Winston Churchill Essay, Research Paper

?Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, his family’s ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, on November 30, 1874.? (1) He grew up in a sheltered life of a wealthy family. He was the older son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a British statesman who rose to be chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. He attended a higher educational program at Harrow High School. Toward the end of his years at Harrow, he took great diligence in preparing for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, in witch he acquired his deploma with honors. Churchill fit right into the military, he advanced rather quickly into officer ranks and served with every fiber of his being. In ?November 1895.?(5) Churchill used his first military leave to go on an assignment for a London newspaper. Winston went to Cuba with the Spanish Army and wrote about the rebellion and the fighting. Churchill witnessed many battles and wrote about all of them. He wrote his first book ? The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898).?(4) ?In 1898 Churchill went to Egypt attached to the 21st Lancers and took part in the reconquest of the Sudan.?(2) Just like clockwork, he produced a book from his newspaper dispatches. ?The River War (1899) in two volumes.?(6)

Tired by his military career, Churchill resigned from the army ?and turned to journalism and politics in 1899.?(6) Parliament was the next step for this ambitious man, well it would have been if had got elected. Instead Winston traveled to South Africa to cover the Boer War. He was writing and the regiment he was with was captured. Churchill, with his enginewity, managed to escape and take the railroad to Portuguese East Africa. A feat that made him just short of a ledgend, he then became a national hero. There was not to many people who did not know the name of Winston Churchill. With his renewed love for the military, Churchill signed up for another army commission. While in the service he continued to write for the papers. In the summer of ?1900.?(3) Churchill went back to London.?His newspaper dispatches were promptly reprinted in two books, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) and Ian.?(2) When Churchill finally went back to England in ?1900, his South Africa Exploits had made him famous.?(4) With his new found glory, Winston stepped into the House of Commons. During the start of his political career, Churchill produced his only novel ?Savrola (1900).?(5) Within the next few years he produced ?a two-volume biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill (1906).?(1)

Churchill became undersecretary at the Colonial Office, where he was he was in charge of matters concerning Britain’s colonies. One of his trips to inspect some colonies in East Africa generated another book, ?My African Journey (1908).?(1) In 1908 he recieved his ?first cabinet post as president of the Board of Trade.?(7) That same year, Clementine Ogilvy Hozier stepped into the picture, who Churchill married shortly. Winston?s presence in the cabinet was not going unnoticed. In 1911 Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith made Churchill first lord of the admiralty. Churchill dove head first into this prestigius undertaking, developing heavier guns, faster battleships, and superior naval aviation. The British fleet was better than ever and Churchill was pleased with his great acheivement. Things went well for Churchill until the campaign at the Gallipoli Peninsula on the Dardanelles. When things went sour Churchill took the blame as scapegoat. Churchill was then ?demoted from the admiralty in May 1915 and given a minor cabinet post.?(2)

The months that followed his demotion were difficult, ?he began to paint, a hobby that brought him pleasure for more than four decades.?(1) For the next few years Winston jump in and out of office. He kept busy painting and writing ?The World Crisis (1923-1931) his five-volume account of World War I.?(1) ?He wrote his autobiography My Early Life (1930), which he called “a story of youthful endeavour,” and two books of essays, Thoughts and Adventures (1932) and Great Contemporaries (1937). His most sustained writing project during these years was the four-volume Marlborough: His Life and Times (1933-1938).?(1)

?1940 the German attacked Norway and Chamberlain resigned, giving King George VI the incentive to ask Churchill to be Prime Minister.?(3) Churchill answered with his now famous quote, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”(2)

?1945?(4) a new Prime Minister was appointed, Clement Richard Attlee. This change crushed his political party. He began rebuilding the shattered fabric of his party and in

?1946 six-volume work, The Second World War (1948-1954), a comprehensive first-person account of his wartime statesmanship.? In ?1951?(2) Churchill’s efforts to revitalize the Conservative Party were rewarded, and he became Prime Minister, again.

?In 1953 Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him the Knighthood of the Garter, and he became Sir Winston Churchill.?(3) In the same year he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his historical and biographical works. ?November 1954, on Churchill’s 80th birthday, the House of Commons honored him on the eve of his retirement.?(1) In April ?1955?(7) he resigned as Prime Minister but remained a member of the House of Commons. During his retirement, Churchill completed ?A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-1958), a four-volume work.?(5) In his last years he spent most of his time painting, ?ultimately producing more than 500 canvases.?(1) ?The Royal Academy of Arts presented a collection of his works in 1959.?(1)

Churchill past away peacefully at his home in London, two months after his 90th birthday. Following a state funeral service that was attended by dozens of world leaders ?at Saint Paul’s Cathedral,?(1) he was buried near Blenheim Palace.