Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill,
KG,
OM,
CH,
TD,
FRS,
PC (30 November 1874 –
24 January 1965) was a
British politician known
chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during
World War II. He served as
Prime Minister from
1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and
orator, Churchill was also an
officer in the British Army,
historian, writer, and artist. He was the only British Prime
Minister to have received the
Nobel Prize in Literature and the
first person to be recognized as an
Honorary Citizen of the
United States.
During his
army career, Churchill saw military action in India, in the Sudan
and the
Second Boer War. He gained
fame and notoriety as a war correspondent and through contemporary
books he wrote describing the campaigns. He also served briefly in
the British Army on the
Western Front in
World War I, commanding the 6th Battalion of the
Royal Scots Fusiliers.
At the forefront of the political scene for almost fifty years, he
held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World
War, he served as
President
of the Board of Trade,
Home
Secretary and
First Lord of the
Admiralty as part of the
Asquith
Liberal
government. During the war he continued as First Lord of the
Admiralty until the disastrous
Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure
from government. He returned as
Minister of Munitions,
Secretary of State for War and
Secretary of State for
Air. In the
interwar years, he
served as
Chancellor of the
Exchequer in the Conservative government.
After the outbreak of the
Second World
War, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.
Following the resignation of
Neville
Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, he became
Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom and led Britain to victory against the
Axis powers. Churchill was always noted for his
speeches, which became a great inspiration to the British people
and embattled
Allied
forces.
After losing
the
1945 election, he became
Leader of the
Opposition. In 1951, he again became Prime Minister before
finally retiring in 1955. Upon his death, the Queen granted him the
honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies
of statesmen in the world.
Family and early life

Churchill aged seven in 1881
A descendant of the famous
Spencer
family,
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, like his
father, used the surname
Churchill in public life. His
ancestor
George
Spencer had changed his surname to Spencer-Churchill in 1817
when he became
Duke of
Marlborough, to highlight his descent from
John Churchill, 1st Duke
of Marlborough. Winston's father,
Lord Randolph Churchill, the third
son of
John
Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was a politician,
while his mother,
Lady Randolph
Churchill (
née Jennie Jerome) was the
daughter of American millionaire
Leonard
Jerome.
Born on 30 November 1874, 2 months
prematurely, in a bedroom in Blenheim Palace
, Woodstock, Oxfordshire
, Churchill had one brother, John Strange
Spencer-Churchill.

Blenheim Palace, the Churchill
family's ancestral home
Independent and rebellious by nature, Churchill generally did
poorly in school, for which he was punished.
He was educated at
three independent schools: St George's School
in Ascot
, Berkshire, followed by Brunswick
School
in Hove
, near
Brighton
(the school
has since been renamed Stoke Brunswick School
and relocated to Ashurst Wood
in West
Sussex
), and then at Harrow School
on 17 April 1888, where his military career
began. Within weeks of his arrival, he had joined the
Harrow Rifle Corps. He earned
high marks in English and history and was also the school's fencing
champion.
He was rarely visited by his mother (then known as Lady Randolph
Churchill), and wrote letters begging her to either come to the
school or to allow him to come home. His relationship with his
father was a distant one; he once remarked that they barely spoke
to each other. Due to this lack of parental contact he became very
close to his nanny, Elizabeth Anne Everest, whom he used to call
"Old Woom". His father died on 24 January 1895, aged just 45,
leaving Churchill with the conviction that he too would die young,
so should be quick about making his mark on the world.
Speech impediment
Churchill described himself as having a "speech impediment" which
he consistently worked to overcome. After many years, he finally
stated, "My impediment is no hindrance". Trainee speech therapists
are often shown videotapes of Churchill's mannerisms while making
speeches and the
Stuttering Foundation of
America uses Churchill, pictured on its home page, as one of
its role models of successful stutterers. A large number of
1920s–1940s printed materials by various authors mention the
stutter in terms implying that it was a well-known Churchill
characteristic.
The Churchill Centre, however, flatly refutes the claim that
Churchill stuttered, while confirming that he did have difficulty
pronouncing the letter
S and spoke with a lisp. His father
also spoke with a lisp. Certainly, the careful ear of diarist and
fellow parliamentarian
Harold
Nicolson led him to portray Churchill's speech with a lazy
S rather than any hint of a stutter: "It is cuthtomary to
thtand up when the Kingth thpeech is read."
Marriage and children
Churchill met his future wife,
Clementine Hozier, in 1904 at a ball in
Crewe House, home of the
Earl of Crewe and
his wife
Margaret
Primrose (daughter of
Archibald Primrose, 5th
Earl of Rosebery). In 1908, they met again at a dinner party
hosted by
Lady St
Helier. Churchill found himself seated beside Clementine, and
they soon began a lifelong romance.
He proposed to Clementine during a house
party at Blenheim
Palace
on 10 August 1908, in a small Temple of Diana.
On 12
September 1908, they were married in St.
Margaret's, Westminster
. The church was packed; the
Bishop of St Asaph conducted the
service. In March 1909, the couple moved to a house at 33 Eccleston
Square.
Their first child,
Diana, was born
in London on 11 July 1909. After the pregnancy, Clementine moved to
Sussex to recover, while Diana stayed in London with her nanny. On
28 May 1911, their second child,
Randolph, was born at 33 Eccleston
Square.
Their third child, Sarah, was born on 7
October 1914 at Admiralty House
. The birth was marked with anxiety for
Clementine, as Winston had been sent to Antwerp
by the
Cabinet to "stiffen the resistance of the beleaguered city" after
news that the Belgians intended to surrender the town.
Clementine gave birth to her fourth child, Marigold Frances
Churchill, on 15 November 1918, four days after the official end of
World War I. In the early months of August, the Churchills'
children were entrusted to a French nursery governess in Kent named
Mlle Rose.
Clementine, meanwhile, travelled to Eaton
Hall
to play tennis with Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke
of Westminster and his family. While still under the
care of Mlle Rose, Marigold had a cold, but was reported to have
recovered from the illness. As the illness progressed with hardly
any notice, it turned into
septicaemia.
Following advice from a landlady, Rose sent for Clementine.
However
the illness turned fatal on 23 August 1921, and Marigold was buried
in the Kensal Green
Cemetery
three days later. On 15 September 1922,
the Churchills' last child was born,
Mary.
Later that month, the
Churchills bought Chartwell
, which would be Winston's home until his death in
1965.
Service in the Army

Churchill in military uniform in
1895
After
Churchill left Harrow in 1893, he applied to attend the Royal
Military College, Sandhurst
. It took three attempts before he passed the
entrance exam; he applied for cavalry rather than infantry because
the grade requirement was lower and did not require him to learn
mathematics, which he disliked. He graduated eighth out of a class
of 150 in December 1894, and although he could now have transferred
to an infantry regiment as his father had wished, chose to remain
with the cavalry and was commissioned as a
Second Lieutenant in the
4th Queen's Own Hussars on 20
February 1895. In 1941, he received the honour of Colonel of the
Hussars.
Churchill's pay as a second lieutenant in the 4th Hussars was £300.
However, he believed that he needed at least a further £500
(equivalent to £25,000 in 2001 terms) to support a style of life
equal to other
officers of
the
regiment. His mother provided an
allowance of £400 per year, but this was repeatedly overspent.
According to biographer
Roy Jenkins,
this is one reason he took an interest in war correspondence. He
did not intend to follow a conventional career of promotion through
army ranks, but to seek out all possible chances of military action
and used his mother's and family influence in high society to
arrange postings to active campaigns. His writings both brought him
to the attention of the public, and earned him significant
additional income. He acted as a war correspondent for several
London newspapers and wrote his own books about the
campaigns.
Cuba
In 1895,
Churchill travelled to Cuba
to observe
the Spanish fight the Cuban guerrillas; he had obtained
a commission to write about the conflict from the Daily
Graphic. To his delight, he came under fire for the
first time on his twenty-first birthday. He had fond memories of
Cuba as a "...large, rich, beautiful island..." While there, he
soon acquired a taste for Havana cigars, which he would smoke for
the rest of his life. While in New York, he stayed at the home of
Bourke Cockran, an admirer of
his mother. Bourke was an established American politician, and a
member of the House of Representatives. He greatly influenced
Churchill, both in his approach to oratory and politics, and
encouraging a love of America.
He soon received word that his nanny, Mrs Everest, was dying; he
then returned to England and stayed with her for a week until she
died. He wrote in his journal "She was my favourite friend." In
My Early Life he wrote: "She
had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of
the twenty years I had lived."
India
In early
October 1896, he was transferred to Bombay
, British India. He was considered one of
the best
polo players in his regiment and led
his team to many prestigious tournament victories.

A young Winston Churchill on a lecture
tour of the United States in 1900
Malakand
In 1897, Churchill attempted to travel to both report and, if
necessary, fight in the
Greco-Turkish War, but this
conflict effectively ended before he could arrive. Later, while
preparing for a leave in England, he heard that three brigades of
the
British Army were going to fight
against a
Pashtun tribe and he asked his
superior officer if he could join the fight.
He fought under the
command of General Jeffery, who was the commander of the second
brigade operating in Malakand, in
what is now Pakistan
. Jeffery sent him with fifteen scouts to
explore the
Mamund Valley; while on
reconnaissance, they encountered an enemy tribe, dismounted from
their horses and opened fire. After an hour of shooting, their
reinforcements, the 35th
Sikhs arrived, and
the fire gradually ceased and the brigade and the Sikhs marched on.
Hundreds of tribesmen then ambushed them and opened fire, forcing
them to retreat. As they were retreating four men were carrying an
injured officer but the fierceness of the fight forced them to
leave him behind. The man who was left behind was slashed to death
before Churchill’s eyes; afterwards he wrote of the killer, "I
forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this
man." However the Sikhs' numbers were being depleted so the next
commanding officer told Churchill to get the rest of the men and
boys to safety.
Before he left he asked for a note so he would not be charged with
desertion. He received the note, quickly signed, and headed up the
hill and alerted the other brigade, whereupon they then engaged the
army. The fighting in the region dragged on for another two weeks
before the dead could be recovered. He wrote in his journal:
"Whether it was worth it I cannot tell."
An account of the
Siege of
Malakand
was published in December 1900 as The Story of the Malakand
Field Force. He received £600 for his account.
During the campaign, he also wrote articles for the newspapers
The Pioneer and
The Daily Telegraph.
His account of the battle was one of his first published stories,
for which he received
£5 per column from
The Daily
Telegraph.
Sudan and Oldham
Churchill
was transferred to Egypt
in 1898
where he visited Luxor
before
joining an attachment of the 21st
Lancers serving in the Sudan
under the
command of General Herbert
Kitchener. During his time he encountered two future
military officers, with whom he would later work, during the
First World War:
Douglas Haig, then a captain and
John Jellicoe, then a
gunboat lieutenant. While in the Sudan, he participated in what has
been described as the last meaningful British
cavalry charge at the
Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. He
also worked as a war correspondent for the
Morning Post. By October 1898, he had
returned to Britain and begun his two-volume work;
The River War, an account of the
reconquest of the Sudan published the following year. Churchill
resigned from the British Army effective from 5 May 1899.
He soon had his first opportunity to begin a Parliamentary career,
when he was invited by
Robert Ascroft
to be the second
Conservative
Party candidate in Ascroft's
Oldham constituency. The
event of Ascroft's sudden death caused a double by-election and
Churchill was one of the candidates. In the midst of a national
trend against the Conservatives, both seats were lost; however
Churchill impressed by his vigorous campaigning.
South Africa
Having failed at Oldham, Churchill looked about for some other
opportunity to advance his career. On 12 October 1899, the
Second Boer War between Britain and the
Boer Republics broke out and he
obtained a commission to act as war correspondent for the
Morning Post with a salary of £250 per month.
He rushed to sail on the same ship as the newly appointed British
commander,
Sir Redvers Buller.
After
some weeks in exposed areas he accompanied a scouting expedition in
an armoured train, leading to his capture and imprisonment in a
POW camp in Pretoria
. His actions during the ambush of the train
led to speculation that he would be awarded the
Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for
gallantry in the face of the enemy, but this did not occur. Writing
in
London to Ladysmith
via Pretoria, a collected version of his war reports, he
described the experience:
He
escaped from the prison camp and travelled almost to Portuguese
Lourenço
Marques
in Delagoa
Bay
, with the assistance of an English mine
manager. His escape made him a minor national hero for a time in Britain, though instead of
returning home, he rejoined General Buller's army on its march to
relieve the British at the Siege of Ladysmith
and take Pretoria. This time, although
continuing as a war correspondent, he gained a commission in the
South African Light Horse.
He was
among the first British troops into Ladysmith
and Pretoria. He and his cousin,
the Duke of
Marlborough, were able to get ahead of the rest of the troops
in Pretoria, where they demanded and received the surrender of 52
Boer prison camp guards.
In 1900, Churchill returned to England on the
RMS Dunottar Castle, the same
ship on which he set sail for South Africa eight months earlier. He
there published
London to Ladysmith and a second volume of
Boer war experiences,
Ian
Hamilton's March. Churchill stood again for parliament in
Oldham in the
general election
of 1900 and won (his Conservative colleague, Crisp, was
defeated) in the contest for two seats. After the 1900 general
election he embarked on a speaking tour of Britain, followed by
tours of the United States and Canada, earning in excess of
£5,000.
Territorial service
In 1900, he retired from regular army and in 1902 joined the
Imperial Yeomanry where he was commissioned
as a
Captain in the
Queen's Own Oxfordshire
Hussars on 4 January 1902. In April 1905, he was promoted to
Major and appointed to command of the Henley
Squadron of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars. In September 1916,
he transferred to the
territorial reserves of
officers where he remained till retiring in 1924.
Western front
Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of World War
I, but was obliged to leave the war cabinet after the disastrous
Battle of Gallipoli. He
attempted to obtain a commission as a brigade commander, but
settled for command of a battalion. After spending some time as a
Major with the 2nd Battalion,
Grenadier
Guards, he was appointed
Lieutenant-Colonel, commanding the 6th
Battalion,
Royal Scots
Fusiliers (part of the
9th
Division), on 1 January 1916. Correspondence with his wife
shows that his intent in taking up active service was to
rehabilitate his reputation, but this was balanced by the serious
risk of being killed. As a commander he continued to exhibit the
reckless daring which had been a hallmark of all his military
actions, although he disapproved strongly of the mass slaughter
involved in many western front actions.
Lord Deedes explained to a gathering of
the
Royal Historical
Society in 2001 why Churchill went to the front line: "He was
with
Grenadier Guards, who were dry
[without alcohol] at battalion headquarters. They very much liked
tea and condensed milk, which had no great appeal to Winston, but
alcohol was permitted in the front line, in the trenches. So he
suggested to the colonel that he really ought to see more of the
war and get into the front line. This was highly commended by the
colonel, who thought it was a very good thing to do."
Political career to World War II

Churchill's election poster for the
1899 by-election in Oldham, which he lost
Early years in Parliament
Churchill stood again for the
seat of Oldham at the
1900 general
election. After winning the seat, he went on a speaking tour
throughout Britain and the United States, raising £10,000 for
himself. In Parliament, he became associated with a faction of the
Conservative Party led by
Lord Hugh Cecil; the
Hughligans. During his first
parliamentary session, he opposed the
government's military expenditure and
Joseph Chamberlain's proposal of
extensive tariffs, which were intended to protect Britain's
economic dominance. His own constituency effectively deselected
him, although he continued to sit for Oldham until the next general
election. After the
Whitsun recess in 1904
he
crossed the floor to sit as a
member of the
Liberal Party. As a
Liberal, he continued to campaign for
free
trade. When the Liberals took office with
Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Prime
Minister, in December 1905, Churchill became
Under-Secretary of State for the
Colonies dealing mainly with South Africa after the Boer War. From
1903 until 1905, Churchill was also engaged in writing
Lord Randolph Churchill,
a two-volume biography of his father which was published in 1906
and received much critical acclaim.
Following his deselection in the seat of Oldham, Churchill was
invited to stand for
Manchester
North West. He won the seat at the
1906 general election
with a majority of 1,214 and represented the seat for two years,
until 1908. When Campbell-Bannerman was succeeded by
Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908,
Churchill was promoted to the Cabinet as
President of the Board of
Trade. Under the law at the time, a newly appointed Cabinet
Minister was obliged to seek re-election at a
by-election; Churchill lost his seat but was
soon back as a member for
Dundee constituency. As
President of the Board of Trade he joined newly appointed
Chancellor Lloyd George in opposing
First Lord of the Admiralty,
Reginald McKenna's proposed huge
expenditure for the construction of Navy
dreadnought warships, and in supporting the
Liberal reforms. In 1908, he
introduced the Trade Boards Bill setting up the first minimum wages
in Britain, In 1909, he set up
Labour Exchanges to help
unemployed people find work. He helped draft the first unemployment
pension legislation, the
National Insurance Act of 1911.

Churchill in 1904
Churchill also assisted in passing the
People's Budget becoming President of the
Budget League, an organisation set up in response to the
opposition's "Budget Protest League". The budget included the
introduction of new taxes on the wealthy to allow for the creation
of new social welfare programmes.
After the budget bill was sent to the
Commons in 1909 and passed, it went to the House of
Lords
, where it was vetoed. The Liberals then
fought and won two general elections in January and December 1910
to gain a mandate for their reforms. The budget was then passed
following the
Parliament Act
1911 for which he also campaigned. In 1910, he was promoted to
Home Secretary.
His term was
controversial, after his responses to the Siege of
Sidney Street
and the dispute at the
Cambrian Colliery and the suffragettes.
In 1910,
a number of coal miners in the Rhondda Valley
began what has come to be known as the Tonypandy Riot. The Chief Constable of
Glamorgan requested troops be sent in to help police quell the
rioting.
Churchill, learning that the troops were
already travelling, allowed them to go as far as Swindon
and Cardiff
but blocked their deployment. On 9 November,
the
Times criticised this
decision. In spite of this, the rumour persists that Churchill had
ordered troops to attack, and his reputation in Wales and in Labour
circles never recovered.

Winston Churchill
(
highlighted) at Sidney Street, 3 January 1911
In early
January 1911, Churchill made a controversial visit to the Siege of
Sidney Street
in London. There is some uncertainty as to
whether he attempted to give operational commands, and his presence
attracted much criticism. After an inquest,
Arthur Balfour remarked, "he [Churchill] and
a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what
the photographer was doing, but what was
the right honourable gentleman doing?"
A biographer, Roy Jenkins, suggests that he went simply because "he
could not resist going to see the fun himself" and that he did not
issue commands.
Churchill's proposed solution to the suffragette issue was a
referendum on the issue, but this found no favour with
Herbert Henry Asquith and women's
suffrage remained unresolved until after the
First World War.
In 1911, Churchill was transferred to the office of the
First Lord of the Admiralty, a
post he held into
World War I. He gave
impetus to several reform efforts, including development of
naval aviation (he undertook flying
lessons himself), the construction of new and larger warships, the
development of tanks, and the switch from coal to oil in the
Royal Navy.
World War I and the Post War Coalition
On 5
October 1914, Churchill went to Antwerp
, which the Belgian government proposed to
evacuate. The
Royal Marine
Brigade was there and at Churchill’s urgings the 1st and 2nd Naval
Brigades were also committed. Antwerp fell on 10 October with the
loss of 2500 men. At the time he was attacked for squandering
resources. It is more likely that his actions prolonged the
resistance by a week (Belgium had proposed surrendering Antwerp on
3 October) and that this time saved Calais and Dunkirk.
Churchill was involved with the development of the tank, which was
financed from naval research funds. He then headed the
Landships Committee which was
responsible for creating the first tank corps and, although a
decade later development of the battle tank would be seen as a
tactical victory, at the time it was seen as misappropriation of
funds.
In
1915, he was one of the political and military engineers of the
disastrous Gallipoli landings on
the Dardanelles
during World War I. He took much of the
blame for the fiasco, and when Prime Minister Asquith formed an
all-party
coalition
government, the Conservatives demanded his demotion as the
price for entry.
For several months Churchill served in the sinecure of
Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster. However on 15 November 1915 he resigned from the
government, feeling his energies were not being used and, though
remaining an MP, served for several months on the
Western Front commanding the 6th
Battalion of the
Royal Scots
Fusiliers, under the rank of Colonel. In March 1916, Churchill
returned to England after he had become restless in France and
wished to speak again in the House of Commons. Future Prime
Minister
David Lloyd George
acidly commented: "You will one day discover that the state of mind
revealed in (your) letter is the reason why you do not win trust
even where you command admiration. In every line of it, national
interests are completely overshadowed by your personal concern." In
July 1917, Churchill was appointed
Minister of Munitions, and in January
1919,
Secretary of State for
War and
Secretary of
State for Air. He was the main architect of the
Ten Year Rule, a principle that allowed the
Treasury to dominate and control strategic, foreign and financial
policies under the assumption that "there would be no great
European war for the next five or ten years".
A major
preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office
was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a
staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that
Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". He
secured, from a divided and loosely organised Cabinet,
intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond
the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation—and in
the face of the bitter hostility of Labour.
In 1920, after the
last British forces had been
withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the
Poles when they invaded Ukraine
. He became
Secretary of State for the
Colonies in 1921 and was a signatory of the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which
established the
Irish Free State.
Churchill
was involved in the lengthy negotiations of the treaty and to
protect British maritime interests, he engineered part of the
Irish Free State agreement to
include three Treaty
Ports—Queenstown (Cobh
), Berehaven
and Lough
Swilly
—which could be used as Atlantic bases by the Royal Navy. Under the terms of
the Anglo-Irish Trade
Agreement the bases were returned to the newly renamed "Ireland
" in 1938.
Churchill
advocated the use of tear gas on Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq
, based on a
War
Office
minute of 12 May 1919:
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of
gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace
Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a
permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a
man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle
at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.I am strongly
in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The
moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be
reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most
deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience
and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious
permanent effects on most of those affected.
Though the British did
consider the
use of poison gas in putting down Kurdish rebellions, it was
not used for technical reasons.
Rejoining the Conservative Party – Chancellor of the
Exchequer
In September, the Conservative Party withdrew from the Coalition
government following a meeting of
backbenchers dissatisfied with the handling of
the
Chanak Crisis, a move that
precipitated the looming
October 1922 General
Election. Churchill fell ill during the campaign, and had to
have an
appendicectomy. This made it
difficult for him to campaign, and a further setback was the
internal division that continued to beset the Liberal Party. He
came only fourth in the poll for
Dundee, losing to the
prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour.
Churchill later
quipped that he left Dundee
"without an office, without a seat, without a party and without
an appendix". He stood for the Liberals again in the
1923 general
election, losing in Leicester
, and then as an independent, first without success
in a by-election
in the Westminster Abbey
constituency, and then successfully in the general election of
1924 for Epping. The
following year, he formally rejoined the Conservative Party,
commenting wryly that "anyone can rat, but it takes a certain
ingenuity to re-rat."
Churchill was appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer in
1924 under
Stanley Baldwin and
oversaw Britain's disastrous return to the
Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation,
unemployment, and the miners' strike that led to the
General Strike of 1926.
His decision,
announced in the 1924 Budget, came after long consultation with
various economists including John
Maynard Keynes, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir
Otto Niemeyer and the board of the
Bank of
England
. This decision prompted Keynes to write
The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, arguing that
the return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity in 1925
(£1=$4.86) would lead to a world
depression. However, the decision was
generally popular and seen as 'sound economics' although it was
opposed by
Lord
Beaverbrook and the Federation of British Industries.
Churchill later regarded this as the greatest mistake of his life.
However in discussions at the time with former Chancellor
McKenna, Churchill acknowledged that the
return to the gold standard and the resulting 'dear money' policy
was economically bad. In those discussions he maintained the policy
as fundamentally political – a return to the pre-war conditions in
which he believed. In his speech on the Bill he said "I will tell
you what it [the return to the Gold Standard] will shackle us to.
It will shackle us to reality."
The return to the pre-war exchange rate and to the Gold Standard
depressed industries. The most affected was the
coal industry. Already suffering from declining output
as shipping switched to oil, as basic British industries like
cotton came under more competition in export markets, the return to
the pre-war exchange was estimated to add up to 10% in costs to the
industry. In July 1925, a Commission of Inquiry reported generally
favouring the miners, rather than the mine owners' position.
Baldwin, with Churchill's support proposed a subsidy to the
industry while a Royal Commission prepared a further report.
That Commission solved nothing and the miners dispute led to the
General Strike of 1926,
Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns be used
on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's
newspaper, the
British
Gazette, and, during the dispute, he argued that "either
the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike
will break the country" and claimed that the
fascism of
Benito
Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world," showing,
as it had, "a way to combat subversive forces"—that is, he
considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat
of Communist revolution. At one point, Churchill went as far as to
call Mussolini the "Roman genius... the greatest lawgiver among
men."
Later economists, as well as people at the time, also criticised
Churchill's budget measures. These were seen as assisting the
generally prosperous rentier banking and salaried classes (to which
Churchill and his associates generally belonged) at the expense of
manufacturers and exporters which were known then to be suffering
from imports and from competition in traditional export markets,
and as paring the Armed Forces too heavily.
Political isolation
The Conservative government was defeated in the
1929 General Election.
Churchill did not seek election to the Conservative Business
Committee, the official leadership of the Conservative MPs. Over
the next two years, Churchill became estranged from the
Conservative leadership over the issues of protective tariffs and
Indian Home Rule and by
his political views and by his friendships with press barons,
financiers and people whose characters were seen as dubious. When
Ramsay MacDonald formed the
National
Government in 1931, Churchill was not invited to join the
Cabinet. He was at the low
point in his career, in a period known as "the wilderness
years".
He spent much of the next few years concentrating on his writing,
including
Marlborough: His Life and
Times—a biography of his ancestor
John Churchill, 1st Duke
of Marlborough—and
A History of the
English Speaking Peoples (though the latter was not
published until well after World War II),
Great
Contemporaries and many newspaper articles and collections of
speeches. He was one of the best paid writers of his time. His
political views, set forth in his 1930 Romanes Election and
published as
Parliamentary Government and the Economic
Problem (republished in 1932 in his collection of essays
"Thoughts and Adventures") involved abandoning
universal suffrage, a return to a
property franchise,
proportional representation for
the major cities and an economic 'sub parliament'.
Indian independence
During the first half of the 1930s, Churchill was outspoken in his
opposition to granting
Dominion status to
India. He was one of the founders of the India Defence League, a
group dedicated to the preservation of British power in India. In
speeches and press articles in this period he forecast widespread
British unemployment and civil strife in India should independence
be granted. The Viceroy
Lord Irwin who
had been appointed by the prior Conservative Government engaged in
the
Round Table Conference in
early 1931 and then announced the Government's policy that India
should be granted Dominion Status. In this the Government was
supported by the Liberal Party and, officially at least, by the
Conservative Party. Churchill denounced the Round Table
Conference.
At a meeting of the West
Essex Conservative
Association specially convened so Churchill could explain his
position he said, "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr
Gandhi, a seditious Middle-Temple lawyer, now posing as a
fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding
half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace...to parley on
equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor." He called
the
Indian Congress leaders
"Brahmins who mouth and patter principles of Western
Liberalism."
There were two incidents which damaged Churchill's reputation
greatly within the Conservative Party in the period. Both were
taken as attacks on the Conservative front bench. The first was his
speech on the eve of the
St George
by-election in April 1931. In a secure Conservative seat, the
official Conservative candidate
Duff
Cooper was opposed by an independent Conservative. The
independent was supported by
Lord Rothermere,
Lord Beaverbrook and their respective newspapers. Although arranged
before the by election was set, Churchill's speech was seen as
supporting the independent candidate andas a part of the Press
Baron's campaign against Baldwin. Baldwin's position was
strengthened when Duff Cooper won and when the civil disobedience
campaign in India ceased with the
Gandhi-Irwin Pact. The second issue was a
claim that Sir
Samuel Hoare and
Lord
Derby had pressured the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to
change evidence it had given to the Joint Select Committee
considering the Government of India Bill and in doing so had
breached Parliamentary privilege.
He had the matter referred to the
House of
Commons
Privilege Committee which after investigations, in
which Churchill gave evidence, reported to the House that there had
been no breach. The report was debated on 13 June. Churchill
was unable to find a single supporter in the House and the debate
ended without a division.
Churchill permanently broke with
Stanley
Baldwin over Indian independence and never held any office
while Baldwin was Prime Minister. Some historians see his basic
attitude to India as being set out in his book
My Early
Life (1930). Historians also dispute his motives in
maintaining his opposition. Some see him as trying to destabilise
the National Government. Some also draw a parallel between
Churchill's attitudes to India and those towards the
Nazis.
Another source of controversy about Churchill's attitude towards
Indian affairs arises over what some historians term the Indian
'nationalist approach' to the
Bengal famine of 1943, which has
sought to place significant blame on Churchill's wartime government
for the excess mortality of up to 3 million people.Leonard A.
Gordon, Review of
Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The
Famine of 1943-1944 by Greenough, Paul R.,
American
Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), p. 1051
/www.jstor.org/stable/1874145> While some commentators point to
the disruption of the traditional marketing system and
maladministration at the provincial level, Arthur Herman, author of
Churchill and Gandhi, contends, 'The real cause was the
fall of Burma to the Japanese, which cut off India’s main supply of
rice imports when domestic sources fell short...it is true that
Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports from other
theatres to India to cover the shortfall: this was wartime.'
German rearmament
Beginning in 1932, when he opposed those who advocated giving
Germany the right to military parity with France, Churchill spoke
often of the dangers of Germany's rearmament. He later,
particularly in
The Gathering Storm, portrayed himself as
being for a time, a lone voice calling on Britain to strengthen
itself to counter the belligerence of Germany. However
Lord Lloyd was the
first to so agitate. Churchill's attitude toward the fascist
dictators was ambiguous. In 1931, he warned against the
League of Nations opposing the Japanese in
Manchuria "I hope we shall try in England to understand the
position of Japan, an ancient state... On the one side they have
the dark menace of Soviet Russia. On the other the chaos of China,
four or five provinces of which are being tortured under Communist
rule". In contemporary newspaper articles he referred to the
Spanish Republican government as a Communist front, and
Franco's army as the "Anti-red movement".
He supported the
Hoare-Laval Pact
and continued up until 1937 to praise
Benito Mussolini.
Speaking in the House of Commons in 1937, Churchill said "I will
not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and Nazism,
I would choose communism". In a 1935 essay, entitled "
Hitler and his Choice" as republished in
Churchill's 1937 book
Great Contemporaries, Churchill
expressed a hope that Hitler, if he so chose, and despite his rise
to power through dictatorial action, hatred, and cruelty, he might
yet "go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of
mind to the great Germanic nation and brought it back serene,
helpful and strong, to the forefront of the European family
circle." Churchill's first major speech on defence on 7 February
1934 stressed the need to rebuild the
Royal Air Force and to create a Ministry of
Defence; his second, on 13 July urged a renewed role for the League
of Nations. These three topics remained his themes until early
1936. In 1935, he was one of the founding members of
Focus
which brought together people of differing political backgrounds
and occupations who were united in seeking 'the defence of freedom
and peace'.
Focus led to the formation of the much wider
Arms and the Covenant Movement in 1936.
Churchill was holidaying in Spain when the
Germans reoccupied the
Rhineland in February 1936, and returned to a divided Britain.
Labour opposition was adamant in opposing sanctions and the
National Government was divided between advocates of economic
sanctions and those who said that even these would lead to a
humiliating backdown by Britain as France would not support any
intervention. Churchill's speech on 9 March was measured and
praised by
Neville Chamberlain
as constructive. But within weeks Churchill was passed over for the
post of
Minister
for Co-ordination of Defence in favour of the Attorney General
Sir
Thomas Inskip. Alan Taylor called
this 'An appointment rightly described as the most extraordinary
since
Caligula made his horse a consul.' In
June 1936, Churchill organised a deputation of senior Conservatives
who shared his concern to see Baldwin, Chamberlain and Halifax. He
had tried to have delegates from the other two parties and later
wrote "If the leaders of the Labour and Liberal oppositions had
come with us there might have been a political situation so intense
as to enforce remedial action". As it was the meeting achieved
little, Baldwin arguing that the Government was doing all it could
given the anti-war feeling of the electorate.
On 12 November Churchill returned to the topic. Speaking in the
Address in Reply debate after giving some specific instances of
Germany’s war preparedness he said "The Government simply cannot
make up their mind or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up
his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be
undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for
fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing
more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of
Britain for the locusts to eat."
R.R. James called this one of Churchill’s most brilliant speeches
in this period, Baldwin's reply sounding weak and disturbing the
House. The exchange gave new encouragement to the Arms and the
Covenant Movement.
Abdication crisis
In June 1936,
Walter Monckton told
Churchill that the rumours that King
Edward VIII intended to
marry Mrs
Wallis Simpson were true.
Churchill then advised against the marriage and said he regarded
Mrs Simpson's existing marriage as a 'safeguard'. In November, he
declined
Lord Salisbury's invitation
to be part of a delegation of senior Conservative backbenchers who
met with Baldwin to discuss the matter. On 25 November he,
Attlee and Liberal leader
Archibald Sinclair met with Baldwin, were
told officially of the King's intention, and asked whether they
would form an administration if Baldwin and the National Government
resigned should the King not take the Ministry's advice. Both
Attlee and Sinclair said they would not take office if invited to
do so. Churchill's reply was that his attitude was a little
different but he would support the government.
The Abdication crisis became public, coming to head in the first
fortnight of December 1936. At this time Churchill publicly gave
his support to the King. The first public meeting of the Arms and
the Covenant Movement was on 3 December. Churchill was a major
speaker and later wrote that in replying to the Vote of Thanks he
made a declaration 'on the spur of the moment' asking for delay
before any decision was made by either the King or his Cabinet.
Later that night Churchill saw the draft of the King's proposed
wireless broadcast and spoke with Beaverbrook and the King's
solicitor about it. On 4 December, he met with the King and again
urged delay in any decision about abdication. On 5 December, he
issued a lengthy statement implying that the Ministry was applying
unconstitutional pressure on the King to force him to make a hasty
decision. On 7 December he tried to address the Commons to plead
for delay. He was shouted down. Seemingly staggered by the
unanimous hostility of all Members he left.
Churchill's reputation in Parliament and England as a whole was
badly damaged. Some such as
Alistair
Cooke saw him as trying to build a King's Party. Others like
Harold Macmillan were dismayed by
the damage Churchill's support for the King had done to the Arms
and the Covenant Movement. Churchill himself later wrote "I was
myself smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal
view that my political life was ended." Historians are divided
about Churchill's motives in his support for Edward VIII. Some such
as
A J P Taylor see it as being an
attempt to 'overthrow the government of feeble men'. Others such as
Rhode James see Churchill's motives as entirely honourable and
disinterested, that he felt deeply for the King.
Return from exile
Churchill later sought to portray himself as an isolated voice
warning of the need to rearm against Germany. While it is true that
he had little following in the House of Commons during much of the
1930s he was given considerable privileges by the Government. The
“Churchill group†in the later half of the decade consisted only of
himself,
Duncan Sandys and
Brendan Bracken. It was isolated from the
other main factions within the Conservative Party pressing for
faster rearmament and a stronger foreign policy. In some senses the
‘exile’ was more apparent than real. Churchill continued to be
consulted on many matters by the Government or seen as an
alternative leader.
Even during the time Churchill was campaigning against Indian
independence, he received official and otherwise secret
information. From 1932, Churchill’s neighbour, Major
Desmond Morton with
Ramsay MacDonald's approval, gave Churchill
information on German air power. From 1930 onwards Morton headed a
department of the
Committee of Imperial Defence
charged with researching the defence preparedness of other nations.
Lord Swinton as Secretary of State for
Air, and with Baldwin’s approval, in 1934 gave Churchill access to
official and otherwise secret information.
Swinton did so, knowing Churchill would remain a critic of the
government, but believing that an informed critic was better than
one relying on rumour and hearsay. Churchill was a fierce critic of
Neville Chamberlain's
appeasement of Adolf Hitler and in a speech to the House of
Commons, he bluntly and prophetically stated, "You were given the
choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will
have war."
Role as wartime Prime Minister
"Winston is back"
After the outbreak of
World War II, on
3 September 1939 the day Britain declared war on Germany, Churchill
was appointed
First Lord of
the Admiralty and a member of the War Cabinet, just as he had
been during the first part of
World War
I. When they were informed, the Board of the Admiralty sent a
signal to the Fleet: "Winston is back". In this job, he proved to
be one of the highest-profile ministers during the so-called
"
Phoney War", when the only noticeable
action was at sea.
Churchill advocated the pre-emptive
occupation of the neutral Norwegian iron-ore port of Narvik
and the
iron mines in Kiruna, Sweden, early
in the war. However, Chamberlain and the rest of the
War Cabinet disagreed, and the operation
was delayed until the successful
German invasion of Norway.
Bitter beginnings of the war
On 10 May 1940, hours before the German invasion of France by a
lightning advance through the
Low Countries, it became clear that, following
failure in Norway, the country had no confidence in Chamberlain's
prosecution of the war and so Chamberlain resigned.
The commonly accepted
version of events states that Lord Halifax turned down
the post of Prime Minister because he believed he could not govern
effectively as a member of the House of Lords
instead of the House of Commons
. Although the Prime Minister does not
traditionally advise the King on the former's successor,
Chamberlain wanted someone who would command the support of all
three major parties in the House of Commons. A meeting between
Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill and
David Margesson, the
government
Chief Whip, led to the
recommendation of Churchill, and, as a constitutional monarch,
George VI asked
Churchill to be Prime Minister and to form an all-party government.
Churchill's first act was to write to Chamberlain to thank him for
his support.
Churchill had been among the first to recognise the growing threat
of Hitler long before the outset of the Second World War, and his
warnings had gone largely unheeded. Although there was an element
of British public and political sentiment favouring negotiated
peace with a clearly ascendant Germany, among them the
Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, Churchill
nonetheless refused to consider an armistice with Hitler's Germany.
His use of rhetoric hardened public opinion against a peaceful
resolution and prepared the British for a long war.
Coining the general
term for the upcoming battle, Churchill stated in his "finest hour" speech to the
House of
Commons
on 18 June 1940, "I expect that the Battle of
Britain is about to begin." By refusing an armistice with Germany,
Churchill kept resistance alive in the British Empire and created the basis for the
later Allied counter-attacks
of 1942–45, with Britain serving as a platform for the supply of
Soviet
Union
and the liberation of Western Europe.
In response to previous criticisms that there had been no clear
single minister in charge of the prosecution of the war, Churchill
created and took the additional position of
Minister of Defence. He immediately
put his friend and confidant, the industrialist and newspaper baron
Lord Beaverbrook,
in charge of aircraft production. It was Beaverbrook's business
acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production
and engineering that eventually made the difference in the
war.
's speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled British. His
first speech as Prime Minister was the famous "
I have nothing
to offer but blood, toil,
tears, and sweat". He followed that closely with two other
equally famous ones, given just before the
Battle of Britain. One included the
words:
The other:
At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the
situation included the memorable line "
Never
in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so
few", which engendered the enduring nickname
The Few for the Allied fighter pilots who won
it.
One
of his most memorable war speeches came on 10 November 1942 at the
Lord Mayor's Luncheon at Mansion House
in London, in response to the Allied victory at the
Second
Battle of El Alamein
. Churchill stated:
Without
having much in the way of sustenance or good news to offer the
British
people
, he took a political
risk in deliberately choosing to emphasise the dangers
instead.
"
Rhetorical power", wrote Churchill, "
is neither
wholly bestowed, nor wholly acquired, but cultivated." Not all
were impressed by his oratory.
Robert
Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia and himself a gifted
phrase-maker, said of Churchill during World War II: "His real
tyrant is the glittering phrase so attractive to his mind that
awkward facts have to give way." Another associate wrote: "He is...
the slave of the words which his mind forms about ideas.... And he
can convince himself of almost every truth if it is once allowed
thus to start on its wild career through his rhetorical
machinery."
Relations with the United States
Churchill's good relationship with
Franklin D. Roosevelt secured vital food, oil and
munitions via the North
Atlantic
shipping
routes. It was for this reason that Churchill was relieved
when Roosevelt was
re-elected in
1940. Upon re-election, Roosevelt immediately set about
implementing a new method of providing military hardware and
shipping to Britain without the need for monetary payment. Put
simply, Roosevelt persuaded Congress that repayment for this
immensely costly service would take the form of defending the US;
and so
Lend-lease was born. Churchill had
12 strategic
conferences with Roosevelt
which covered the
Atlantic Charter,
Europe first strategy, the
Declaration by the United
Nations and other war policies.
After Pearl Harbor was attacked
, Churchill's first thought in anticipation of
US help was, "We have won the war!" On 26 December 1941,
Churchill addressed a joint meeting of the
US Congress, asking of Germany and
Japan, "What kind of people do they think we are?" Churchill
initiated the
Special
Operations Executive (SOE) under
Hugh
Dalton's Ministry of
Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and fostered
covert, subversive and partisan operations in
occupied territories with notable
success; and also the
Commandos
which established the pattern for most of the world's current
Special Forces. The Russians referred
to him as the "British Bulldog".
Churchill's health was fragile, as shown by a mild
heart attack he suffered in December
1941 at the White House and also in December 1943 when he
contracted pneumonia. Despite this, he travelled over throughout
the war to meet other national leaders. For security, he usually
travelled using the alias Colonel Warden.
Churchill was party to treaties that would redraw post-World War II
European and Asian boundaries. These were discussed as early as
1943. At the
Second Quebec
Conference in 1944 he drafted and, together with US President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed a toned-down version
of the original
Morgenthau Plan, in
which they pledged to convert Germany after its unconditional
surrender "
into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral
in its character." Proposals for European boundaries and
settlements were officially agreed to by
Harry S. Truman, Churchill, and
Stalin at
Potsdam.
Churchill's strong relationship with Harry Truman was also of great
significance to both countries. While he clearly regretted the loss
of his close friend and counterpart Roosevelt, Churchill was
enormously supportive of Truman in his first days in office,
calling him, "the type of leader the world needs when it needs him
most."
Relations with the Soviet Union
When
Hitler invaded the Soviet
Union, Winston Churchill, a vehement anti-Communist, famously
stated "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable
reference to the Devil in the House of Commons," regarding his
policy toward Stalin. Soon, British supplies and tanks were flowing
to help the Soviet Union.
The settlement concerning the borders of Poland, that is, the
boundary between Poland and the Soviet
Union and
between Germany and
Poland, was viewed as a betrayal in Poland during the post-war
years, as it was established against the views of the
Polish government in exile. It
was Winston Churchill, who tried to motivate
Mikołajczyk, who was Prime
Minister of the Polish government in exile, to accept Stalin's
wishes, but Mikołajczyk refused. Churchill was convinced that the
only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the
transfer of people, to match the national borders.
As he expounded in the House of Commons on 15 December 1944,
"Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to
see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no
mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep
will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are
more possible in modern conditions." However the
resulting expulsions of
Germans were carried out in a way which resulted in much
hardship and, according to a 1966 report by the West German
Ministry of Refugees and
Displaced
Persons, the death of over 2.1 million. Churchill opposed the
effective annexation of Poland by the Soviet Union and wrote
bitterly about it in his books, but he was unable to prevent it at
the conferences.
During October 1944, he and Eden were in Moscow to meet with the
Russian leadership. At this point, Russian forces were beginning to
advance into various eastern European countries.
Churchill held the
view that until everything was formally and properly worked out at
the Yalta
conference
, there had to be a temporary, war-time, working
agreement with regard to who would run what. The most
significant of these meetings were held on 9 October 1944 in the
Kremlin between Churchill and Stalin. During
the meeting, Poland and the
Balkan problems
were discussed. Churchill recounted his speech to Stalin on the
day:
Stalin agreed to this
Percentages
Agreement, ticking a piece of paper as he heard the
translation. In 1958, five years after the recount of this meeting
was published (in
The Second World War),
authorities of the Soviet denied that Stalin accepted the
"imperialist proposal".
One of the conclusions of the Yalta Conference was that the Allies
would return all Soviet citizens that found themselves in the
Allied zone to the Soviet Union. This immediately affected the
Soviet prisoners of
war liberated by the Allies, but was also extended to all
Eastern European
refugees. Solzhenitsyn
called the
Operation Keelhaul
"the last secret of World War II." The operation decided the fate
of up to two million post-war
refugees
fleeing eastern Europe.
Dresden bombings controversy

Historical footage of the destruction
of Dresden, February 1945
Between
13 February and 15 February 1945, British and the US bombers
attacked the German city of Dresden
, which was crowded with German wounded and
refugees. Because of the cultural importance of the city,
and of the number of
civilian
casualties close to the end of the war, this remains one of the
most controversial Western Allied actions of the war. Following the
bombing Churchill stated in a top secret telegram:
On reflection, under pressure from the Chiefs of Staff and in
response to the views expressed by Sir
Charles Portal (
Chief of the Air
Staff,) and
Arthur
Harris (
AOC-in-C of
RAF Bomber Command), among
others, Churchill withdrew his memo and issued a new one. This
final version of the memo completed on 1 April 1945, stated:
Ultimately, responsibility for the British part of the attack lay
with Churchill, which is why he has been criticised for allowing
the bombings to happen. The German historian
Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston
Churchill's decision to
[area] bomb a
shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime" and
writing in 2006 the philosopher
A.
C. Grayling questioned the whole strategic
bombing campaign by the RAF presenting the argument that although
it was not a war crime it was a moral crime and undermines the
Allies contention that they fought a
just
war.On the other hand, it has also been asserted that
Churchill's involvement in the bombing of Dresden was based on the
strategic and tactical aspects of winning the war. The destruction
of Dresden, while immense, was designed to expedite the defeat of
Germany. As the historian
Max Hastings
said in an article subtitled, "the Allied Bombing of Dresden": "I
believe it is wrong to describe strategic bombing as a war crime,
for this might be held to suggest some moral equivalence with the
deeds of the Nazis. Bombing represented a sincere, albeit mistaken,
attempt to bring about Germany's military defeat." Furthermore
British historian,
Frederick Taylor asserts that
"All sides bombed each other's cities during the war. Half a
million Soviet citizens, for example, died from German bombing
during the invasion and occupation of Russia. That's roughly
equivalent to the number of German citizens who died from Allied
raids. But the Allied bombing campaign was attached to military
operations and ceased as soon as military operations ceased."
The Second World War ends

Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall
on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had
been won, 8 May 1945.
In June
1944, the Allied Forces invaded Normandy
and pushed the Nazi forces back into Germany on a
broad front over the coming year. After being attacked on
three fronts by the Allies, and in spite of Allied failures, such
as
Operation Market Garden,
and German counter-attacks, including the
Battle of the Bulge, Germany was
eventually defeated.
On 7 May 1945 at the SHAEF headquarters in Rheims
the Allies accepted Germany's
surrender. On the same day in a BBC news flash
John Snagge announced that 8 May would be
Victory in Europe Day. On
Victory in Europe Day, Churchill broadcast to the nation that
Germany had surrendered and that a final cease fire on all fronts
in Europe would come into effect at one minute past midnight that
night. Afterwards Churchill told a huge crowd in Whitehall: "This
is your victory." The people shouted: "No, it is yours", and
Churchill then conducted them in the singing of
Land of Hope and Glory. In the
evening he made another broadcast to the nation asserting the
defeat of Japan in the coming months. The Japanese later
surrendered on 15 August 1945.
As Europe celebrated peace at the end of six years of war,
Churchill was concerning on the possibility that the celebrations
would soon be brutally interrupted. He concluded that the UK and
the US must prepare for the Red Army ignoring previously agreed
frontiers and agreements in Europe
"to impose upon Russia the
will of the United States and the British Empire." According
to the
Operation Unthinkable
plan ordered by Churchill and developed by the British Armed
Forces, the Third World War could have started on 1 July 1945 with
a sudden attack against the allied Soviet troops. The plan was
rejected by the British
Chiefs
of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible. However this
decision didn't stop the further development of the war plans: with
the beginning of an
arms race, the
militarily unfeasible Third World War developed instead into the
Cold War doctrine.
Leader of the opposition

Churchill at Potsdam, July 1945
Although Churchill's role in World War II had generated him much
support from the British population, he was defeated in the
1945 election.
Many reasons for this have been given, key among them being that a
desire for post-war reform was widespread amongst the population
and that the man who had led Britain in war was not seen as the man
to lead the nation in peace.
For six years he was to serve as the
Leader of the
Opposition. During these years Churchill continued to have an
impact on world affairs. During his March 1946 trip to the United
States, Churchill famously lost a lot of money in a poker game with
Harry Truman and his advisors. (He also liked to play
Bezique, which he learned while serving in the Boer
War.)
During this trip he gave his
Iron
Curtain speech about the USSR and the creation of the Eastern
Bloc.
Speaking on 5 March 1946 at Westminster
College
in Fulton
, Missouri, he declared:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of
Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,
Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous
cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the
Soviet sphere.
Churchill also argued strongly for British independence from the
European Coal and
Steel Community, which he saw as a Franco-German project. He
saw Britain's place as separate from the continent, much more
in-line with the countries of the Commonwealth and the Empire and
with the United States, the so-called Anglosphere.
Second term as Prime Minister
Return to government and the decline of the British Empire
After the General
Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His
third government—after the wartime national government and the
brief caretaker government of 1945—lasted until his resignation in
1955. His domestic priorities in his last government were
overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises, which were
partly the result of the continued decline of British military and
imperial prestige and power. Being a strong proponent of Britain as
an international
power, Churchill would often meet such moments with direct action. One example was his dispatch of British
troops to Kenya
to deal
with the Mau Mau rebellion.
Trying to retain what he could of the Empire, he once stated that,
"I will not preside over a dismemberment."
War in Malaya
This was followed by events which became known as the Malayan Emergency. In Malaya
, a rebellion against British rule had been in
progress since 1948. Once again, Churchill's government
inherited a crisis, and Churchill chose to use direct military
action against those in rebellion while attempting to build an
alliance with those who were not. While the rebellion was slowly
being defeated, it was equally clear that colonial rule from Britain was no longer
sustainable.
Relations with the United States
Churchill also devoted much of his time in office to Anglo-American
relations and although Churchill did not always agree with
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Churchill attempted to
maintain the Special
Relationship with the United States. He made four official
transatlantic visits to America during
his second term as Prime Minister.
The series of strokes
Churchill had suffered a mild stroke while on holiday in the south
of France in the summer of 1949. In June 1953, when he was 78, Churchill
suffered a more severe stroke at 10 Downing Street
. News of this was kept from the public and
from Parliament, who were told that Churchill was suffering from
exhaustion. He went to his country home, Chartwell, to recuperate
from the effects of the stroke which had affected his speech and
ability to walk. He returned to public life in October to
make a speech at a Conservative Party conference at Margate
. However, aware that he was slowing down
both physically and mentally, Churchill retired as Prime Minister in 1955 and was succeeded by
Anthony Eden. He suffered another mild
stroke in February 1956.
Retirement and death
Elizabeth II
offered to create Churchill Duke of
London, but this was declined due to the objections of his son
Randolph, who would have inherited the title on his father's death.
After leaving the premiership, Churchill spent less time in
parliament until he stood down at the 1964 General
Election.As a mere "back-bencher," Churchill spent most of his
retirement at Chartwell and at his home in Hyde Park Gate, in
London. In the 1959 General Election Churchill's majority fell by
more than a thousand, since many young voters in his constituency
did not support an 85-year-old who could only enter the House of
Commons in a wheelchair. As his mental and physical faculties
decayed, he began to lose the battle he had fought for so long
against the "black dog" of depression. There was speculation
that Churchill may have had Alzheimer's disease in his last years,
although others maintain that his reduced mental capacity was
merely the result of a series of strokes. In 1963, US President
John F. Kennedy, acting under
authorisation granted by an Act of
Congress, proclaimed him an Honorary Citizen of the
United States, but he was unable to attend the White House
ceremony. On 15 January 1965, Churchill
suffered a severe stroke that
left him gravely ill. He died at his home nine days later, at age
90, on the morning of Sunday 24 January 1965, coincidentally 70
years to the day after his father's death.
Funeral
By decree
of the Queen, his body lay in state for three days and a state
funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral
. As his coffin passed down the Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier on the
Havengore, dockers lowered their
crane jibs in a salute. The Royal
Artillery fired a 19-gun salute
(as head of government), and the
RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen
English Electric
Lightning fighters. The coffin was then taken the short
distance to Waterloo Station where it was loaded onto a specially
prepared and painted carriage as part of the funeral train for its
rail journey to Bladon. The funeral also saw one of the largest
assemblages of statesmen in the world. The funeral train of Pullman
coaches carrying his family mourners was hauled by Bulleid Pacific
steam locomotive No. 34051 "Winston Churchill". In the fields along
the route, and at the stations through which the train passed,
thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects. At Churchill's
request, he was buried in the family plot at St Martin's
Church
, Bladon, near Woodstock, not far from his
birthplace at Blenheim
Palace
. Churchill's funeral van – Southern Railway
Van S2464S – is now part of a preservation project with the
Swanage
Railway
having been repatriated to the UK in 2007 from the
USA where it was exported in 1965.
Churchill as artist, historian, and writer
Winston Churchill was also an accomplished artist and took great
pleasure in painting, especially after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in
1915. He found a haven in art to overcome the spells of depression,
or as he termed it, the "Black Dog", which he suffered throughout
his life. As William Rees-Mogg has stated, "In his own life, he had
to suffer the 'black dog' of depression. In his landscapes and
still lives there is no sign of depression". He is best known for
his impressionist scenes of landscape,
many of which were painted while on holiday in the South of France,
Egypt or Morocco. He continued his hobby throughout his life and
painted hundreds of paintings, many of which are on show in the
studio at Chartwell as well as private collections. Most of his
paintings are oil-based and feature landscapes, but he also did a
number of interior scenes and portraits.
Despite his lifelong fame and upper-class origins Churchill always
struggled to keep his income at a level that would fund his
extravagant lifestyle. MPs before 1946 received only a nominal
salary (and in fact did not receive anything at all until the
Parliament Act 1911) so many had
secondary professions from which to earn a living. From his
first book in
1898 until his second stint as Prime Minister, Churchill's income
was almost entirely made from writing books and opinion pieces for
newspapers and magazines. The most famous of his newspaper articles
are those that appeared in the Evening
Standard from 1936 warning of the rise of Hitler and the danger
of the policy of appeasement.
Churchill was also a prolific writer of books, writing a novel, two
biographies, three volumes of memoirs, and
several histories in addition to his many newspaper articles. He
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". Two of his most famous works, published after his
first premiereship brought his international fame to new heights,
were his six-volume memoir The Second World War
and A
History of the English-Speaking Peoples; a four-volume
history covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain
(55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914).
Honours

Statue in Parliament Square,
London
Aside from receiving the great honour of a state funeral, Churchill also received
numerous awards and honours, including being made only the second
Honorary Citizen
of the United States while still alive to receive the honor
(Mother Theresa was the other
individual to receive the honor during their lifetime, while five
others have received it posthumously). Churchill received the
Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1953 for his numerous published works, especially his
six-edition set The Second World War. In a 2002 BBC poll of the "100
Greatest Britons", he was proclaimed "The Greatest of Them All"
based on approximately a million votes from BBC viewers. Churchill
was also rated as one of the most influential leaders in history by Time magazine. Churchill
College
, Cambridge
was founded in 1958 on his behalf.
Honorary degrees
Ancestors
See also
References
Notes
- Jenkins, pp. 1–20
- Jenkins, p. 7
- Lt Churchill: 4th Queen's Own Hussars, The
Churchill Centre. Retrieved 2009-08-28.
- Jenkins, pp. 10–11
- Jenkins, p. 10
- Haffner, p.32
- Jenkins p.73 quoting H. W. Massingham in the Daily News
- Nicolson, Harold (1967), The War Years 1939-1945,
Diaries and Letters vol. II, New York: Atheneum, pp. 127 and
169.
- Soames,
Mary: Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of
Winston and Clementine Churchill. p. 1
- Soames p. 6
- Soames pp. 14–15
- Soames p. 17
- Soames pp. 18, 22, 25.
- Soames pp. 40, 44.
- Soames p. 105
- Soames p. 217
- Soames pp. 239, 241.
- Soames p. 262.
- Jenkins, pp. 20–21
- Jenkins, pp. 21–45
- Churchill, Winston S. 1951 The Second World War, Volume 5:
Closing the Ring. Houghton Miffin Edition. Bantam Books, New York
No ISBN or other number provided. p. 606. "Prime Minister to
Foreign Secretary 5. Feb (19)44. Your minute about raising certain
legations to the status of embassy. I must say that Cuba has as
good a claim as some other places–'la perla de Las Antillas'. Great
offence will be given if all the others have it and this large,
rich, beautiful island, the home of the cigar, is denied. Surely
Cuba has much more claim than Venezuela. You will make a bitter
enemy if you leave them out, and after a bit you will be forced to
give them what you have given to the others."
- Jenkins p. 29
- Jenkins, pp. 29–31
- Jenkins, p. 40
- Jenkins, pp. 55–62
- Jenkins, pp. 61–2
- Jenkins, pp. 62–4
- Jenkins, pp. 45–50
- Jenkins, p. 69
- Churchill's Commissions and Military Attachments,
The Churchill Centre
- Jenkins pp. 301–2
- Jenkins, pp. 74–6
- Jenkins, p. 101
- Churchill, Randolph. Winston S. Churchill: Young
Statesman. (c) 1967 C & T Publications: pp. 287–9
- Jenkins, pp. 150–1
- Jenkins, p. 152
- Jenkins, pp. 157–66
- Jenkins, p. 161
- Churchill, Randolph. Winston S. Churchill: Young Statesman. (c)
1967 C & T Publications pp. 359–65
- Churchill, Randolph. Winston S. Churchill: Young
Statesman. (c) 1967 C & T Publications: p. 395
- Jenkins, p. 194
- Jenkins, p. 186
- Churchill took flying lessons, 1911, The
Aerodrome.com
- Naval innovation: from coal to oil, Erik J. Dahl,
Joint Force Quarterly, 2000
- The World Crisis (new edition), Odhams 1938 p.
323
- Robert Rhode James. Churchill: A Study in Failure.
Pelican, 1973. p. 80.
- Jenkins, pp. 282–8
- Jenkins, p. 287
- Jenkins, p. 301
- Jenkins, p. 309
-
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/the-greatest-20th-century-beneficiary-of-popular-mythology-has-been-the-cad-churchill-1876680.html
- Ferris, John. Treasury Control, the Ten Year Rule and
British Service Policies, 1919–1924. The Historical Journal,
Vol. 30, No. 4. (Dec., 1987), pp. 859–83.
- Jenkins, pp. 361–5
- See Jonathan Glancey and Johann Hari, [>
- It is clear from the rest of the passage that "poisoned" does
not mean "deadly", as it would in modern usage
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, (London:
Heinemann, 1976), companion volume 4, part 1
- Budget Blunders: Mr Churchill and the Gold Standard
(1925), BBC News. Retrieved
02-12-2007.
- James p. 207.
- James p. 206.
- Jenkins, p. 405
- Picknett, Lynn, Prince, Clive, Prior, Stephen and Brydon,
Robert (2002). War of the Windsors: A Century of
Unconstitutional Monarchy, p. 78. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN
1-84018-631-3.
- H Henderson The Interwar Years and other papers. Clarendon
Press
- James p 22 212
- Books Written by Winston Churchill (see Amid these
Storms), The Churchill Centre, 2007
- 247 House of Commons Debates 5s col 755
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4573152.stm
- James p. 260.
- Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth
* 1922-1939. (c) 1976 by C&T Publications, Ltd.: p.
618.
- speech on 18 March 1931 quoted in James p. 254.
- James p. 262.
- Rhode James pp. 269–72
- James p. 258.
- Churchill India; facsimile edition see the
introduction by M Weidhorn Dragonwyck Publishing 1990
- Gordon, American Historical Review, p. 1051
- James pp. 285–6.
- Picknett, et al., p. 75.
- Lord Lloyd and the decline of the British Empire J Charmley pp.
1, 2, 213ff
- James p. 329 quoting Churchill's speech in the Commons
- James p. 408.
- A J P Taylor Beaverbrook Hamish Hamilton 1972 p. 375.
- Churchill, Winston. Great Contemporaries. (c) 1937 GP Putnam
Sons, Inc. New York, NY: p. 225.
- for a history of Focus see E Spier Focus Wolff
1963
- Harold Nicholson's letter to his wife on 13 March summed up the
situation "If we send an ultimatum to Germany she ought in all
reason to climb down. But then she will not climb down and we shall
have war... The people of this country absolutely refuse to have a
war. We would be faced with a general strike if we suggested such a
thing. We shall therefore have to climb down ignominiously
"Diaries and Letters 1930-1939 p. 249.
- James pp. 333–7.
- The Origins of the Second World War p. 153.
- The Gathering Storm p. 276.
- James p. 343.
- Frederick Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead Walter
Monckton Weidenfield and Nicholson 1969 p. 129.
- Middlemas K R and Barnes J Stanley Baldwin Weidenfield
and Nicholson 1969 p. 999.
- The Gathering Storm pp. 170–1. Others including
Citrine who chaired the meeting wrote that Churchill did not make
such a speech. Citrine Men and Work Hutchinson 1964 p.
357.
- James pp. 349–51 where the text of the statement is given
- Beaverbrook, Lord; Edited by A. J. P. Taylor (1966). The
Abdication of King Edward VIII. London: Hamish Hamilton.
- Alistair Cook 'Edward VIII' in Six Men Bodley Head
1977
- H Macmillan The Blast of War Macmillan 1970
- The Gathering Storm p. 171.
- A J P Taylor English History (1914-1945) Hamish
Hamilton 1961 p. 404.
- James p. 353.
- These factions were headed by Anthony Eden and Leo Amery Rhode James p. 428
- he was so consulted and so regarded during the Abdication
Crisis see footnotes above
- James p. 302.
- Rhode James pp. 316–8
- Picknett, et al., pp. 149–50.
- Current Biography 1942, p. 155.
- Churchill, Winston: "The Second World War" (abridged edition),
page 163. Pimlico, 2002. ISBN 0-7126-6702-4
- Self, Robert (2006). Neville Chamberlain: A Biography,
p. 431. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-5615-9.
- Bungay 2000, p. 11.
- Jenkins, p. 616–46
- Jenkins, p. 621
- Allen, Hubert Raymond. Who Won the Battle of Britain? London:
Arthur Barker, 1974. ISBN 0-213-16489-2.
- Speech to the House of Commons on 20 August 1940
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Address to the
Congress of the United States 1941, IBiblio.org
- Michael R. Beschloss, (2002) ‘’The Conquerors’’: p. 131.
- Jenkins, p. 849
- Clare Murphy WWII expulsions spectre lives on BBC.co.uk 2
August 2004
- De Zayas, Alfred M. (1979) Nemesis at Potsdam: The
Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans, Routledge
ISBN 0-7100-0458-3. Chapter I, p. 1 citing Churchill,
Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, vol. 406, col.
1484
- Jenkins, pp. 759–63
- Resis, Albert. The Churchill-Stalin Secret "Percentages"
Agreement on the Balkans, Moscow, October 1944. The American
Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 2. (Apr. 1978), pp. 368–87.
- A Footnote to Yalta by Jeremy Murray-Brown,
Documentary at Boston University
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag
Archipelago, vol. 1. Translated by Thomas P. Whitney. New York:
Harper and Row, 1974, page 85.
- Jacob Hornberger Repatriation—The Dark Side of World War
II. The Future of Freedom Foundation, 1995. [1]
- Taylor, Frederick; Dresden: Tuesday, 13 February 1945;
US review, NY: HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-000676-5;
UK review, London: Bloomsbury, ISBN
0-7475-7078-7. pp. 262–4. There were an unknown number of refugees
in Dresden, so the historians Matthias Neutzner, Götz Bergander and
Frederick Taylor have used historical sources and deductive
reasoning to estimate that the number of refugees in the city and
surrounding suburbs was around 200,000 or less on the first night
of the bombing.
- Longmate, Norman (1983). "The Bombers", Hutchins & Co. p.
346. Harris quote as source: Public Records Office ATH/DO/4B quoted
by Lord Zuckerman "From Apes to Warlords" p. 352.
- *Taylor, Frederick (2004). Dresden: Tuesday, 13 February
1945, London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 0-7475-7078-7. pp. 432,
433.
- Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos
in The
Guardian, 21 October 2003
- pp. 237, 238
- Charles Hawley. "Dresden Bombing Is To Be Regretted Enormously",
Der Spiegel
online, 11 February 2005
- coming home BBC Four, 9am to 9.45am, 9 May – 13 May 2005.
- On this day 8 May 1945 BBC. Retrieved 26
December 2007.
- The UK was on double summer time which was 1 hour in
front of 2301 hours CET that the surrender document
specified ( RAF Site Diary 7/8 May).
- The secret strategy to launch attack on Red
Army. Bob Fenton. Telegraph, Issue 1124. 1 October
1998.
- Picknett, et al., p. 190.
- Jenkins, pp. 789–94
- Interview: Clark Clifford. Retrieved 23 March
2009.
- Jenkins, p. 810 and pp. 819–14
- Jenkins pp. 843–61
- Jenkins p. 847
- Jenkins, pp. 868–71
- Rasor, p. 205
- Jenkins, p. 911
- Picknett, et al., p. 252.
- Winston Churchill's funeral van project Swanage Railway News
2006
- Largest Assemblage of Statesmen at funeral since
Churchill, BBC News,
2005
- Winston Churchill's funeral van denied Lottery funding
Swanage
Railway News 2008
- Jenkins p. 279
- Jenkins, pp. 819–23 and pp. 525–6
Primary sources
- Churchill, Winston. The World Crisis. 6 vols.
(1923–31); one-vol. ed. (2005). [On World War I.]
- –––. The Second World War. 6 vols. (1948–53)
- Coombs, David, ed., with Minnie
Churchill. Sir Winston Churchill: His Life through His
Paintings. Fwd. by Mary Soames.
Pegasus, 2003. ISBN 0-7624-2731-0. [Other editions entitled Sir
Winston Churchill's Life and His Paintings and Sir Winston
Churchill: His Life and His Paintings. Includes illustrations
of approx. 500–534 paintings by Churchill.]
- Gilbert, Martin. In Search of
Churchill: A Historian's Journey (1994). [Memoir about editing
the following multi-volume work.]
- –––, ed. Winston S. Churchill. An 8 volume
biography begun by Randolph
Churchill, supported by 15 companion vols. of official and
unofficial documents relating to Churchill. 1966–
- I. Youth, 1874-1900 (2 vols., 1966);
- II. Young Statesman, 1901–1914 (3 vols., 1967);
- III. The Challenge of War, 1914–1916 (3 vols., 1973). ISBN
0-395-16974-7 (10) and ISBN 978-0-395-16974-2 (13);
- IV. The Stricken World, 1916–1922 (2 vols., 1975);
- V. The Prophet of Truth, 1923–1939 (3 vols., 1977);
- VI. Finest Hour, 1939-1941: The Churchill War Papers
(2 vols., 1983);
- VII. Road to Victory, 1941-1945 (4 vols., 1986);
- VIII. Never Despair, 1945-1965 (3 vols., 1988).
- James, Robert Rhodes, ed. Winston S. Churchill:
His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963. 8 vols. London: Chelsea,
1974.
- Knowles, Elizabeth. The Oxford Dictionary of Twentieth
Century Quotations. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN
0-19-860103-4. ISBN 978-0-19-860103-6. ISBN 0-19-866250-5. ISBN
978-0-19-866250-1.
- Loewenheim, Francis L. and Harold
D. Langley, eds; Roosevelt
and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence
(1975).
Secondary sources
- Davis, Richard Harding.
Real Soldiers of Fortune (1906). Early biography. Project Gutenberg etext,
wikisource here
- Gilbert, Martin. Churchill: A
Life (1992). ISBN 0-8050-2396-8. [One-volume version of
8-volume biography.]
- Haffner, Sebastian.
Winston Churchill (1967).
- Hastings, Max. Finest Years:
Churchill as Warlord, 1940-45. London, HarperPress, 2009. ISBN
9780007263677
- Hennessy, P. Prime minister: the office and its holders
since 1945 (2001).
- Hitchens, Christopher. "The
Medals of His Defeats", The
Atlantic Monthly (April 2002).
- James, Robert Rhodes. Churchill: A Study in Failure,
1900-1939 (1970).
- Jenkins, Roy. Churchill: A
Biography (2001).
- Kersaudy, François. Churchill and De Gaulle (1981).
ISBN 0-00-216328-4.
- Krockow, Christian. Churchill: Man of the Century.
[1900-1999]. ISBN 1-902809-43-2.
- Lukacs, John. Churchill :
Visionary, Statesman, Historian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
- Manchester, William.
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940
(1988). ISBN 0-316-54512-0.
- –––.
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm,
1940-1965 (2010).
- –––.
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory,
1874–1932 (1983). ISBN 0-316-54503-1.
- Massie, Robert. Dreadnought:
Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War. ISBN
1-84413-528-4). [Chapters 40–41 concern Churchill at
Admiralty.]
- Pelling, Henry. Winston
Churchill (1974). ISBN 1-84022-218-2. [Comprehensive
biography.]
- Rasor, Eugene L. Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965:
A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography.
Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN
0-313-30546-3 [Entries include several thousand books and scholarly
articles.]
- Soames, Mary, ed. Speaking for Themselves: The Personal
Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill (1998).
- Stansky, Peter, ed. Churchill: A Profile (1973)
[Perspectives on Churchill by leading scholars]
- Storr, Anthony. Churchill's
Black Dog and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind. HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd. New Edition ed., 1997. ISBN 9780006375661
External links
Speeches