Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, and was also of wealthy and aristocratic parentage. Although he reached very low levels in college, his early fascination with militarism led him to join the Household Cavalry in 1895. As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill traveled extensively, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, South Africa and Egypt. .

Churchill was elected Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of Liberal government. He was the First Lord of the Admiralty (the top civil/political part of the Royal Navy) at the time of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which he ran. Heavily criticized for this mistake, he resigned for this place and then traveled to the Western Front to fight himself.

The interwar years saw Churchill again ‘cross the floor’ from the Liberals to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924, when he controversially opted for Britain to rejoin the gold standard. Following the electoral defeat of the Conservatives in 1929, Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the next eleven years out of work, mainly writing and making speeches. Although he was alone in his staunch opposition to Indian independence, his warnings against appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven correct if World War II broke out in 1939.

After Neville Chamberlain’s resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government.

Churchill, who also assumed the self-created post of Defense Secretary, was successful in both diplomatic and administrative roles in pursuing the British war effort. Several of his most memorable speeches have been delivered in this particular period and are thus credited with revitalizing British morale in times of great adversity. However, the unexpected victory of Labor leader Clement Attlee in the 1945 general election caused Churchill to abandon business and focus once more on public speaking. Since his 1946 speech in the US, the instinctive pro-American has declared that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent” and warned of the continuing threat from an effective Soviet Union.

By re-election of his own in 1951, Churchill was, in Roy Jenkins’s text, “gloriously unhealthy for the job.” Aging and progressively ill, she often conducted business from his bedside, although his powerful personality and oratorical ability lingered, the prime minister’s leadership was far less decisive than during the battle. His second term was the most important for the Conservative Party’s acceptance of Labour’s newly developed welfare state, and Churchill’s impact on domestic politics was also restricted. Subsequent attempts by him to diminish the escalating Cold War through individual diplomacy did not create significant results, coupled with failing health that forced him to resign in 1955, making way for his Deputy Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.

Churchill died in 1965 and was also honored with a state funeral.