and lost what was, for him, a small fortune in the great crash of the American stock market in October 1929, causing a severe setback to the family finances. But he continued to write as a means of maintaining the style of life to which he had always been accustomed. Apart from his major works, notably his multi-volume histories of the First and Second World Wars and the Life of his illustrious ancestor John, first Duke of Marlborough, he poured forth speeches and articles for newspapers and magazines. His last big book was the History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which he had begun in 1938 and which was eventually published in the 1950s. In 1953 Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Churchill took up painting as an antidote to the anguish he felt over the Dardanelles disaster. Painting became a constant solace and preoccupation and he rarely spent a few days away from home without taking his canvas and brushes. Even during his tour of France’s Maginot Line in the middle of August 1939 Churchill managed to snatch a painting holiday with friends near Dreux.

In the summer of 1922, while on the lookout for a suitable country house, Churchill caught sight of a property near Westerham in Kent, and fell instantly in love with it. Despite Clementine’s initial lack of enthusiasm for the dilapidated and neglected house, with its overgrown and seemingly unmanageable grounds, Chartwell was to become a much-loved family home. Clementine, however, never quite overcame her resentment of the fact that Winston had been less than frank with her over the buying of Chartwell, and from time to time her feelings surfaced.

With typical enthusiasm, Churchill personally undertook many major works of construction at Chartwell such as a dam, a swimming pool, the building (largely with his own hands) of a red brick wall to surround the vegetable garden, and the re-tiling of a cottage at the bottom of the garden. In 1946 Churchill bought a farm adjoining Chartwell and subsequently derived much pleasure, though little profit, from farming.

Churchill was born into the world of hunting, shooting and fishing and throughout his life they were to prove spasmodic distractions. But it was hunting and polo, first learned as a young cavalry officer in India, that he enjoyed most of all.

In the summer of 1949, Churchill embarked on a new venture – he bought a racehorse. On the advice of Christopher Soames, he purchased a grey three-year-old colt, Colonist II. It was to be the first of several thoroughbreds in his small stud. They were registered in Lord Randolph’s colours – pink with chocolate sleeves and cap. (These have been adopted as the colours of Churchill College.) Churchill was made a member of the Jockey Club in 1950, and greatly relished the distinction.

Among Winston’s closest friends were Professor Lindemann and the “the three B’s” (none popular with Clementine), Birkenhead, Beaverbook, Bracken. The Churchills entertained widely, including among their guests Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein and Lawrence of Arabia. Churchill regularly holidayed with rich friends in the Mediterranean, spending several cruises in the late 1950s as the guest of Greek millionaire shipowner, Aristotle Onassis.

Editorial note

Much of the information presented here was originally compiled by Josephine Sykes, Monica Halpin and Victor Brown. It was edited by Allen Packwood.

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Yes, there are still things to learn about Churchill, as fine new biography reveals

Is "Churchill: Walking With Destiny" by Andrew Roberts the best Churchill biography of them all?

Who in their right mind would presume to say, short of Winston Churchill himself, who maintained, “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”?

All Churchill biographies stand in the shadow of their subject and on the shoulders of Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert, whose primary research constitutes the bulk of what we truly know.

In this sense, Roberts’ new biography (Viking, 982 pp., ★★★★ out of four) stands tall, re-illuminating the well-etched contours of Churchill’s monumental life with scrupulous scholarship and a flair for unearthing the telling detail; looking twice where most biographers have been content to glance once.

Here are five time-honored Churchillian bio-tropes, reframed and refreshed by Roberts’ keen attention to historical context.

1. The purported poor judgment of Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Churchill was scapegoated by his own government for the 1915 disaster at Gallipoli during World War I. Roberts re-examines this episode, as all Churchill biographers have, and largely exculpates him. Along the way, though, he shares an obscure, arm-wrestling exchange of letters between Churchill and King George V over the naming of new Royal Navy ships, begun in Churchill’s second month as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, that inexorably reveals just how full of himself the 30-something Churchill could be.

Churchill keeps pushing names that his King shoots down. “Instead of… letting the matter drop,” Roberts writes, “Churchill dug in his heels. So did the King… There was something almost comic about the obstinacy. Churchill would in all likelihood have continued the unequal struggle indefinitely,” Roberts concludes, had one high naval subordinate whom he “admired and trusted” not finally persuaded him to just drop it.

2. His time in the trenches led to Churchill's stand against Hitler.

Though painted as a war monger by the Hitler-appeasing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Churchill and a small cohort of anti-appeasers in Parliament insisted that only by standing up to Adolf Hitler could England hope to avoid another world war. Roberts detects “a fascinating dichotomy” in this confrontation.

“Although the appeasement movement was intended to prevent another war,” he notes, “most of its leaders had not seen action in the Great War, whereas most of the anti-appeasers had.” They were led by Churchill, who, after resigning as First Lord because of Gallipoli, actually had gone and fought in the trenches.

3. Goebbels' propaganda campaign against Churchill.

In May 1940, with the Nazi invasion of France, Churchill was named prime minister because, as Churchill himself said, “no one else wanted the job.” The British people, however, took to their new PM immediately. A July 1940 Gallup poll, according to Roberts, gave Churchill an 88 percent approval rating.

Yet, at this very moment, Roberts points out, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was proclaiming “that Churchill was being bribed by the Jews to continue the war but that a fifth column would soon remove him from power. He encouraged Britons to write chain letters for peace, to hiss and boo Churchill’s appearance on the cinema newsreels and to horsewhip him whenever he appeared in public.”

They did not, of course. Still, one cannot help but ponder what Goebbels might have wrought with his fake news had there been an internet at his disposal and social media at his fingertips.

4. The irony of the famed “Finest Hour” speech.

Confronting the impending “Battle of Britain,” Churchill, on June 18, 1940, delivered in Parliament what Roberts rightly calls a “peroration (that) will be remembered as long as the English language is spoken.” "If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years,” Churchill famously closed, “men will still say: ‘This was their finest hour.’ ”

Yet, remarks Roberts, “the British Empire was not long to outlast Hitler’s Nazi one”; ultimately, “less than a decade more.”

5. A telling moment after the war ended.

Churchill, at war’s end, pivoted almost immediately to a position of forgiveness toward Germany and antagonism toward Stalin and Russia. Roberts captures this with an after-hours encounter in the House of Commons Smoking Room between Churchill and an old wartime Labour Party nemesis, now advocating amity with Germany.

“Of course I’ve forgiven you,” Churchill assures the man, when asked. “Indeed, I agree with very much that you are saying about the Germans… Such hatred that I have left in me – and it isn’t much – I would rather reserve for the future than the past.” Churchill then moved on alone, murmuring, almost to himself: “Hmm. A judicious and thrifty disposal of bile.”

Biography Online

Winston Churchill Biography

Churchill was famous for his stubborn resistance to Hitler during the darkest hours of the Second World War.

Short Bio Winston Churchill

Winston was born at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock near Oxford to an aristocratic family – the Duke of Marlborough. He was brought up by servants and friends of the family. He rarely spoke to his father, and he spent most of his childhood at boarding school – Harrow. Churchill wasn’t the best student, having a rebellious nature and was reportedly slow to learn; but Churchill excelled at sports and joined the officer cadet corps, which he enjoyed.

On leaving school, he went to Sandhurst to train as an officer. After gaining his commission, Churchill sought to gain as much active military experience as possible. He used his mother’s connections to get postings to areas of conflict. The young Churchill received postings to Cuba and North West India. He also combined his military duties with working as a war correspondent – earning substantial money for his reports on the fighting.

In 1899, he resigned from the military and pursued his career as a war correspondent. He was in South Africa for the Boer War, and he became a minor celebrity for his role in taking part in a scouting patrol, getting captured and later escaping. He might have gained the Victoria Cross for his efforts, though officially he was a civilian at the time. After this experience,  he gained a temporary commission in the South Africa Light Horses and later commented he had a ‘good war’ while continuing his work as a war correspondent.

Winston Churchill 1900

Churchill returned to the UK in 1900 and successfully stood as a Conservative candidate for Oldham. After becoming an MP, Churchill began a lucrative speaking tour, where he could command a high price for his speeches.

In 1904, he made a dramatic shift, leaving the Conservative Party and joining the Liberal Party. He was later often called a ‘class traitor’ by some Conservative colleagues. Churchill disagreed with an increasing amount of Conservative policies, including tariff protection. Churchill also had some empathy for improving the welfare of the working class and helping the poor.

In the Liberal Party, Churchill made a meteoric political rise. By 1908, he was made President of the Board of Trade, and he was a key supporter of Lloyd George’s radical People’s Budget – a budget which saw the growth of an embryonic Welfare State and introduction of income tax to pay for it. The budget made a significant improvement to the life of the poor and helped to address the inequality of British society.

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”

– W. Churchill Speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland (“Unemployment”), October 10, 1908,

However, although Churchill was a Liberal, he was also staunchly anti-Socialist and suspicious of trade unions. During the General Strike,  he took a hardline stance to defeat the unions at any cost.

In 1911, he was made First Lord of the Admiralty – a post he held into the First World War.

On the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, Churchill was one of the most strident members of the cabinet arguing for British involvement in the war. In August 1914, the Liberal cabinet was split with some members against going to war on the continent. However, Churchill’s view prevailed, and he admitted to being enthused about the prospects of being involved in the ‘Great War’. He went to Belgium where he urged the Royal Marines to commit to action around Antwerp. This decision was criticised for wasting resources. Others said it helped saved the channel ports from the advancing German army.

Churchill also used naval funds to help develop the tank – something he felt would be useful in the war.

However, despite tremendous eagerness for war, his flagship policy for the war was deemed a failure. Churchill planned the 1915 Dardanelles Campaign – a daring bid to knock Turkey out of the war. But, unfortunately, it proved a military failure with thousands of Allied casualties and no military gain. Although the fault of the failure was shared amongst others, Churchill resigned from his post and sought to gain a position in the army on the Western Front.

At the end of the First World War, Churchill was active in trying to support the Russian white army –  who were trying to resist the Communist forces which had gained control over the Soviet Union.

In 1924 Churchill was appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Conservative PM Stanley Baldwin. Under advice from many economists, Churchill made the decision to return Britain to the Gold Standard at a pre-war level. But, this proved to be damaging to the economy and led to a period of deflation, high unemployment and low growth. Churchill later admitted this was his greatest domestic mistake.

The low growth and declining living standards contributed to the General Strike of 1926 – Churchill eagerly sought to break the strikers and defeat the trades unions. During this period he expressed admiration for Mussolini for being a strong leader.

In the 1930s, his political eccentricities consigned him to the backbenches, where he was a vocal critic of appeasement and urged the government to re-arm. Churchill was often a lone voice in speaking about the growing danger of Hitler’s Germany. He also opposed Indian Independence and was a staunch supporter of the Empire.

After an unsuccessful start to the Second World War, the Commons chose Churchill to lead the UK in a national coalition. Churchill was instrumental in insisting Britain keep fighting. He opposed the minority voices in the cabinet seeking to make any deal with Hitler.

Churchill proved an adept war leader. His speeches became famous and proved an important rallying cry for a country which stood alone through the difficult years of 1940 and 1941. These early years saw the Battle of Britain and the Blitz – a period where invasion by Germany seemed likely.

“we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”

Speech in the House of Commons (4 June 1940)

“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 still say, ‘This was their finest hour.”

Speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940

Churchill – 1940 during Air Raid

After the US entry into the war in 1942, the immediate crisis was over, and the tide of war began to turn. After the Battle of El Alamein, Churchill was able to tell the House of Commons.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

From 1943 onwards Churchill spent more time managing the uneasy Allied coalition of Soviet Union, US and the UK. Churchill was involved in many aspects of the war, taking an interest in all areas, especially the build up to the D-Day landings in Normandy. Churchill also participated in conferences with Stalin and Roosevelt which helped shape the war and post-war settlement. With American money, Churchill played a role in avoiding the mistakes of the First World War as the Allies sought to avoid a harsh settlement and rebuild occupied Europe.

“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.”

– Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948)

It was Churchill who helped popularise the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ after he saw the growing gulf between the Communist East and Western Europe.

“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory…. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

Speech at Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946

After winning the Second World War, Churchill was shocked to lose the 1945 general election to a resurgent Labour party. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1945-51.

But, under the Conservatives, he returned to power in the 1950 election – accepting much of the post-war consensus and the end of the British Empire. Churchill served as PM from 1951-55 before retiring from politics. In his last speech in the Commons in 1955-03-01, he ended with the words:

“The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.”

Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” Towards the end of his life, Churchill became an accomplished artist, though he found the years of retirement difficult and suffered periods of depression.

Churchill died in his home at age 90, on the morning of Sunday 24 January 1965. His funeral was the largest state funeral in the world, up to that point in time.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography Winston Churchill ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 11th Feb 2013. Last updated 11th March 2017.

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: at Amazon.com

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: at Amazon.co.uk

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The Biography of British Bulldog Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was a British Prime Minister, soldier, and writer who remains to this day one of the most popular and significant figures in political history.

Winston Churchill is a well-known political figure who held major military and civilian positions in the British government during his long political career, including being elected as Prime Minister twice. He held the premiership of Great Britain from 1940–1945 and again from 1951–1955. Winston Churchill is recognized as an inspirational political leader who led Great Britain to victory in World War II. He is known as an outstanding orator and writer and received the Nobel Prize in 1953 for writing his six-volume history of World War II. Churchill was an excellent painter as well, and his works of art are now worth millions of dollars.

Youth & Childhood of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 at his family’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England. He was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Lady Jennie Jerome. Even though Churchill saw himself as British, his mother was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1854 to a wealthy financier, Leonard Jerome. Lord Randolph Churchill and Lady Jannie Jarome met in Paris, France, and married in 1873. Churchill and his brother, Jack, were raised mainly in the United Kingdom, though they moved from place to place throughout their childhood and spent holidays in different European countries, including Austria-Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Winston Churchill was particularly attached to his nanny, Mrs. Elizabeth Everest, and called her “Woom” or “Woomany.” In 1893, after 18 years of service, Elizabeth Everest left her job and soon died of peritonitis in 1896. Winston Churchill grieved the death of his closest friend, referring to her as “my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of the twenty years I had lived.” Lady Churchill played a limited role in Churchill’s early years, which might be a reason for his attachment to his nanny. Referring to his mother, Winston Churchill later stated: “ I loved her dearly—but at a distance ,” but as he grew older, he saw Lady Churchill as his closest friend and strongest ally.

Winston Churchill attended multiple schools but had little interest in academic excellence or discipline. According to Victorian traditions, Churchill was first sent to the boarding school of St. George in Berkshire at the age of seven, where he had poor grades and often misbehaved. Due to his poor health, Churchill moved to Brunswick School in Hove in September 1884, where he slightly improved his academic performance.

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In April 1988, Winston Churchill barely passed the Harrow School exams. He was particularly interested in history and English but was still unpunctual and described as careless by his teachers. During this time, Winston Churchill found his passion in poetry and writing and published his works in the school magazine Harrovian.

Due to his poor academic performance, Churchill’s family thought he would not be able to study at the university and instead chose a military career for him. It took Churchill three attempts to pass the exams at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1893, where he spent 15 months as a cadet in the cavalry. Soon after his graduation, his father died in January 1895.

The early death of his father led Churchill to believe that his family members would die young, which did not appear to be true. Lady Churchill, who married twice after Lord Churchill’s death, died in her late sixties in 1921, while his brother, Jack Churchill, died in 1947, aged 67. Winston Churchill himself lived for 70 years after his father’s death and survived multiple strokes.

After graduating from the military college, Winston Churchill left for Cuba to report on the Cuban War of Independence for the Daily Graphic. After spending a couple of months there, his regiment was relocated to India, where Winston Churchill served both as a soldier and journalist until 1897. The Story of the Malakand Field Force, published in 1898, gained Churchill wider public attention. He started his career as an author, culminating in the publication of his romance, Savrola, in 1900. In 1899, the London Morning Post sent Winston Churchill to South Africa to cover the Boer War . He was captured just after arriving and managed to escape through a bathroom window, which made him a celebrity back in Britain.

With his background as a soldier, war correspondent, and author of six books, Winston was 30 years old and already well-known when he married Clementine Hozier. Clementine became and remained Churchill’s trusted confidante throughout his political career. According to Churchill, getting through the war years would have been “ impossible without her ,” not only for her efforts to preserve his health but also for influencing her husband’s political decisions.

Winston Churchill’s Political Career Before World War II

Winston Churchill began his political career at a young age, at only 25 years old. His activities in India and Cuba helped to expand his horizons. Besides observing the wars for independence, he embarked on self-education, reading works of Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin , and Thomas Babington Macaulay, among others. As a result, in 1899, Winston Churchill left the military and decided to dedicate himself to politics. He hired a private secretary and participated in the 1900 General Elections as a Conservative candidate for the Oldham seat.

Churchill managed to secure a seat in Parliament with a narrow victory. Members of parliament were not paid at the time, so Winston Churchill embarked on lecture tours around the world to discuss his experiences in South Africa. He traveled to the United States and met President William McKinley and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt . He also visited Canada and returned to Europe to give lectures in Madrid and Paris. Churchill managed to acquire a considerable amount of money to support his political endeavors.

Although Churchill was allied with the Hughligans, a conservative group, he was one of their most vocal critics regarding the level of public expenditures. Over time, Winston Churchill became more inclined toward the liberal opposition as their views aligned on key issues, such as the censure against the government’s use of indentured Chinese laborers in South Africa and voting in favor of a bill introduced by the liberals to restore legal rights to trade unions.

Churchill’s opposition to the Conservatives pushed the Oldham Conservative Association to withdraw their support of his candidacy in the election in December 1903. However, this didn’t stop Churchill from upholding his values. The opposition finally culminated on May 31, 1904, when Churchill left the Conservative Party for the Liberal Party at the House of Commons.

The Liberal Party won the 1906 general elections with 337 seats to the Conservative Party’s 157. On the request of the Manchester Liberals, Winston Churchill ran for the Manchester North West seat and was elected to the House of Commons once more.

During this time, Churchill also finished and published his father’s biography after working on it for several years. He received an advance payment of £8,000 for it, which was the highest amount ever paid for a political biography in the country at the time, which is equivalent in purchasing power to £1,244,517.44 today. In this new government, Churchill distinguished himself as the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, a position that he requested.

Churchill rose swiftly within the Liberal ranks and became a cabinet minister in 1908—President of the Board of Trade. In 1910, he served as a Home Secretary for a year, and in 1911, he was appointed the First Lord of the Admiralty. These events mark the period when Churchill shifted his focus from domestic to international politics. During this time, the world saw the rise of Germany , and Churchill saw the need to prepare Britain for future international crises. He worked on modernizing the British fleet and navy.

Nevertheless, the start of World War I was not as successful for Britain as Churchill thought. The 1915 British invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Ottoman Empire, which aimed to take them out of the war, is regarded as the lowest point in his political career. Turkish forces resisted, and after nine months and 250,000 casualties, Britain was forced to withdraw. Churchill left the post and, in 1924, rejoined the Conservatives, holding different positions in the government.

During the period between World War I and World War II , Churchill was actively trying to spread awareness about the rise of German nationalism that threatened another war. Adolf Hitler declared on March 16, 1935, that he would rearm Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament following World War I in order to prevent Germany from starting a new war. Hitler announced plans to reintroduce conscription, build an army of more than 500,000 troops, and develop an aviation force. However, the previous experience of military campaigns pushed Britain toward isolationism, making it reluctant to be involved in another international conflict.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938, granting Germany a piece of Czechoslovakia, which Churchill described as “throwing a small state to the wolves” and failing Britain’s attempts to maintain peace.

In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and Britain and France were forced to declare war. Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill took his place on May 10, 1940.

Leadership During World War II

As Nazi Germany threatened an invasion , Winston Churchill directed his energy as Prime Minister toward increasing and modernizing British defense. He adopted the position of Minister of Defense as well. Besides taking an active role in both administrative and diplomatic tasks, he gave remarkable and memorable speeches, trying to lift and stimulate British morale in a time of great crisis.

In 1940, Germany attacked Russia, and the United States entered World War II in 1941. Thanks to Winston Churchill’s political intuition, he had already established close relations with the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and despite mistrust, he cooperated with the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, as well. These leaders, also called the “Big Three,” met several times to discuss wartime issues, the most important of which were held in 1943 in Tehran, Iran, and Yalta, Crimea in 1945. The key outcome of the Tehran Conference was the Allies’ commitment to open a second front against Nazi Germany. While at Yalta, the Big Three agreed that Germany would be divided into four post-war occupation zones under the control of American, British, French, and Soviet military forces following its unconditional capitulation. The opening of the second front gave the Soviet Union much-needed power to fight in Eastern Europe and eventually weakened Nazi Germany. Churchill was the chief architect of these negotiations that eventually led to the victory of the Allied Forces.

In September 1945, Germany surrendered, and the war was over. In Britain, new elections were approaching, and a victorious Churchill seemed unbeatable. However, war-weary British voters did not want the Conservatives to be elected again. In the 1945 elections, Winston Churchill lost.

He continued giving public speeches on different political issues. In 1946, in the United States, he declared that “ an iron curtain has descended across the continent ,” once again warning about the growing dangers of the Soviet Union, which, as history shows, appeared true. He advocated for the British union with France and Germany to re-create “the European Family,” which would eventually pave the way to his idea of the “ United States of Europe .” Churchill believed that only close cooperation and the unity of the English-speaking world could destroy communist tyranny.

The Post-War Political Career of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill again ran for the post of Prime Minister and was re-elected in 1951. However, as the British politician Roy Jenkins described him, he was “ gloriously unfit for office ” by this time. Churchill was already 77 and in deteriorating health. He often dealt with the day-to-day tasks from his bed. Even though his decision-making and powerful personality were the same, his leadership appeared less decisive, so his influence, especially on British domestic policies, was limited.

Nevertheless, Winston Churchill never stopped trying to influence the Cold War using his personal diplomatic ties, but they were not successful. His vision of building a sustainable détente between the East and the West failed. Eventually, his poor health led him to resign on April 5, 1955. Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Eden became the new prime minister.

“ I am ready to meet my maker; whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter ,” Winston Churchill declared on his 75th birthday. He remained a member of parliament, though he did not play an active role, finally announcing his retirement from politics in 1963.

Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965, and was given a state funeral for his enormous contributions to the United Kingdom and the international community. He became the first non-royal to be given a state funeral since the Duke of Wellington, a leading military and political figure in 19th-century Britain who also served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

In the book Things That Matter, a collection of his newspaper columns and essays, famous American columnist Charles Krauthammer included a small chapter entitled “ Winston Churchill: The Indispensable Man .” In it, he argues why Time magazine should have chosen Churchill as its “Person of the Century” in 1999:

“Because only Churchill has that absolutely necessary criterion—irreplaceability. And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, the common man—the taxpayer, the grunt—fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, and Reagan. But above all, victory required one man, without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.”

Who Was Winston Churchill? The Dark Side of Britain’s Great Hero

By Tsira Shvangiradze MA Diplomacy and Int'l Politics, BA Int'l Relations Tsira is an international relations specialist based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She holds a MA in Diplomacy and International Politics and a BA in International Relations from Tbilisi State University. In her spare time, she contributes articles in the field of political sciences and international relations.

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• Articles / Biography / Historical Figures Article

Winston Churchill Biography – The Life of Sir Winston Churchill

• By Muaz Jadoon
• July 2nd, 2022

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill is one of the greatest Prime Ministers in British History. He led the country during World War 2 and is remembered for his staunch defense of Europe’s Liberal Democracy against the onslaught of fascism from Germany in the form of Hitler and his Nazi ideals. He is a wartime hero, a soldier, a brilliant politician, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, and curiously enough, an artist . He is remembered less fondly in the 3 rd world for his support of Britain’s imperialist ideals and racist attitudes towards Britain’s colonial subjects. Specifically, his role in the famine in Bengal in 1943 . But to judge him solely on those acts would be unfair to his legacy; the world is not necessarily the ideal one we envision with our rose-tinted glasses. Winston Churchill was, and will remain, one of the greatest British Politicians for his role and preserving United Kingdom’s integrity and strength in challenging times. While the German war machine during World War 2 defeated most countries it came into contact with, Churchill was instrumental in rallying all of Britain together against a familiar foe and keeping morale high. His fiery speeches are some of the greatest in history. With many iconic moments, from his speech on never surrendering to his famous declaration after the victory at El Alamein on how the victory marked a change in the tides of war, where Germany was finally on the backfoot. 

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” 

Winston Churchill, 1942

Winston Churchill was born in November 1874 at his family’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He is a direct descendant of the First Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill. Although descended from one of the noble houses of England, Churchill, and his father were not in the direct line of succession. They did not inherit the title or the property that the Marlborough lineage entailed . Also, very interestingly, Winston Churchill was half-American. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was born in New York and married Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, after arriving in England. Lord Randolph Churchill was a representative of the Conservative Party and had been elected a Member of the Parliament . Throughout the 1880s, his parents were estranged and did not care much about the future politician. He was primarily taken care of by his nanny Elizabeth Everest . He described her as his “…dearest and most intimate friend during the whole 20 years I had Lived… I shall never know such a friend again.” Churchill began boarding at seven at St. George’s School in Berkshire, then transferred to Brunswick School in Hove, and finally graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst on his third attempt in 1894. By February 1985, Churchill joined the 4 th Queen’s Own Hussars as 2 nd Lieutenant. 

Military Experiences and Journalism

Winston Churchill’s first military experience came in Cuba in the autumn of 1895, where he was joined by his friend Reggie Barnes to observe the war of independence. Churchill sent reports of the conflict to the Daily Graphic in London. After Cuba, Churchill was sent to Bangalore in 1896, where he stayed in India for nearly 19 months—joining expeditions to Hyderabad and Swat. India is also where his love for literature started, immersing himself in texts by Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin, H.G. Wells, and many others. While in India, he wrote his first book, “The Story of the Malakand Field Force” an account of his experiences in the expeditions led by the British against the Mohmand Rebels in Swat in India. He wrote his only work of fiction, “Savrola” , while also in India. 

After his exploits in India, Winston Churchill joined the 21 st Lancers led by General Kitchener in Sudan, initially working as a journalist for The Morning Post . After this campaign, he worked on “The River War” an account of Britain’s conquest of Sudan under General Kitchener. 

The Second Boer War and Winston Churchill’s Entry into Politics

Before the Second Boer War in 1899 started in South Africa, Winston Churchill anticipated its outbreak and sailed to South Africa as a journalist for The Morning Post. In October, he was caught among the military shelling by the Boer troops and was taken as a Prisoner of War in Pretoria . In December, he escaped South Africa, catapulting Churchill to fame. This miraculous escape and growing popularity in the United Kingdom helped him get into politics at 25 when he was elected as a Conservative MP for Oldham in 1901. He also published “Ian Hamilton’s March” the same year, a book detailing his experiences in South Africa, including his miraculous escape.

During his initial years in the parliament, while elected as a Conservative, Winston Churchill’s stance on most issues did not align with the Conservative Party. By 1904, he had crossed the floor and joined the Liberal Party in the House of Commons instead. As a liberal, he was the President of the Board of Trade between 1908 and 1910. The Home Secretary between 1910 and 1911, the First Lord of the Admiralty (Political Head of the British Royal Navy) until 1915. He then served as the Minister of Munitions from 1917 to 1919 and as the Secretary of State for War and Air from 1919 to 1921. Then as the Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1921 and 1922. He then rejoined the Conservative Party, where he would stay for the rest of his career in politics. His first post back as a member of the Conservative Party was the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924 to 1929. 

Winston Churchill was renowned as a politician before the war for a few notable things. His social reforms included higher taxations for the higher classes leading to allegations of him betraying his class. He had introduced substantial reforms to the prison system, including the introduction of libraries and entertainment for prisoners and the separation of criminals from political prisoners, guaranteeing the latter more freedoms and less ill-treatment. He also believed in the Irish’s rights to self-rule under the British center’s strict control rather than as an independent state. He was also viewed as an opponent of the Suffrage Movement , although he supported giving women the right to vote only if most of the male electorate supported it too. He was also responsible for reverting Britain to the Gold Standard in 1925, reducing the state pension age from 75 to 65, introducing widow’s pensions, reducing military expenditure, and imposing taxes on luxury items. Lastly, he called for the introduction of a legally binding minimum wage. 

Winston Churchill’s Warnings about Germany and World War 2

After the 1929 election, the Conservative party was defeated by the Labour Party. Until 1939, Winston Churchill would not be in the cabinet, and this period he would describe as the “wilderness” years. These are the years that Churchill would spend focusing on his writing and his painting hobby. He also spent time publishing different works, such as his autobiography and a biography of his ancestor John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough. He then grew famous again and came into the public eye for his many writings about the growing threat of Germany . Most of the British Public and the Government were not willing to take his warnings seriously, given the relative peace of the 1930s. Still, following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia at the hands of the German Nazi forces in 1939, there was an increasing clamor amongst the public to bring Winston Churchill back as he had foreseen and predicted the rise of Germany. 

On 3 September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany, and Winston Churchill was reappointed as the First Lord of the Admiralty. By May 1940, he was appointed the leader of the Conservative Party and given the position of Prime Minister during the war effort. Here is where Churchill would gain most of his reputation as a ruthless military tactician and a war hero for the British Empire. He gave several iconic speeches during the war, such as his “ we shall fight on the beaches ” also known as the “finest hour” speech to the House of Commons. This speech is remembered as one of the most influential speeches of the 20 th century. He also gave his iconic “blood, toil, tears, and sweat speech” during the war. Winston Churchill was a committed leader, and despite failures in Singapore , losing Burma , and overseeing the worst famine in Bengal , where millions of people died, Churchill vowed to fight on. His resolve and unwavering belief in the eventual defeat of the Germans were awe-inspiring. He remained Prime Minister until the end of the war. He contested the election in 1945 but lost despite winning the war. He became leader of the Opposition until 1950. He was re-elected as Prime Minister in 1951, but he was already 77 by the time his term started. His health gradually declined until he resigned in 1955. He eventually passed away on 12 January 1965 at the age of 90. 

Winston Churchill is largely remembered as one of the most influential politicians of the 20 th century. He is recognized for his outstanding role in guiding the United Kingdom during the turbulent years of the Second World War. He is remembered as a Fiery orator, a skilled tactician, an extraordinary journalist, and one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers. A television series by the BBC in 2002 conducted a poll to rank the 100 Greatest Britons in British history. The show recognized Churchill as the greatest Briton, ranking higher than famous figures like Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, and even Queen Elizabeth I. He has been the subject of many films, notably The King’s Speech and most recently Darkest Hour , where the actor Gary Oldman was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor.

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• USA TODAY Sports

Jack Nicklaus from Masters: Covers LIV Golf, Winston Churchill, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy & more

Before hitting his ceremonial shot at Augusta National on Thursday, Jack Nicklaus had a warning.

"Watch out on the left and right," said Nicklaus, who has won 18 major championships, including six green jackets.

Tom Watson followed Nicklaus.

"Jack, you never hit a hook off this tee in your life," Watson, 74, said.

One tradition like none other when it comes to the Masters is the ceremonial tee shot and news conference that follows. Nicklaus, at 84, continues in his role as an Honorary Starter, even if it is one of the few times he swings a club each year.

Nicklaus, a North Palm Beach resident, then covered a variety of subjects during a news conference with Watson and Jupiter Island's Gary Player.

On what Nicklaus would like to see when it comes to PGA Tour, LIV Golf

"The best outcome is the best players play against each other all the time. That's what I feel about it. And how it's going, I don't know … I don't want to be privy to it. I talked to (PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan) not very long ago, and I said, 'Jay, 'don't tell me what's going on because I don't want to have to lie to the press and people that ask me questions.' I said, 'How are you doing?' He said, 'We're doing fine.' I said, 'OK, that's all I want to know.'

"If Jay thinks we're doing fine, we'll get there, I think we'll get there. And I certainly hope that happens, the sooner the better."

On whether he believes Tiger Woods can win another major

"Tiger is quite capable of winning. I said in here 20 years ago, Tiger had a chance to win more than Arnold (Palmer) and I had put together, and that would have been 10. And you know, he probably did if he had not been injured.

"I think he's got a tough way to go to win. I think he'll certainly hit the ball well enough to do so. Whether he physically can handle what has to happen with it, and he's also got to be able to score better than everybody else, too. That's part of the deal. But anyway, he's a very special, talented athlete, and I wish him well."

On Winston Churchill after Player said the British PM was one of his heroes

"Gary mentioned Churchill. Churchill was a golfer. He played golf on a vacation one time, and he got back to Parliament and they said, 'Mr. Churchill, you played golf on your vacation? Tell us about the game of golf?' He says, 'Golf is a game in which one plays and takes a very small ball and tries to put it into an even smaller hole with an implement singularly ill-designed for the purpose.'

"I always loved that quote. It is exactly basically to most people what the game of golf is."

On what he learned from his 19 runner-up finishes in majors

"You try to learn from what you do. You know, I think that Tom got me on a few occasions, and probably more than I probably got him as we came head-to-head down to the bottom. But you know, each one of those occasions, it was generally one of us made a mistake of some kind.

"(1977) here, Tom birdied 17 and I had a shot, 6-iron into 18. I had 163 yards to where the pin was, and I had a 6-iron in my hand and wanted to hit it to the right of the hole, and all of a sudden he hit it in. And I changed my mind, and I shouldn't have. So I made a mistake, put it in the bunker and lost the tournament, or lost a chance to tie. Tom just had to bogey the last hole to win.

"At Pebble Beach, Tom took it away from me. I remember … Jack Whitaker was interviewing me on the 18th green. He says, 'Well, it's great to be in the company of somebody who won five U.S. Opens.' And all of a sudden there's this roar at the 17th green and the impossible chip that he hit that went in the hole.

"What did I learn? Probably not enough."

On what he would do after he shanked a shot, like his 8-iron at the 1964 Masters

"Go play the next one. What can you do? You hit it. You've got to go chase it. There isn't anything you can do. It's a little embarrassing."

On his 'other' embarrassing moment in golf

"It was my birthday, I don't know what year it was, but we were at Pebble Beach. We were having a little group together down at the room. And a friend of mine calls, 'Hey, Jack, somebody wants to say happy birthday to you.' And a guy got on the phone and sang 'Happy Birthday' all the way through, and I could barely hear. He said, 'Happy birthday, Jack.'

"And I gave it real businesslike, as I might in those days, 'Who am I speaking with, please?'

'It's Bing Crosby, Jack. Happy birthday.'

"I'm sitting there listening to Bing Crosby sing Happy Birthday and I don't even know it."

On how many times he completely whiffed on a shot

"I did it in the British Open at the 17th hole at Muirfield. I went under that one. I did one at, I think it was the 15th hole at Sandwich. It was (I) love the left side of the green, in the high grass, took a wedge shot and ball dropped into my divot."

On if he thinks Rory McIlroy will win a Masters for his career Grand Slam

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"The answer to that I think is yes. … As he gets older, it gets tougher because all of a sudden it's a conversation. (Is) Rory McIlroy good enough to win the Grand Slam, absolutely. But they have got to do it, and they all know that, and do I think Rory will win here? Yeah. He could win this year. He could win next year. He's just too talented not to. But then again … you just never know."

On whether he'll ever visit St. Andrews again

"I frankly don't have any plans to be at St Andrews again. When I retired in 2005, I had no plans to go back. I said, 'You know, I finished, I retired from St Andrews, I don't want to go back. I've had enough.'

And then they made me an honorary citizen, and there's no way I'm going to say no to that. So I went back two years ago for that. And it was a wonderful honor, I love St Andrews. I've had great memories. I don't want to go back at my age and tarnish memories. The only thing I can do is do something worse. So I want to leave it ... it was very special. I want to leave it very special."

On the game of golf

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"I think that we all … (tried) to play as much around the world as we could. We tried to promote the game wherever we could to grow the game. It's all about growing and bringing people into the game in the right fashion. Golf is a great teacher, and Tom is absolutely dead right. You're responsible for your own mistakes, and you can absolutely be proud of the accomplishments that you make.

"The game is a great game. It's the only game that I knew. It's how I ended up playing golf. I played all sports, and the one that I found that I could put as much effort as I wanted to put in, I would be rewarded from the effort that I put. And I don't think there's any other game that is as great as golf in that way.

"And that's why I love it. That's why I played it. That's why I played it all my life. That's why I'm still involved with it."

Tom D'Angelo is a senior sports columnist and golf writer for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at [email protected].