Hall of Fame: Rise and Fall of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill, also known as Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England. His father, Lord Randolph was a conservative politician while his mother was an American named Jennie Jerome, daughter of a New York stockbroker newspaper proprietor. Mrs Everest, his nanny was hired to attend young Winston when he was just a few months old. He and his younger brother Jack saw very little of their parents during their childhood, and both were taken care of by their nanny.

In 1882, Churchill was sent away to boarding school named St George’s at Berkshire. After only two years at St George’s, he was sent to a school in Brighton where he learned things that interested him such as French, history, poetry, horse riding and swimming.

YOUNG SOLDIER (1893 – 1900)

The death of his father who was aged just forty-five on 24 January 1895, had a profound effect on him. After one month, Churchill became a cavalry officer in the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars. From 1895 to 1900, he got himself transferred to dangerous places and then writing up his experiences in newspaper articles and books. During these years he was posted in Cuba, South Africa and India.

RISING POLITICIAN (1901 – 1932)

Returning to Britain as a military hero, he laid siege again to Oldham in the election of 1900.Churchill won his first election to Parliament as a Conservative (Tory) for the town of Oldham. In 1904 he left his father’s conservative party and joined the Liberals. Initially in his career, he held a succession of senior Government roles. In 1924, he came back to the Conservative Party as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

WILDERNESS YEARS (1933 – 1939)

In November 1932, Churchill visited Germany and saw the brown-shirted Nazis marching through the streets of Munich. Although he no longer had a government position, he continued to write books and newspaper articles, but many, including himself, thought his political career was over. He openly criticized Hitler’s new Nazi dictatorship in Germany and made efforts for British rearmament. After the Munich Crisis of 1938, there was a rising agreement that he was right. When war finally broke out in September 1939, the then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had no choice but to make him First Lord of the Admiralty.

WAR LEADER (1940 – 1945)

Churchill became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, the same day that Hitler invaded France. The first weeks of his leadership were marked by military disaster, as France surrendered, and the British army was evacuated from Dunkirk. Churchill cautiously curated his famous speeches to raise British morale while sending a message of disobedience to Germany. He told the House of Commons, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’. He personified the British spirit through his cigar and V for Victory salute. The war in Europe ended with Victory in Europe on 8 May 1945. But the Conservatives were thrown out of office and Churchill resigned as the Prime Minister to make way for Clement Attlee and the Labour Party.

SENIOR STATESMAN (1946 – 1965)

Churchill’s world ended with WWII. The British Empire was lost, and Britain was bankrupt. But he refused to accept defeat, he re-launched himself on the international stage with warning about the Soviet ‘Iron Curtain’. He returned as the Prime Minister in 1951, participating in the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. His deteriorating health finally forced his retirement in 1955 though he remained a Member of Parliament until June 1964.

DEATH AND LEGACY

Winston Churchill died on January 24, 1965. Churchill had predicted that he would die on the anniversary of his father’s death. This came out to be true when he died seventy years to the day after his father Lord Randolph passed away. Sir Martin Gilbert, in the final volume of his epic biography Winston S Churchill, said, “Men and women wept when they heard the news of Churchill’s death. Nearly ten years had passed since his last months as Prime Minister, a quarter of a century since his “finest hour” in 1940.”

Vishakha

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