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The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard
Spencer-Churchill,  Order of the Garter|KG,  
Order of Merit|OM,  Order of the Companions of
Honour|CH,  Royal Society|FRS Queen's Privy
Council for Canada|PC (30 November 1874 – 24
January 1965) was a United Kingdom|British
statesman, best known as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom during the World War II|Second
World War. At various times a soldier, journalist,
author and politician, Churchill is generally
regarded as one of the most important leaders in
British and world history. He won the 1953 Nobel
Prize for literature.

Churchill's legal surname was Spencer-Churchill,
but starting with his father, Lord Randolph
Churchill, his branch of the family always used
just the name Churchill in public life. Because of
the existence of another author called Winston
Churchill (novelist)|Winston Churchill, his books
were published under the name "Winston Spencer
Churchill" or "Winston S. Churchill", though some
later printings ignore this.


==Early life==

Born at Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock,
Oxfordshire|Woodstock in the England|English
county of Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill was a
descendant of the first famous member of the
Churchill family – John Churchill, who
became the first Duke of Marlborough. Winston's
politician father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was
the third son of the John Spencer-Churchill, 7th
Duke of Marlborough|7th Duke of Marlborough;
Winston's mother was Jennie Jerome|Lady Randolph
Churchill (née Jennie Jerome), daughter of
American millionaire Leonard Jerome. Neither
parent showed young Winston much affection or
love.

Churchill spent much of his childhood at boarding
schools, including Harrow School|Harrow. He was
rarely visited by his mother, whom he virtually
worshipped, despite his letters begging her to
either come or let his father permit him to come
home. He had a distant relationship with his
father despite keenly following his father's
career. Once, in 1886, he is reported to have
proclaimed "My daddy is Chancellor of the
Exchequer and one day that's what I'm going to
be." His desolate, lonely childhood stayed with
him throughout his life. He was very close to his
nurse, Elizabeth Ann Everest (nicknamed "Woom" by
Churchill), and was deeply saddened when she died
on 3 July 1895. Churchill paid for her gravestone
at the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium.

Churchill did badly at Harrow, regularly being
punished for poor work and lack of effort. His
nature was independent and rebellious and he
failed to achieve much academically, failing some
of the same courses numerous times despite showing
great ability in other areas such as maths and
history, in both of which he was placed at times
top in his class. But his refusal to study the
classics undermined any chance of success at a
school like Harrow. 

The view of Churchill as a failure at school is
one which he himself propagated, probably due to
his father's intense dislike of the young Winston
and his obvious readiness to label his son a
disappointment. He did, however, become the
school's fencing champion.

In 1893, on his third attempt, he passed the
entrance exam and enrolled in the Royal Military
Academy Sandhurst|Royal Military Academy at
Sandhurst. He entered the college near the bottom
of the intake of 102 cadets, but when he graduated
two years later he was ranked eighth in his class.
He was appointed Second Lieutenant in the 4th
Hussars cavalry. In 1895, prior to his regiment
departing for an extended posting to India, he
went to Cuba as a military observer with the
Spanish army in its fight against pro-independence
rebels. He also reported for the Saturday Review.
In 1898 he was attached as a supernumerary officer
to the 21st Lancers (acting again as a war
correspondent) and rode with them at the Battle of
Omdurman, taking part in what is commonly thought
to be the last full cavalry charge of the British
Empire.

==The young man in a hurry==
As the son of a prominent politician, it was
unsurprising that Churchill was soon to be drawn
into politics himself. He started speaking at a
number of Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative
meetings in the 1890s, and in 1897 he wrote an
unpublished essay,
http://www-adm.pdx.edu/user/frinq/pluralst/churspe
k.htm "The Scaffolding of Rhetoric". It was
noticeable that in the first few years of his
political career, and again in the mid-1920s, he
frequently used his father's slogan of "Tory
Democracy". Many were to regard Churchill in his
early years as being obsessed with continuing his
father's battles from fifteen years earlier.



In 1899 he was considered as a prospective
candidate for Oldham. One of the town's two Member
of Parliament|MPs had died and the other, in ill
health, was persuaded to resign so that both seats
could be elected together. Churchill found himself
thrust into a prominent by-election, alongside
James Mawdsley (trade unionist), the Lancashire
general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Cotton Spinners and one of the few prominent
Conservative trade unionists. The Liberal
candidates were Alfred Emmott and Walter Runciman,
1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford|Walter Runciman,
who later sat in the Cabinet alongside Churchill.
The by-election was dominated by a number of
issues, including a Tithe|Clerical Tithes Bill in
Parliament, the brunt of criticism for which fell
upon Churchill as a candidate for the governing
party and the only Anglican of the four (though he
was non-practicing). Facing attacks on the Bill,
Churchill repudiated it. He later commented, "This
was a frightful mistake. It is not the slightest
use defending Governments or parties unless you
defend the worst thing about which they are
attacked." The Conservative leader in the Commons
Arthur Balfour commented, "I thought he was a
young man of promise, but it appears he is a young
man of promises." Despite this, Churchill and
Mawdsley narrowly lost the marginal seat, though
with no harm to themselves as the Conservative
government was facing a period of unpopularity.
Runciman is reported to have commented to
Churchill: "Don't worry, I don't think this is the
last the country has heard of either of us."

Churchill then became a war correspondent in the
second Boer War|Anglo-Boer war between Britain and
self-proclaimed Afrikaners in South Africa. He was
captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train
convoy and thrown into prison. 

However, he made a daring escape which made him
something of a national hero. One night he scaled
the prison walls and slipped by the sentries.
Then, travelling on freight trains, he crossed
over 500 kilometres of enemy territory and crossed
the South African border to Lourenço Marques (now
Maputo in Mozambique). He quickly returned to
British-controlled South Africa where he joined a
South African cavalry regiment and was involved in
a number of brutal and bloody battles, and resumed
filing stories for a rapt public in Britain.
During this period he was recommended for a
Victoria Cross although Horatio Kitchener, 1st
Earl Kitchener|Horatio Kitchener vetoed the award.

Churchill later returned to Oldham and used the
publicity he had gained to stand again for the
seat in the United Kingdom general election,
1900|1900 general election when he was elected for
the seat. It was the successful launch of a
political career which would last a total of
sixty-two years, serving as an MP in the House of
Commons from 1900 to 1922 and from 1924 to 1964.
He remained politically active even in his brief
years out of the Commons. At first a member of the
Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party, he
"crossed the floor" in 1904 to join the Liberal
Party (UK)|Liberals over his opposition to
protective tariffs.



==Ministerial office==
In the United Kingdom general election, 1906|1906
general election, Churchill won a seat in
Manchester. In the Liberal government of Henry
Campbell-Bannerman he served as Under-Secretary of
State for the Colonies. Churchill soon became the
most prominent member of the Government outside
the Cabinet, and when Campbell-Bannerman was
succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908, it
came as little surprise when 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
Manchester seat to the Conservative William
Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford|William
Joynson-Hicks but was soon elected in another
by-election at Dundee. As President of the Board
of Trade he pursued radical social reforms in
conjunction with David Lloyd George, the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1910 Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary,
where he was to prove somewhat controversial. A
famous photograph from the time shows the
impetuous Churchill taking personal charge of the
January 1911 Sidney Street Siege, peering around a
corner to view a gun battle between cornered
anarchists and Scots Guards. His role attracted
much criticism.  The building which was laid siege
to, caught fire and Churchill denied the fire
brigade access, forcing the criminals to choose
surrender or death. Arthur Balfour asked, "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?"

In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the
Admiralty, a post he would hold into the World War
I|First World War. He gave impetus to military
reform efforts, including development of naval
aviation, tanks, and the switch in fuel from coal
to oil, a massive engineering task, also reliant
on securing Mesopotamias oil rights bought circa
1907 through the secret service using the Royal
Burmah Oil Company as a front company.
The development of the tank|battle tank was
financed from naval research funds via the 
Landships Committee, and even though a decade
later developing the battle tank would be seen as
a stroke of genius, at the time it was seen as
misappropriation of funds. The battle tank was
deployed ineptly in 1915, much to Churchill's
annoyance. He wanted a fleet of tanks used to
surprised the Germans under cover of smoke, and to
open a large 
section of the trench warfare|trenches by crushing
barbed wire and creating a breakthrough sector.

However, he was also one of the political and
military engineers of the disastrous Battle of
Gallipoli|Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles
during World War I, which led to his description
as "the butcher of Gallipoli". When Asquith formed
an all-party coalition government, the
Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the
price for entry. For several months Churchill
served in the non-portfolio job of Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster, before resigning from the
government feeling his energies were not being
used. He rejoined the army, though remaining an
MP, and served for several months on the Western
Front. During this period his second in command
was a young Archibald Sinclair, 1st Viscount
Thurso|Archibald Sinclair who would later lead the
Liberal Party.

==Return to power==
In December 1916, Asquith and the Conservative
Party were ousted from power and were replaced by
Lloyd George and the now ruling Liberal Party. 
However, the time was thought to not yet be right
to risk the Conservatives' wrath by bringing
Churchill back into government. However, in July
1917 Churchill was appointed Minister of
Munitions. After the end of the war Churchill
served as both Secretary of State for War and
Secretary of State for Air (1919–1921). On
the possible use of gas weapons in quelling
uprisings in the British League of Nations
Mandate|mandated territories of the former Ottoman
Empire, Churchill wrote: 

: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 gases: gases 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.

During this time (1919–1921|21), he
undertook with surprising zeal the cutting of
military expenditure. However, the 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 an
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.

== Career between the wars==

In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation
to remove his appendix. Upon his return, he
learned that the government had fallen and a
United Kingdom general election, 1922|General
Election was looming. The Liberal Party was now
beset by internal division and Churchill's
campaign was weak. He lost his seat at Dundee,
quipping that he had lost his ministerial office,
his seat and his appendix all at once. Churchill
stood for the Liberals again in the United Kingdom
general election, 1923|1923 general election,
losing in Leicester, but over the next twelve
months he moved towards the Conservative Party,
though initially using the labels "Anti-Socialist"
and "Constitutionalist". Two years later, in the
United Kingdom general election, 1924|General
Election of 1924, he was elected to represent
Epping (where there is now a statue of him) as a
"Constitutionalist" with Conservative backing. The
following year he formally rejoined the
Conservative Party, commenting wryly that "Anyone
can rat change parties, but it takes a certain
ingenuity to re-rat."  

He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in
1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw the United
Kingdom's disastrous return to the Gold Standard,
which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the
miners' strike that led to the UK General Strike
1926|General Strike of 1926. This decision
prompted the economist John Maynard Keynes to
write The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill,
correctly arguing that the return to the gold
standard would lead to a world depression.
Churchill later regarded this as one of the worst
decisions of his life. To be fair to him, it must
be noted that he was not an economist and that he
acted on the advice of the Governor of the Bank of
England, Montague Norman (of whom Keynes said:
"Always so charming, always so wrong".) 

During the UK General Strike 1926|General Strike
of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested
that machineguns 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." Furthermore, he was to controversially
claim 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.

The Conservative government was defeated in the
United Kingdom general election, 1929|1929 General
Election. In the next two years, Churchill became
estranged from the Conservative leadership over
the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home
Rule. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the UK National
Government|National Government in 1931, Churchill
was not invited to join the Cabinet
(government)|Cabinet. He was now at the lowest
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 (which was not published
until well after WWII). He became most notable for
his outspoken opposition towards the granting of
independence to India (see Simon Commission and
Government of India Act 1935).

Soon, though, his attention was drawn to the rise
of Adolf Hitler and the dangers of Germany's
rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling
on Britain to strengthen itself and counter the
belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce
critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of
Hitler. He was also an outspoken supporter of King
 Edward VIII of the United Kingdom|Edward VIII
during the Abdication Crisis of Edward
VIII|Abdication Crisis, leading to some
speculation that he might be appointed Prime
Minister if the King refused to take Baldwin's
advice and consequently the government resigned.
However, this did not happen, and Churchill found
himself politically isolated and bruised for some
time after this.

==Role as wartime Prime Minister==
expansion
At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill
was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In this
job he proved to be one of the highest-profile
ministers during the so-called "Bore War", when
the only noticeable action was at sea.  Churchill
advocated the pre-emptive occupation of the
neutral Norway|Norwegian iron-ore port of Narvik
and the iron mines in Swedish iron ore during
World War II|Kiruna, Sweden, early in the War.
However, Chamberlain and the rest of the War
Cabinet disagreed, and the operation was delayed
until the Norwegian Campaign|German invasion of
Norway, which was successful despite British
efforts.  

In May 1940, directly upon the German invasion of
France by a surprising lightning advance through
the Low Countries, it became clear that the
country had no confidence in Chamberlain's
prosecution of the war. Chamberlain resigned, and 
Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed
an all-party government. In response to previous
criticisms that there had been no clear single
minister in charge of the prosecution of the war,
he created and took the additional position of
Minister of Defence. He immediately put his friend
and confidant the industrialist and newspaper
baron Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook|Lord
Beaverbrook in charge of aircraft production. It
was Beaverbrook's astounding business acumen that
allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft
production and engineering that eventually made
the difference in the war.



Churchill's speeches were a great inspiration to
the embattled United Kingdom. His first speech as
Prime Minister was the famous "I have nothing to
offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech.
He followed that closely with two other equally
famous ones, given just before the Battle of
Britain. One included the immortal line, "We shall
defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we
shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and
in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we
shall never surrender." The other included the
equally famous "Let us therefore brace ourselves
to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the
British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a
thousand years, men will still say, 'This was
their finest hour.'" 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.


His good relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt
secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the
North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. It was for
this reason that Churchill was relieved when
Roosevelt was re-elected. Upon re-election,
Roosevelt immediately set about implementing a new
method of not only providing military hardware to
Britain without the need for monetary payment, but
also of providing, free of fiscal charge, much of
the shipping that transported the supplies. Put
simply, Roosevelt persuaded Congress that
repayment for this immensely costly service would
take the form of defending the USA; and so
Lend-lease was born. Churchill had 12 military
strategy|strategic List of World War II
conferences|conferences with Roosevelt which
covered the Atlantic Charter, Europe first
strategy, the Declaration by the United Nations
and other war policies.  Churchill initiated the
Special Operations Executive (SOE) under Hugh
Dalton's Minister of Economic Warfare|Ministry of
Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and
fostered covert, subversive and partisan
operations in occupied territories with notable
success; and also the British Commandos|Commandos
which established the pattern for most of the
world's current Special Forces. The Russians
referred to him as the "British Bulldog".


However, some of the military actions during the
war remain controversial. Churchill was at best
indifferent and perhaps complicit in the Great
Bengal famine of 1943 which took the lives of at
least 2.5 million Bengalis. Japanese troops were
threatening British India after having
successfully taken neighbouring British Burma.
Some consider the British government's policy of
denying effective famine relief a deliberate and
callous scorched earth policy adopted in the event
of a successful Japanese invasion. Churchill
supported the Bombing of Dresden in World War
II|bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of
the war; Dresden was primarily a civilian target
with many refugees from the East and was of
allegedly little military value. However, the
bombing was helpful to the allied Soviets.


Churchill was party to treaties that would redraw
post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. These
were discussed as early as 1943. Proposals for
European boundaries and settlements were
officially agreed to by Harry S. Truman,
Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam
Conference|Potsdam.

The settlement concerning the borders of Poland,
i.e. the Curzon line|boundary between Poland and
the Soviet Union and Oder-Neisse line|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. 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 in 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." The transfers were
in the end carried out in a way which resulted in
hardship and death for many of those transferred.
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.

==After World War II==

Although the importance of Churchill's role in
World War II was undeniable, he had many enemies
in his own country.  His expressed contempt for a
number of popular ideas, in particular public
health care and better education for the majority
of the population, produced much dissatisfaction
amongst the population, particularly those who had
fought in the war. Immediately following the close
of the war in Europe, Churchill was heavily
defeated at united Kingdom general election,
1945|election by Clement Attlee and the Labour
Party (UK)|Labour Party. Some historians think
that many British voters believed that the man who
had led the nation so well in war was not the best
man to lead it in peace. Others see the election
result as a reaction against not Churchill
personally, but against the Conservative Party's
record in the 1930s under Baldwin and Chamberlain.

Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the
pan-Europeanism that eventually led to the
formation of the European Common market and later
the European Union (for which one of the three
main buildings of the European Parliament is named
in his honour). Churchill was also instrumental in
giving France a permanent seat on the UN Security
Council|United Nations Security Council (which
provided another European power to counterbalance
the Soviet Union's permanent seat). Churchill also
occasionally made comments supportive of world
government. For instance, he once
saidhttp://www.worldbeyondborders.org/quotes.htm:
:Unless some effective world supergovernment for
the purpose of preventing war can be set up ...
the prospects for peace and human progress are
dark ...If ... it is found possible to build a
world organization of irresistible force and
inviolable authority for the purpose of securing
peace, there are no limits to the blessings which
all men enjoy and share.

At the beginning of the Cold War, he famously
mentioned the "Iron Curtain", a phrase originally
created by Joseph Goebbels.   The phrase entered
the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at
Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri|Fulton,
Missouri, when Churchill, a guest of Harry S.
Truman, famously 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, Poland|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.

==Second term==

Churchill was restless and bored as leader of the
Conservative opposition in the immediate post-war
years.  After Labour's defeat in the General
Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime
Minister.  His third government – after the
wartime national government and the short
caretaker government of 1945 – would last
until his resignation in 1955. During this period
he renewed what he called the "special
relationship" between Britain and the United
States, and engaged himself in the formation of
the post-war order.

His domestic priorities were, however,
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.

===Anglo-Iranian Oil Dispute===
The crisis began under the government of Clement
Attlee. In March 1951, the Iranian parliament (the
Majlis) voted to nationalization|nationalise the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and its holdings
by passing a bill strongly backed by the elderly
statesman Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who was
elected Prime Minister the following April by a
large majority of the parliament.  The
International Court of Justice was called into
settle the dispute, but a 50/50 profit-sharing
arrangement, with recognition of nationalisation,
was rejected by Mossadegh. Direct negotiations
between the British and the Iranian government
ceased, and over the course of 1951, the British
ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian
government and explored the possibility of a coup
against it. U.S. President Harry S. Truman was
reluctant to agree, placing a much higher priority
on the Korean War. The effects of the blockade and
embargo were staggering and led to a virtual
shutdown of Iran's oil exports.

Churchill's return to power brought with it a
policy of undermining the Mossadegh government.
Both sides floated proposals unacceptable to the
other, each side believing that time was on its
side. Negotiations broke down, and as the
blockade's political and economic costs mounted
inside Iran, coup plots arose from the army and
pro-British factions in the Majlis.

Churchill and his Foreign Secretary pursued two
mutually exclusive goals. On one hand, they wanted
"development and reform" in Iran; on the other
hand, they did not want to give up the control or
revenue from AIOC that would have permitted that
development and reform to go forward. Initially
they backed Sayyid Zia as an individual with whom
they could do business, but as the embargo dragged
on, they turned more and more to an alliance with
the military. Churchill's government had come
full-circle, from ending the Attlee plans for a
coup, to planning one itself.

The crisis dragged on until 1953.  Churchill
approved a plan, with help from U.S. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, to back a coup in Iran. The
combination of external and internal political
pressure converged around Fazlollah Zahedi. Over
the summer of 1953, demonstrations grew in Iran,
and with the failure of a plebiscite, the
government was destabilised. Zahedi, using foreign
financing, took power, and Mossadegh surrendered
to him on 20 August 1953.

The coup pointed to an underlying tension within
the post-War order: the industrialised
Democracies, hungry for resources to rebuild in
the wake of World War II, and to engage the Soviet
Union in the Cold War, dealt with emerging states
such as Iran as they had with colonies in a
previous era. On one hand, spurred by the fear of
a third world war against the USSR and committed
to a policy of containment at any cost, they were
more than willing to circumvent local political
prerogatives.  On the other hand, many of these
local governments were both unstable and corrupt.
The two factors created a vicious circle –
intervention led to more dictatorial rule and
corruption, which made intervention rather than
establishment of strong local political
institutions a greater and greater temptation.

===The Mau Mau Rebellion===
seemain|Mau Mau Uprising
In 1951, grievances against the colonial
distribution of land came to a head with the Kenya
Africa Union demanding greater representation and
land reform.  When these demands were rejected,
more radical elements came forward, launching the
Mau Mau rebellion in 1952. On 17August 1952, a
state of emergency was declared, and British
troops were flown to Kenya to deal with the
rebellion. As both sides increased the ferocity of
their attacks, the country moved to full-scale
civil war. 

In 1953, the Lari massacre, perpetrated by Mau-Mau
insurgents against Kikuyu loyal to the British,
changed the political complexion of the rebellion
and gave the public-relations advantage to the
British. Churchill's strategy was to use a
military stick combined with implementing many of
the concessions that Attlee's government had
blocked in 1951. He ordered an increased military
presence and appointed General Sir George Erskine,
who would implement Operation Anvil in 1954 that
broke the back of the rebellion in the city of
Nairobi.  Operation Hammer, in turn, was designed
to root out rebels in the countryside. Churchill
ordered peace talks opened, but these collapsed
shortly after his leaving office.

===Malaya Emergency===
seemain|Malayan Emergency
In Malaysia, a rebellion against British rule had
been in progress since 1948.  Once again,
Churchill's government inherited a crisis, and
once again Churchill chose to use direct military
action against those in rebellion while attempting
to build an alliance with those who were not. He
stepped up the implementation of a "hearts and
minds" campaign and approved the creation of
fortified villages, a tactic that would become a
recurring part of Western military strategy in
South-East Asia. (See Vietnam War). 

The Malayan Emergency was a more direct case of a
guerrilla movement, centred in an ethnic group,
but backed by the Soviet Union. As such, Britain's
policy of direct confrontation and military
victory had a great deal more support than in Iran
or in Kenya. At the highpoint of the conflict,
over 35,000 British troops were stationed in
Malaysia. As the rebellion lost ground, it began
to lose favour with the local population. 

While the rebellion was slowly being defeated, it
was equally clear that colonial rule from Britain
was no longer tenable.  In 1953, plans were drawn
up for independence for Singapore and the other
crown colonies in the area. The first elections
were held in 1955, just days before Churchill's
own resignation, and by 1957, under Prime Minister
Anthony Eden, Malaysia became independent.

==Honours for Churchill==
In 1953 he was awarded two major honours: he was
invested as a Order_of_the_Garter|Knight of the
Garter (becoming Sir Winston Churchill, KG) and he
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel
Prize for Literature "for his mastery of
historical and biographical description as well as
for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human
values". A stroke in June of that year led to him
being paralysed down his left side. He retired
because of his health on 5 April 1955 but retained
his post as Chancellor of the University of
Bristol.  

In 1955, Churchill was offered elevation to
dukedom as the first-ever Duke of London, a title
he himself selected. However, he then declined the
title after being persuaded by his son Randolph
Churchill|Randolph not to accept it. Since then,
no non-royal people have ever been offered a
Dukedom in the United Kingdom.

In 1956 he received the Karlspreis (engl.:
Charlemagne Award), an award by the German city of
Aachen to those who most contribute to the
European idea and European peace.

During the next few years he revised and finally
published A History of the English Speaking
Peoples in four volumes. In 1959 Churchill
inherited the title of Father of the House,
becoming the MP with the longest continuous
service – since 1924. He was to hold the
position until his retirement from the Commons in
1964, the position of Father of the House then
passing to Rab Butler.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy made Churchill the first
person to receive Honorary U.S. Citizenship.

From 1941 to his death, he was the Lord Warden of
the Cinque Ports, a ceremonial office.

==Family==
On 2 September 1908 at the socially desirable St.
Margaret's, Westminster, Churchill married
Clementine Churchill, Baroness
Spencer-Churchill|Clementine Hozier, a dazzling
but largely penniless beauty whom he met at a
dinner party that March (he had proposed to
actress Ethel Barrymore but was turned down). They
had five children: Diana Churchill|Diana; Randolph
Frederick Edward Churchill|Randolph; Sarah
Millicent Hermione Churchill|Sarah, who co-starred
with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding; Marigold
Frances Churchill|Marigold, who died in early
childhood; and Mary Churchill|Mary, who has
written a book on her parents.

Clementine's mother was Lady Blanche Henrietta
Ogilvy, second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier
and a daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie.
Clementine's paternity, however, is open to
healthy debate. Lady Blanche was well-known for
sharing her favours and was eventually divorced as
a result. She maintained that Clementine's father
was Bay Middleton|Capt. William George "Bay"
Middleton, a noted horseman. But Clementine's
biographer Joan Hardwick has surmised, due to Sir
Henry Hozier's reputed sterility, that all Lady
Blanche's "Hozier" children were actually fathered
by her sister's husband, Algernon Bertram
Freeman-Mitford, better known as a grandfather of
the infamous Mitford family|Mitford sisters of the
1920s.

Churchill's son Randolph and his grandsons
Nicholas Soames and Winston Churchill
(grandson)|Winston all followed him into Member of
Parliament|Parliament.

When not in London on government business,
Churchill usually lived at his beloved
Chartwell|Chartwell House in Kent, two miles south
of Westerham. He and his wife bought the house in
1922 and lived there until his death in 1965. 
During his Chartwell stays, he enjoyed writing
there, as well as painting, bricklaying, and
admiring the estate's famous black swans.

==Last days==

Aware that he was slowing down both physically and
mentally, Churchill retired as Prime Minister in
1955 and was succeeded by Anthony Eden, who had
long been his ambitious protégé.  Churchill
spent most of his retirement at Chartwell and in
the south of France.  

In 1963, pursuant to an Act of Congress, U.S.
President John F. Kennedy named Churchill the
first Honorary Citizen of the United States. 
Churchill was too ill to attend the White House
ceremony, so his son and grandson accepted the
award for him.


On 15 January 1965 Churchill suffered another
stroke – a severe cerebral thrombosis
– that left him gravely ill. He died nine
days later on 24 January 1965, 70 years to the day
of his father's death. His body lay in State in
Westminster Hall for three days and a State
funeral|state funeral service was held at St
Paul's Cathedral. This was the first state funeral
for a non-royal family member since that of
Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts of
Kandahar|Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar in
1914. As his coffin passed down the Thames on a
boat, the cranes of London's docklands bowed in
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 state funeral was the largest
gathering of dignitaries in Britain as
representatives from over 100 countries attended,
including French President Charles de Gaulle,
Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, other
heads of state and government, and members of
royalty. It also saw largest assemblage of
statesmen in the world until the funeral of Pope
John Paul II in 2005.

It has been suggested it was Churchill's wish
that, were de Gaulle to outlive him, his
(Churchill's) funeral procession should pass
through Waterloo Station. This is complete myth.
Though of course President de Gaulle did indeed
attend the service and the coffin departed for
Bladon from Waterloo Station, there is no
absolutely no connection. In fact, Churchill did
not plan his own funeral as commonly believed; he
made a few suggestions, but there was a private
committee which made the plans, and he was not on
it.  

At Churchill's request, he was buried in the
family plot at Saint Martin's Churchyard, Bladon,
near Woodstock and not far from his birthplace at
Blenheim.

Because the funeral took place on 30 January,
people in the United States marked Churchill's
funeral by paying tribute to his friendship with
Roosevelt because it was the anniversary of FDR's
birth.

==Churchill as historian==


Churchill was a prolific writer throughout his
life and, during his periods out of office,
regarded himself as a professional writer who was
also a Member of Parliament. Despite his
aristocratic birth, he inherited little money (his
mother spent most of his inheritance) and always
needed ready cash to maintain his lavish lifestyle
and to compensate for a number of failed
investments. Some of his historical works, such as
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, were
written primarily to raise money.

Although Churchill was an excellent writer, he was
not a trained historian, and his historical works
show many limitations. In his youth he was an avid
reader of history but within a narrow range. The
major influences on his historical thought, and
his prose style, were Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of
Clarendon|Clarendon's history of the English Civil
War, Edward Gibbon|Gibbon's The History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Thomas
Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|Macaulay's
History of England. He had no knowledge of, or
interest in, social or economic history, and he
always saw history as essentially political and
military, driven by great men rather than by
economic forces or social change. 

Churchill was the last (and one of the most
influential) exponents of "Whig history" –
the belief of the 18th- and 19th-century Whig
Party|Whigs that the British people had a unique
greatness and an imperial destiny, and that all
British history should be seen as progress towards
fulfilling that destiny. This belief inspired his
political career as well as his historical
writing. It was an old-fashioned view of history
even in Churchill's youth, but he never modified
it or showed any interest in other schools of
history. Although he employed professional
historians as assistants, they had no influence
over the content of his works.

Churchill's historical writings fall into three
categories. The first is works of family history,
the biographies of his father, Life of Lord
Randolph Churchill (1906), and of his great
ancestor, Marlborough: His Life and Times (four
volumes, 1933–38). These are still regarded
as fine biographies, but are marred by Churchill's
desire to present his subjects in the best
possible light. He made only limited use of the
available source materials and, in the case of his
father, suppressed some material from family
archives that reflected badly on Lord Randolph.
The Marlborough biography shows to the full
Churchill's great talent for military history.
Both books have been superseded by more scholarly
works but are still highly readable.

The second category is Churchill's
autobiographical works, including his early
journalistic compilations The Story of the
Malakand Field Force (1898), The River War (1899),
London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) and Ian
Hamilton's March (1900). These latter two were
issued in a re-edited form as My Early Life
(1930). All these books are colourful and
entertaining, and contain some valuable
information about Britain's imperial wars in
India, Sudan and South Africa, but they are
essentially exercises in self-promotion, since
Churchill was already a Parliamentary candidate in
1900. 

Churchill's reputation as a writer, however, rests
on the third category, his three massive
multi-volume works of narrative history. These are
his histories of the First World War – The
World Crisis (six volumes, 1923–31) –
and of The Second World War (six volumes,
1948–53), and his History of the
English-Speaking Peoples (four volumes,
1956–58, much of which had been written in
the 1930s). These are among the longest works of
history ever published (The Second World War runs
to more than two million words), and earned him
the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Churchill's histories of the two world wars are,
of course, far from being conventional historical
works, since the author was a central participant
in both stories and took full advantage of that
fact in writing his books. Both are in a sense,
therefore, memoirs as well as histories, but
Churchill was careful to broaden their scope to
include events in which he played no part –
the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,
for example. Inevitably, however, Churchill placed
Britain, and therefore himself, at the centre of
his narrative. Arthur Balfour described The World
Crisis as "Winston's brilliant autobiography,
disguised as a history of the universe." 

As a Cabinet minister for part of the First World
War and as Prime Minister for nearly all of the
Second, Churchill had unique access to official
documents, military plans, official secrets and
correspondence between world leaders. After the
First War, when there were few rules governing
these documents, Churchill simply took many of
them with him when he left office and used them
freely in his books – as did other wartime
politicians such as David Lloyd George. As a
result of this, strict rules were put in place
preventing Cabinet ministers using official
documents for writing history or memoirs once they
left office.

The World Crisis was inspired by Reginald Baliol
Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher|Lord Esher's attack on
Churchill's reputation in his memoirs. It soon
broadened out into a general multi-volume history.
The volumes are a mix of military history, written
with Churchill's usual narrative flair; diplomatic
and political history, largely written to justify
Churchill's own actions and policies during the
war; portraits of other political and military
figures, usually written to further political
vendettas or settle debts (most notably with Lloyd
George); and personal memoir, written in a
colourful but highly selective manner. Today these
books are almost useless as historical references.
As with all Churchill's works, they have nothing
to say about economic or social history, and are
coloured by his political views –
particularly in regards to the Russian Revolution.
But they remain highly readable for their
narrative skill and vivid portrayals of people and
events.

When he resumed office in 1939, Churchill fully
intended writing a history of the war then
beginning. He said several times: "I will leave
judgements on this matter to history – but I
will be one of the historians." To circumvent the
rules against the use of official documents, he
took the precaution throughout the war of having a
weekly summary of correspondence, minutes,
memoranda and other documents printed in galleys
and headed "Prime Minister's personal minutes".
These were then stored at his home for future use.
As well, Churchill wrote or dictated a number of
letters and memorandums with the specific
intention of placing his views on the record for
later use as a historian.

This all became a source of great controversy when
The Second World War began appearing in 1948.
Churchill was not an academic historian, he was a
politician, and was in fact Leader of the
Opposition, still intending to return to office.
By what right, it was asked, did he have access to
Cabinet, military and diplomatic records which
were denied to other historians? 

What was unknown at the time was the fact that
Churchill had done a deal with the Clement
Attlee|Attlee Labour government which came to
office in 1945. Recognising Churchill's enormous
prestige, Attlee agreed to allow him (or rather
his research assistants) free access to most
documents, provided that (a) no official secrets
were revealed, (b) the documents were not used for
party political purposes, and (c) the typescript
was vetted by the Cabinet Secretary, Norman
Brook|Sir Norman Brook. Brook took a close
interest in the books and rewrote some sections
himself to ensure that nothing was said which
might harm British interests or embarrass the
government. Churchill's history thus became a
semi-official one.

Churchill's privileged access to documents and his
unrivalled personal knowledge gave him an
advantage over all other historians of the Second
World War for many years. The books had enormous
sales in both Britain and the United States and
made Churchill a rich man for the first time. It
was not until after his death and the opening of
the archives that some of the deficiencies of his
work became apparent.

Some of these were inherent in the unique position
Churchill occupied as a historian, being both a
former Prime Minister and a serving politician. He
could not reveal military secrets, such as the
work of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park (see
Ultra) or the planning of the atomic bomb. He
could not discuss wartime disputes with figures
such as Dwight Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle or
Tito, since they were still world leaders at the
time he was writing. He could not discuss Cabinet
disputes with Labour leaders such as Attlee, whose
goodwill the project depended on. He could not
reflect on the deficiencies of generals such as
Archibald Wavell or Claude Auchinleck for fear
they might sue him (some, indeed, threatened to do
so).

Other deficiencies were of Churchill's own making.
Although he described the fighting on the Eastern
Front, he had little real interest in it and no
access to Soviet or German documents, so his
account is a pastiche of secondary sources,
largely written by his assistants. The same is
true to some extent of the war in the Pacific
except for episodes such as the fall of Singapore
in which he was involved. His account of the U.S.
naval war in the Pacific was so heavily based on
other writers that he was accused of plagiarism.

The real focus of Churchill's work is always on
the war in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and
North Africa, but here his work is based heavily
on his own documents, so it greatly exaggerates
his own role. He had little access to American
documents, and even those he did have, such as his
letters from Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman|Truman and
Eisenhower, had to be used with caution for
diplomatic reasons. Although he was, of course, a
central figure in the war, he was not as central
as his books suggest. Although he is usually fair,
some personal vendettas are aired – against
Stafford Cripps, for example.

The Second World War can still be read with great
profit by students of the period, provided it is
seen mainly as a memoir by a leading participant
rather than as an authoritative history by a
professional and detached historian. The war, and
particularly the period between 1940 and 1942 when
Britain was fighting alone, was the climax of
Churchill's career, and his personal account of
the inside story of those days is unique and
invaluable. But since the archives have been
opened far more accurate and reliable histories
have been written.

Churchill's History of the English-Speaking
Peoples was commissioned and largely written in
the 1930s when Churchill badly needed money, but
it was put aside when war broke out in 1939, being
finally issued after he left office for the last
time in 1955. Although it contains much fine
writing, it shows Churchill's deficiencies as a
historian at their most glaring. It is generally
regarded as tendentious and very old-fashioned,
seeing world history as a one-dimensional pageant
of battles and speeches, kings and statesmen, in
which the English occupy central stage. Events of
central importance to modern history, such as the
industrial revolution, are scarcely mentioned.
Although Churchill's enormous prestige ensured
that the books were respectfully received and sold
well, they are now little read.

== Miscellany and trivia ==

*Various secondary/high schools in Canada and the
United States are named after Churchill, such as
Sir Winston Churchill High School in Calgary,
Alberta|Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

*Churchill was an ardent supporter of Zionism,
following his meetings with Chaim Weizmann and the
visits in Eretz Israel|Eretz Israel - Palestina.
He kept supporting it (and later, Israel) even
after WWII.
http://www.jewishpost.com/jewishpost/jpn201b.html

*Churchill College, Cambridge|Churchill College, a
constituent college of the University of
Cambridge, was founded in 1960 as the national and
commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill.

*The Churchill tank, a heavy infantry tank of
World War II, was named in his honour.

*A few people have attributed Churchill's
extraordinary abilities to his being affected by
bipolar disorder. This is not widely accepted,
however, and no major biographer of Churchill has
made that claim.  In his last years, Churchill is
believed by several writers to have suffered from
Alzheimer's disease, though the Churchill Centre
disputes this. Certainly he suffered from fits of
Clinical depression|depression that he called his
"black dog."  Some researchers also believe that
Churchill was dyslexic, based on the difficulties
he described himself having at school. However,
the Churchill Centre and other experts strongly
refute this (Source:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org ). 

*Churchill also overcame a severe stammer and lisp
(speech)|lisp, but some of his speeches were still
marred with traces of them. Churchill even thought
that these added an interesting element to a
speaker's voice: "Sometimes a slight and not
unpleasing stammer or impediment has been of some
assistance in securing the attention of the
audience. . ."
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/ind
ex.cfm?pageid=814http://www.stuttersfa.org/pressrm
/chrchill.htm

*The United States Navy destroyer USS Winston S.
Churchill (DDG-81)|USS Winston S. Churchill
(DDG-81) is named in his honour. In 1963,
Churchill was the first person to be made an
Honorary Citizen of the United States. 

*Churchill's mother was American and some,
including Churchill himself, have said that his
maternal grandmother was an Iroquois, which would
make Churchill the only British prime minister of
Native American descent. Research has failed to
validate this contention, and some doubt its
accuracy.

*In 1995, a row erupted after the National Lottery
spent 12 million pounds of its 'good causes'
budget on Churchill's personal papers after his
descendants said they were tempted to sell them to
American academics. Churchill's family were
heavily criticised for not offering the papers to
the nation for free. 

*Churchill was voted as "The Greatest Briton" in
2002 "100 Greatest Britons" poll sponsored by the
BBC and voted for by the public. He was also named
TIME Magazine|TIME magazine "Man of the
Half-Century" in the early 1950s.

*John Lennon's middle name was Winston. His mother
named him after the prime minister.

*The Cigar#Sizes|Churchill cigar size actually was
named after him.

*Churchill was a Freemason between 1901 and 1912,
although there is evidence he had some involvement
subsequently.
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cf
m?pageid=547.

*In 1943 Churchill was played by Dudley Field
Malone, one of the attorneys in the Scopes Trial
in the propaganda film Mission to Moscow.

* It was alleged by W. Somerset Maugham that
Churchill once confided in him that he had once
been to bed with Ivor Novello.

*In July 1944 Churchill requested from the Chief
of Staff Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay|
General Ismay a study on the potential use of
poison gas as a means of shortening the war or
retaliating against the V-1_flying_bomb|V-1 and
V-2 rocket|V-2 rockets then falling on London: 
:I want you to think very seriously over this
question of poison gas. I would not use it unless
it could be shown either that (a) it was life or
death for us, or (b) that it would shorten the war
by a year... If the bombardment of London became a
serious nuisance and great rockets with
far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many
centres of Government and labour, I should be
prepared to do anything that would hit the enemy
in a murderous place. I may certainly have to ask
you to support me in using poison gas. We could
drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other
cities in Germany in such a way that most of the
population would be requiring constant medical
attention. We could stop all work at the flying
bomb starting points. I do not see why we should
have the disadvantages of being the gentleman
while they have all the advantages of being the
cad. There are times when this may be so but not
now... (source: Prime Minister's Personal Minute,
D.217/4, 6 July 1944)

:The study concluded and advised Churchill that
the use of such weapons would not benefit the war
effort.

== See also ==

*Lady Hermione Cobbold
*Bombing of Dresden in World War II

==Churchill's war cabinet, May 1940–May
1945==
*Winston Churchill – Prime Minister,
Minister of Defence and Leader of the House of
Commons.
*Neville Chamberlain – Lord President of the
Council
*Clement Attlee – Lord Privy Seal and
effective Deputy Leader of the House of Commons.
*Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax|Lord Halifax
– Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
*Arthur Greenwood – Minister without
Portfolio

===Changes===
*August 1940: Max Aitken, 1st Baron
Beaverbrook|Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft
Production, joins the War Cabinet
*October 1940: Sir John Anderson, 1st Viscount
Waverley|John Anderson succeeds Neville
Chamberlain as Lord President.  Sir Kingsley Wood,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Ernest Bevin,
the Minister of Labour, enter the War Cabinet.
Lord Halifax assumes the additional job of Leader
of the House of Lords.
*December 1940: Anthony Eden succeeds Lord Halifax
as Foreign Secretary.  Halifax remains nominally
in the Cabinet as Ambassador to the United States.
His successor as Leader of the House of Lords is
not in the War Cabinet.
*May 1941: Lord Beaverbrook ceased to be Minister
of Aircraft Production, but remains in the Cabinet
as Minister of State. His successor was not in the
War Cabinet.
*June 1941: Lord Beaverbrook becomes Minister of
Supply, remaining in the War Cabinet.
*1941: Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount
Chandos|Oliver Lyttelton enters the Cabinet as
Minister Resident in the Middle East.
*4 February 1942: Lord Beaverbrook becomes
Minister of Production|Minister of War Production,
his successor as Minister of Supply is not in the
War Cabinet.
*19 February 1942: Beaverbrook resigns and no
replacement Minister of War Production is
appointed for the moment. Clement Attlee becomes
Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and Deputy
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Deputy Prime
Minister. Sir Stafford Cripps succeeds Attlee as
Lord Privy Seal and takes over the position of
Leader of the House of Commons from Churchill. Sir
Kingsley Wood leaves the War Cabinet, though
remaining Chancellor of the Exchequer.
*22 February 1942: Arthur Greenwood resigns from
the War Cabinet.
*March 1942: Oliver Lyttelton fills the vacant
position of Minister of Production ("War" was
dropped from the title). Richard Casey, Baron
Casey|Richard Gardiner Casey (a member of the
Australian Parliament) succeeds Oliver Lyttelton
as Minister Resident in the Middle East.
*October 1942: Sir Stafford Cripps retires as Lord
Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons and
leaves the War Cabinet. His successor as Lord
Privy Seal is not in the Cabinet, Anthony Eden
takes the additional position of Leader of the
House of Commons. The Secretary of State for the
Home Department|Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison
(politician)|Herbert Morrison, enters the Cabinet.
*September 1943: Sir John Anderson, 1st Viscount
Waverley|John Anderson succeeds Sir Kingsley Wood
(deceased) as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
remaining in the War Cabinet.  Clement Attlee
succeeds Anderson as Lord President, remaining
also Deputy Prime Minister.  Attlee's successor as
Dominions Secretary is not in the Cabinet.
*November 1943: Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of
Woolton|Lord Woolton enters the Cabinet as
Minister of Reconstruction.

==Winston Churchill's caretaker cabinet,
May–July 1945==
*Winston Churchill – Prime Minister and
Minister of Defence
*Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton|Lord
Woolton – Lord President of the Council
*Max Aitken |Lord Beaverbrook – Lord Privy
Seal
*Sir John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley|John
Anderson – Chancellor of the Exchequer
*Sir Donald Bradley Somervell, Baron
Somervell|Donald Bradley Somervell –
Secretary of State for the Home Department
*Anthony Eden – Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs and Leader of the House of Commons
*Oliver Stanley – Secretary of State for the
Colonies
*Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess
of Salisbury|Lord Cranborne – Secretary of
State for Dominion Affairs and Leader of the House
of Lords
*Sir P.J. Grigg – Secretary of State for War
*Leopold Stennett Amery|Leo Amery –
Secretary of State for India|Secretary of State
for India and Burma
*Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery|Lord
Rosebery – Secretary of State for Scotland
*Harold Macmillan – Secretary of State for
Air
*Brendan Bracken – First Lord of the
Admiralty
*Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos|Oliver
Lyttelton – President of the Board of Trade
and Minister of Production
*Robert Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson|Robert Hudson
– Minister of Agriculture
*Rab Butler – Minister of Labour

==Winston Churchill's third cabinet, October
1951–April 1955==
*Winston Churchill – Prime Minister and
Minister of Defence
*Gavin Turnbull Simonds, 1st Baron Simonds|Lord
Simonds – Lord Chancellor
*Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton|Lord
Woolton – Lord President of the Council
*Elton John – Lord Privy Seal and Leader of
the House of Lords
*Rab Butler – Chancellor of the Exchequer
*Sir David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of
Kilmuir|David Maxwell-Fyfe – Secretary of
State for the Home Department
*Anthony Eden – Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs
*Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos|Oliver
Lyttelton – Secretary of State for the
Colonies
*Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay|Lord Ismay
– Secretary of State for Commonwealth
Relations
*James Stuart, 1st Viscount Stuart of
Findhorn|James Stuart – Secretary of State
for Scotland
*Peter Thorneycroft – President of the Board
of Trade
*Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell|Lord
Cherwell – Paymaster-General
*Sir Walter Monckton, 1st Viscount Monckton|Walter
Monckton – Minister of Labour
*Harry Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank|Harry
Crookshank – Minister of Health and Leader
of the House of Commons
*Harold Macmillan – Minister of Housing and
Local Government
*Frederick Leathers, 1st Baron Leathers|Lord
Leathers – Minister for the Co-ordination of
Transport, Fuel, and Power

===Changes===
*March 1952: Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Ismay as
Commonwealth Relations Secretary.  Salisbury
remains also Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the
House of Lords.  Harold Alexander, 1st Earl
Alexander of Tunis|Lord Alexander of Tunis
succeeds Churchill as Minister of Defence.
*May 1952: Harry Crookshank succeeds Lord
Salisbury as Lord Privy Seal, remaining Leader of
the House of Commons.  Salisbury remains
Commonwealth Relations Secretary and Leader of the
House of Lords.  Crookshank's successor as
Minister of Health is not in the Cabinet.
*November 1952: Lord Woolton becomes Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster.  Lord Salisbury succeeds
Lord Woolton as Lord President.  Philip
Cunliffe-Lister, 1st Earl of Swinton|Lord Swinton
succeeds Lord Salisbury as Commonwealth Relations
Secretary.  
*September 1953: Florence Horsbrugh, the Minister
of Education, Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Minister of
Agriculture, and Gwilym Lloyd George, 1st Viscount
Tenby|Gwilym Lloyd George, the Minister of Food,
enter the cabinet.  The Ministry for the
Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel, and Power, is
abolished, and Lord Leathers leaves the Cabinet.
*October 1953: Lord Cherwell resigns as Paymaster
General.  His successor is not in the Cabinet.
*July 1954: Alan Lennox-Boyd succeeds Oliver
Lyttelton as Colonial Secretary.  Derick Heathcoat
Amory succeeds Sir Thomas Dugdale as Minister of
Agriculture.
*October 1954: Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, now Lord
Kilmuir, succeeds Lord Simonds as Lord Chancellor.
Gwilym Lloyd George succeeds him as Home
Secretary.  The Food Ministry is merged into the
Ministry of Agriculture.  Sir David Eccles
succeeds Florence Horsbrugh as Minister of
Education.  Harold Macmillan succeeds Lord
Alexander of Tunis as Minister of Defence.  Duncan
Sandys succeeds Macmillan as Minister of Housing
and Local Government.  Osbert Peake, the Minister
of Pensions and National Insurance, enters the
Cabinet.

==References==
* Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of
the Great War by Robert Massie (ISBN 1844135284);
deals with forty years of European politics by
reference to the naval arms race between Britain
and Germany. Contains chapters on Churchill's
early life (chapter 40: "I Do Believe That I Am a
Glowworm") and period as First Lord of the
Admiralty (chapter 41: Churchill at the
Admiralty).
* Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert (ISBN
0-8050-2396-8)
* Winston Churchill by Henry Pelling, (first
issue) 1974, (Wordsworth Military Library Edition)
1999 (ISBN 1-84022-218-2), 
* Winston Churchill" by Sebastian  Haffner,
Reinbek 1967, Germany 
* http://www.worldbeyondborders.org/quotes.htm
Quotations database, World Beyond Borders.
* The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Quotations
by Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-860103-4)
* The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill,
Visions of Glory 1874-1932, 1983, Little, Brown
(Vol. I) by William Manchester, ISBN 0316545031
* The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone
1932-1940, 1988, Little, Brown (Vol. II) by
William Manchester, ISBN 0316545120
* Volume III remains unfinished as of August 2005

== External links ==

wikisource author
* http://www.winstonchurchill.org The Churchill
Centre website
*http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/sp
eech_52.html Audio of Churchill's "finest hour"
speech
* http://www.spanamwar.com/Churchillcomments.htm
Winston Churchill in Cuba
*http://www.malakand.blogspot.com Opinion piece on
Churchill's significance in history.
*http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jamesdow
/winston.htm Another bio of him including extended
quotations from his speeches
*
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive
Churchill and the Great Republic. Exhibition
explores Churchill's lifelong relationship with
the United States.
*http://www.jewishpost.com/jewishpost/jpn201b.html
Chu

	Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard
Spencer-Churchill,  Order of the Garter|KG,  
Order of Merit|OM,  Order of the Companions of
Honour|CH,  Royal Society|FRS Queen's Privy
Council for Canada|PC (30 November 1874 – 24
January 1965) was a United Kingdom|British
statesman, best known as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom during the World War II|Second
World War. At various times a soldier, journalist,
author and politician, Churchill is generally
regarded as one of the most important leaders in
British and world history. He won the 1953 Nobel
Prize for literature.

Churchill's legal surname was Spencer-Churchill,
but starting with his father, Lord Randolph
Churchill, his branch of the family always used
just the name Churchill in public life. Because of
the existence of another author called Winston
Churchill (novelist)|Winston Churchill, his books
were published under the name "Winston Spencer
Churchill" or "Winston S. Churchill", though some
later printings ignore this.


==Early life==

Born at Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock,
Oxfordshire|Woodstock in the England|English
county of Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill was a
descendant of the first famous member of the
Churchill family – John Churchill, who
became the first Duke of Marlborough. Winston's
politician father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was
the third son of the John Spencer-Churchill, 7th
Duke of Marlborough|7th Duke of Marlborough;
Winston's mother was Jennie Jerome|Lady Randolph
Churchill (née Jennie Jerome), daughter of
American millionaire Leonard Jerome. Neither
parent showed young Winston much affection or
love.

Churchill spent much of his childhood at boarding
schools, including Harrow School|Harrow. He was
rarely visited by his mother, whom he virtually
worshipped, despite his letters begging her to
either come or let his father permit him to come
home. He had a distant relationship with his
father despite keenly following his father's
career. Once, in 1886, he is reported to have
proclaimed "My daddy is Chancellor of the
Exchequer and one day that's what I'm going to
be." His desolate, lonely childhood stayed with
him throughout his life. He was very close to his
nurse, Elizabeth Ann Everest (nicknamed "Woom" by
Churchill), and was deeply saddened when she died
on 3 July 1895. Churchill paid for her gravestone
at the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium.

Churchill did badly at Harrow, regularly being
punished for poor work and lack of effort. His
nature was independent and rebellious and he
failed to achieve much academically, failing some
of the same courses numerous times despite showing
great ability in other areas such as maths and
history, in both of which he was placed at times
top in his class. But his refusal to study the
classics undermined any chance of success at a
school like Harrow. 

The view of Churchill as a failure at school is
one which he himself propagated, probably due to
his father's intense dislike of the young Winston
and his obvious readiness to label his son a
disappointment. He did, however, become the
school's fencing champion.

In 1893, on his third attempt, he passed the
entrance exam and enrolled in the Royal Military
Academy Sandhurst|Royal Military Academy at
Sandhurst. He entered the college near the bottom
of the intake of 102 cadets, but when he graduated
two years later he was ranked eighth in his class.
He was appointed Second Lieutenant in the 4th
Hussars cavalry. In 1895, prior to his regiment
departing for an extended posting to India, he
went to Cuba as a military observer with the
Spanish army in its fight against pro-independence
rebels. He also reported for the Saturday Review.
In 1898 he was attached as a supernumerary officer
to the 21st Lancers (acting again as a war
correspondent) and rode with them at the Battle of
Omdurman, taking part in what is commonly thought
to be the last full cavalry charge of the British
Empire.

==The young man in a hurry==
As the son of a prominent politician, it was
unsurprising that Churchill was soon to be drawn
into politics himself. He started speaking at a
number of Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative
meetings in the 1890s, and in 1897 he wrote an
unpublished essay,
http://www-adm.pdx.edu/user/frinq/pluralst/churspe
k.htm "The Scaffolding of Rhetoric". It was
noticeable that in the first few years of his
political career, and again in the mid-1920s, he
frequently used his father's slogan of "Tory
Democracy". Many were to regard Churchill in his
early years as being obsessed with continuing his
father's battles from fifteen years earlier.



In 1899 he was considered as a prospective
candidate for Oldham. One of the town's two Member
of Parliament|MPs had died and the other, in ill
health, was persuaded to resign so that both seats
could be elected together. Churchill found himself
thrust into a prominent by-election, alongside
James Mawdsley (trade unionist), the Lancashire
general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Cotton Spinners and one of the few prominent
Conservative trade unionists. The Liberal
candidates were Alfred Emmott and Walter Runciman,
1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford|Walter Runciman,
who later sat in the Cabinet alongside Churchill.
The by-election was dominated by a number of
issues, including a Tithe|Clerical Tithes Bill in
Parliament, the brunt of criticism for which fell
upon Churchill as a candidate for the governing
party and the only Anglican of the four (though he
was non-practicing). Facing attacks on the Bill,
Churchill repudiated it. He later commented, "This
was a frightful mistake. It is not the slightest
use defending Governments or parties unless you
defend the worst thing about which they are
attacked." The Conservative leader in the Commons
Arthur Balfour commented, "I thought he was a
young man of promise, but it appears he is a young
man of promises." Despite this, Churchill and
Mawdsley narrowly lost the marginal seat, though
with no harm to themselves as the Conservative
government was facing a period of unpopularity.
Runciman is reported to have commented to
Churchill: "Don't worry, I don't think this is the
last the country has heard of either of us."

Churchill then became a war correspondent in the
second Boer War|Anglo-Boer war between Britain and
self-proclaimed Afrikaners in South Africa. He was
captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train
convoy and thrown into prison. 

However, he made a daring escape which made him
something of a national hero. One night he scaled
the prison walls and slipped by the sentries.
Then, travelling on freight trains, he crossed
over 500 kilometres of enemy territory and crossed
the South African border to Lourenço Marques (now
Maputo in Mozambique). He quickly returned to
British-controlled South Africa where he joined a
South African cavalry regiment and was involved in
a number of brutal and bloody battles, and resumed
filing stories for a rapt public in Britain.
During this period he was recommended for a
Victoria Cross although Horatio Kitchener, 1st
Earl Kitchener|Horatio Kitchener vetoed the award.

Churchill later returned to Oldham and used the
publicity he had gained to stand again for the
seat in the United Kingdom general election,
1900|1900 general election when he was elected for
the seat. It was the successful launch of a
political career which would last a total of
sixty-two years, serving as an MP in the House of
Commons from 1900 to 1922 and from 1924 to 1964.
He remained politically active even in his brief
years out of the Commons. At first a member of the
Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party, he
"crossed the floor" in 1904 to join the Liberal
Party (UK)|Liberals over his opposition to
protective tariffs.



==Ministerial office==
In the United Kingdom general election, 1906|1906
general election, Churchill won a seat in
Manchester. In the Liberal government of Henry
Campbell-Bannerman he served as Under-Secretary of
State for the Colonies. Churchill soon became the
most prominent member of the Government outside
the Cabinet, and when Campbell-Bannerman was
succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908, it
came as little surprise when 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
Manchester seat to the Conservative William
Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford|William
Joynson-Hicks but was soon elected in another
by-election at Dundee. As President of the Board
of Trade he pursued radical social reforms in
conjunction with David Lloyd George, the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1910 Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary,
where he was to prove somewhat controversial. A
famous photograph from the time shows the
impetuous Churchill taking personal charge of the
January 1911 Sidney Street Siege, peering around a
corner to view a gun battle between cornered
anarchists and Scots Guards. His role attracted
much criticism.  The building which was laid siege
to, caught fire and Churchill denied the fire
brigade access, forcing the criminals to choose
surrender or death. Arthur Balfour asked, "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?"

In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the
Admiralty, a post he would hold into the World War
I|First World War. He gave impetus to military
reform efforts, including development of naval
aviation, tanks, and the switch in fuel from coal
to oil, a massive engineering task, also reliant
on securing Mesopotamias oil rights bought circa
1907 through the secret service using the Royal
Burmah Oil Company as a front company.
The development of the tank|battle tank was
financed from naval research funds via the 
Landships Committee, and even though a decade
later developing the battle tank would be seen as
a stroke of genius, at the time it was seen as
misappropriation of funds. The battle tank was
deployed ineptly in 1915, much to Churchill's
annoyance. He wanted a fleet of tanks used to
surprised the Germans under cover of smoke, and to
open a large 
section of the trench warfare|trenches by crushing
barbed wire and creating a breakthrough sector.

However, he was also one of the political and
military engineers of the disastrous Battle of
Gallipoli|Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles
during World War I, which led to his description
as "the butcher of Gallipoli". When Asquith formed
an all-party coalition government, the
Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the
price for entry. For several months Churchill
served in the non-portfolio job of Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster, before resigning from the
government feeling his energies were not being
used. He rejoined the army, though remaining an
MP, and served for several months on the Western
Front. During this period his second in command
was a young Archibald Sinclair, 1st Viscount
Thurso|Archibald Sinclair who would later lead the
Liberal Party.

==Return to power==
In December 1916, Asquith and the Conservative
Party were ousted from power and were replaced by
Lloyd George and the now ruling Liberal Party. 
However, the time was thought to not yet be right
to risk the Conservatives' wrath by bringing
Churchill back into government. However, in July
1917 Churchill was appointed Minister of
Munitions. After the end of the war Churchill
served as both Secretary of State for War and
Secretary of State for Air (1919–1921). On
the possible use of gas weapons in quelling
uprisings in the British League of Nations
Mandate|mandated territories of the former Ottoman
Empire, Churchill wrote: 

: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 gases: gases 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.

During this time (1919–1921|21), he
undertook with surprising zeal the cutting of
military expenditure. However, the 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 an
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.

== Career between the wars==

In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation
to remove his appendix. Upon his return, he
learned that the government had fallen and a
United Kingdom general election, 1922|General
Election was looming. The Liberal Party was now
beset by internal division and Churchill's
campaign was weak. He lost his seat at Dundee,
quipping that he had lost his ministerial office,
his seat and his appendix all at once. Churchill
stood for the Liberals again in the United Kingdom
general election, 1923|1923 general election,
losing in Leicester, but over the next twelve
months he moved towards the Conservative Party,
though initially using the labels "Anti-Socialist"
and "Constitutionalist". Two years later, in the
United Kingdom general election, 1924|General
Election of 1924, he was elected to represent
Epping (where there is now a statue of him) as a
"Constitutionalist" with Conservative backing. The
following year he formally rejoined the
Conservative Party, commenting wryly that "Anyone
can rat change parties, but it takes a certain
ingenuity to re-rat."  

He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in
1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw the United
Kingdom's disastrous return to the Gold Standard,
which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the
miners' strike that led to the UK General Strike
1926|General Strike of 1926. This decision
prompted the economist John Maynard Keynes to
write The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill,
correctly arguing that the return to the gold
standard would lead to a world depression.
Churchill later regarded this as one of the worst
decisions of his life. To be fair to him, it must
be noted that he was not an economist and that he
acted on the advice of the Governor of the Bank of
England, Montague Norman (of whom Keynes said:
"Always so charming, always so wrong".) 

During the UK General Strike 1926|General Strike
of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested
that machineguns 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." Furthermore, he was to controversially
claim 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.

The Conservative government was defeated in the
United Kingdom general election, 1929|1929 General
Election. In the next two years, Churchill became
estranged from the Conservative leadership over
the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home
Rule. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the UK National
Government|National Government in 1931, Churchill
was not invited to join the Cabinet
(government)|Cabinet. He was now at the lowest
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 (which was not published
until well after WWII). He became most notable for
his outspoken opposition towards the granting of
independence to India (see Simon Commission and
Government of India Act 1935).

Soon, though, his attention was drawn to the rise
of Adolf Hitler and the dangers of Germany's
rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling
on Britain to strengthen itself and counter the
belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce
critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of
Hitler. He was also an outspoken supporter of King
 Edward VIII of the United Kingdom|Edward VIII
during the Abdication Crisis of Edward
VIII|Abdication Crisis, leading to some
speculation that he might be appointed Prime
Minister if the King refused to take Baldwin's
advice and consequently the government resigned.
However, this did not happen, and Churchill found
himself politically isolated and bruised for some
time after this.

==Role as wartime Prime Minister==
expansion
At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill
was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In this
job he proved to be one of the highest-profile
ministers during the so-called "Bore War", when
the only noticeable action was at sea.  Churchill
advocated the pre-emptive occupation of the
neutral Norway|Norwegian iron-ore port of Narvik
and the iron mines in Swedish iron ore during
World War II|Kiruna, Sweden, early in the War.
However, Chamberlain and the rest of the War
Cabinet disagreed, and the operation was delayed
until the Norwegian Campaign|German invasion of
Norway, which was successful despite British
efforts.  

In May 1940, directly upon the German invasion of
France by a surprising lightning advance through
the Low Countries, it became clear that the
country had no confidence in Chamberlain's
prosecution of the war. Chamberlain resigned, and 
Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed
an all-party government. In response to previous
criticisms that there had been no clear single
minister in charge of the prosecution of the war,
he created and took the additional position of
Minister of Defence. He immediately put his friend
and confidant the industrialist and newspaper
baron Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook|Lord
Beaverbrook in charge of aircraft production. It
was Beaverbrook's astounding business acumen that
allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft
production and engineering that eventually made
the difference in the war.



Churchill's speeches were a great inspiration to
the embattled United Kingdom. His first speech as
Prime Minister was the famous "I have nothing to
offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech.
He followed that closely with two other equally
famous ones, given just before the Battle of
Britain. One included the immortal line, "We shall
defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we
shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and
in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we
shall never surrender." The other included the
equally famous "Let us therefore brace ourselves
to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the
British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a
thousand years, men will still say, 'This was
their finest hour.'" 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.


His good relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt
secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the
North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. It was for
this reason that Churchill was relieved when
Roosevelt was re-elected. Upon re-election,
Roosevelt immediately set about implementing a new
method of not only providing military hardware to
Britain without the need for monetary payment, but
also of providing, free of fiscal charge, much of
the shipping that transported the supplies. Put
simply, Roosevelt persuaded Congress that
repayment for this immensely costly service would
take the form of defending the USA; and so
Lend-lease was born. Churchill had 12 military
strategy|strategic List of World War II
conferences|conferences with Roosevelt which
covered the Atlantic Charter, Europe first
strategy, the Declaration by the United Nations
and other war policies.  Churchill initiated the
Special Operations Executive (SOE) under Hugh
Dalton's Minister of Economic Warfare|Ministry of
Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and
fostered covert, subversive and partisan
operations in occupied territories with notable
success; and also the British Commandos|Commandos
which established the pattern for most of the
world's current Special Forces. The Russians
referred to him as the "British Bulldog".


However, some of the military actions during the
war remain controversial. Churchill was at best
indifferent and perhaps complicit in the Great
Bengal famine of 1943 which took the lives of at
least 2.5 million Bengalis. Japanese troops were
threatening British India after having
successfully taken neighbouring British Burma.
Some consider the British government's policy of
denying effective famine relief a deliberate and
callous scorched earth policy adopted in the event
of a successful Japanese invasion. Churchill
supported the Bombing of Dresden in World War
II|bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of
the war; Dresden was primarily a civilian target
with many refugees from the East and was of
allegedly little military value. However, the
bombing was helpful to the allied Soviets.


Churchill was party to treaties that would redraw
post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. These
were discussed as early as 1943. Proposals for
European boundaries and settlements were
officially agreed to by Harry S. Truman,
Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam
Conference|Potsdam.

The settlement concerning the borders of Poland,
i.e. the Curzon line|boundary between Poland and
the Soviet Union and Oder-Neisse line|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. 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 in 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." The transfers were
in the end carried out in a way which resulted in
hardship and death for many of those transferred.
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.

==After World War II==

Although the importance of Churchill's role in
World War II was undeniable, he had many enemies
in his own country.  His expressed contempt for a
number of popular ideas, in particular public
health care and better education for the majority
of the population, produced much dissatisfaction
amongst the population, particularly those who had
fought in the war. Immediately following the close
of the war in Europe, Churchill was heavily
defeated at united Kingdom general election,
1945|election by Clement Attlee and the Labour
Party (UK)|Labour Party. Some historians think
that many British voters believed that the man who
had led the nation so well in war was not the best
man to lead it in peace. Others see the election
result as a reaction against not Churchill
personally, but against the Conservative Party's
record in the 1930s under Baldwin and Chamberlain.

Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the
pan-Europeanism that eventually led to the
formation of the European Common market and later
the European Union (for which one of the three
main buildings of the European Parliament is named
in his honour). Churchill was also instrumental in
giving France a permanent seat on the UN Security
Council|United Nations Security Council (which
provided another European power to counterbalance
the Soviet Union's permanent seat). Churchill also
occasionally made comments supportive of world
government. For instance, he once
saidhttp://www.worldbeyondborders.org/quotes.htm:
:Unless some effective world supergovernment for
the purpose of preventing war can be set up ...
the prospects for peace and human progress are
dark ...If ... it is found possible to build a
world organization of irresistible force and
inviolable authority for the purpose of securing
peace, there are no limits to the blessings which
all men enjoy and share.

At the beginning of the Cold War, he famously
mentioned the "Iron Curtain", a phrase originally
created by Joseph Goebbels.   The phrase entered
the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at
Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri|Fulton,
Missouri, when Churchill, a guest of Harry S.
Truman, famously 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, Poland|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.

==Second term==

Churchill was restless and bored as leader of the
Conservative opposition in the immediate post-war
years.  After Labour's defeat in the General
Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime
Minister.  His third government – after the
wartime national government and the short
caretaker government of 1945 – would last
until his resignation in 1955. During this period
he renewed what he called the "special
relationship" between Britain and the United
States, and engaged himself in the formation of
the post-war order.

His domestic priorities were, however,
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.

===Anglo-Iranian Oil Dispute===
The crisis began under the government of Clement
Attlee. In March 1951, the Iranian parliament (the
Majlis) voted to nationalization|nationalise the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and its holdings
by passing a bill strongly backed by the elderly
statesman Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who was
elected Prime Minister the following April by a
large majority of the parliament.  The
International Court of Justice was called into
settle the dispute, but a 50/50 profit-sharing
arrangement, with recognition of nationalisation,
was rejected by Mossadegh. Direct negotiations
between the British and the Iranian government
ceased, and over the course of 1951, the British
ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian
government and explored the possibility of a coup
against it. U.S. President Harry S. Truman was
reluctant to agree, placing a much higher priority
on the Korean War. The effects of the blockade and
embargo were staggering and led to a virtual
shutdown of Iran's oil exports.

Churchill's return to power brought with it a
policy of undermining the Mossadegh government.
Both sides floated proposals unacceptable to the
other, each side believing that time was on its
side. Negotiations broke down, and as the
blockade's political and economic costs mounted
inside Iran, coup plots arose from the army and
pro-British factions in the Majlis.

Churchill and his Foreign Secretary pursued two
mutually exclusive goals. On one hand, they wanted
"development and reform" in Iran; on the other
hand, they did not want to give up the control or
revenue from AIOC that would have permitted that
development and reform to go forward. Initially
they backed Sayyid Zia as an individual with whom
they could do business, but as the embargo dragged
on, they turned more and more to an alliance with
the military. Churchill's government had come
full-circle, from ending the Attlee plans for a
coup, to planning one itself.

The crisis dragged on until 1953.  Churchill
approved a plan, with help from U.S. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, to back a coup in Iran. The
combination of external and internal political
pressure converged around Fazlollah Zahedi. Over
the summer of 1953, demonstrations grew in Iran,
and with the failure of a plebiscite, the
government was destabilised. Zahedi, using foreign
financing, took power, and Mossadegh surrendered
to him on 20 August 1953.

The coup pointed to an underlying tension within
the post-War order: the industrialised
Democracies, hungry for resources to rebuild in
the wake of World War II, and to engage the Soviet
Union in the Cold War, dealt with emerging states
such as Iran as they had with colonies in a
previous era. On one hand, spurred by the fear of
a third world war against the USSR and committed
to a policy of containment at any cost, they were
more than willing to circumvent local political
prerogatives.  On the other hand, many of these
local governments were both unstable and corrupt.
The two factors created a vicious circle –
intervention led to more dictatorial rule and
corruption, which made intervention rather than
establishment of strong local political
institutions a greater and greater temptation.

===The Mau Mau Rebellion===
seemain|Mau Mau Uprising
In 1951, grievances against the colonial
distribution of land came to a head with the Kenya
Africa Union demanding greater representation and
land reform.  When these demands were rejected,
more radical elements came forward, launching the
Mau Mau rebellion in 1952. On 17August 1952, a
state of emergency was declared, and British
troops were flown to Kenya to deal with the
rebellion. As both sides increased the ferocity of
their attacks, the country moved to full-scale
civil war. 

In 1953, the Lari massacre, perpetrated by Mau-Mau
insurgents against Kikuyu loyal to the British,
changed the political complexion of the rebellion
and gave the public-relations advantage to the
British. Churchill's strategy was to use a
military stick combined with implementing many of
the concessions that Attlee's government had
blocked in 1951. He ordered an increased military
presence and appointed General Sir George Erskine,
who would implement Operation Anvil in 1954 that
broke the back of the rebellion in the city of
Nairobi.  Operation Hammer, in turn, was designed
to root out rebels in the countryside. Churchill
ordered peace talks opened, but these collapsed
shortly after his leaving office.

===Malaya Emergency===
seemain|Malayan Emergency
In Malaysia, a rebellion against British rule had
been in progress since 1948.  Once again,
Churchill's government inherited a crisis, and
once again Churchill chose to use direct military
action against those in rebellion while attempting
to build an alliance with those who were not. He
stepped up the implementation of a "hearts and
minds" campaign and approved the creation of
fortified villages, a tactic that would become a
recurring part of Western military strategy in
South-East Asia. (See Vietnam War). 

The Malayan Emergency was a more direct case of a
guerrilla movement, centred in an ethnic group,
but backed by the Soviet Union. As such, Britain's
policy of direct confrontation and military
victory had a great deal more support than in Iran
or in Kenya. At the highpoint of the conflict,
over 35,000 British troops were stationed in
Malaysia. As the rebellion lost ground, it began
to lose favour with the local population. 

While the rebellion was slowly being defeated, it
was equally clear that colonial rule from Britain
was no longer tenable.  In 1953, plans were drawn
up for independence for Singapore and the other
crown colonies in the area. The first elections
were held in 1955, just days before Churchill's
own resignation, and by 1957, under Prime Minister
Anthony Eden, Malaysia became independent.

==Honours for Churchill==
In 1953 he was awarded two major honours: he was
invested as a Order_of_the_Garter|Knight of the
Garter (becoming Sir Winston Churchill, KG) and he
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel
Prize for Literature "for his mastery of
historical and biographical description as well as
for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human
values". A stroke in June of that year led to him
being paralysed down his left side. He retired
because of his health on 5 April 1955 but retained
his post as Chancellor of the University of
Bristol.  

In 1955, Churchill was offered elevation to
dukedom as the first-ever Duke of London, a title
he himself selected. However, he then declined the
title after being persuaded by his son Randolph
Churchill|Randolph not to accept it. Since then,
no non-royal people have ever been offered a
Dukedom in the United Kingdom.

In 1956 he received the Karlspreis (engl.:
Charlemagne Award), an award by the German city of
Aachen to those who most contribute to the
European idea and European peace.

During the next few years he revised and finally
published A History of the English Speaking
Peoples in four volumes. In 1959 Churchill
inherited the title of Father of the House,
becoming the MP with the longest continuous
service – since 1924. He was to hold the
position until his retirement from the Commons in
1964, the position of Father of the House then
passing to Rab Butler.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy made Churchill the first
person to receive Honorary U.S. Citizenship.

From 1941 to his death, he was the Lord Warden of
the Cinque Ports, a ceremonial office.

==Family==
On 2 September 1908 at the socially desirable St.
Margaret's, Westminster, Churchill married
Clementine Churchill, Baroness
Spencer-Churchill|Clementine Hozier, a dazzling
but largely penniless beauty whom he met at a
dinner party that March (he had proposed to
actress Ethel Barrymore but was turned down). They
had five children: Diana Churchill|Diana; Randolph
Frederick Edward Churchill|Randolph; Sarah
Millicent Hermione Churchill|Sarah, who co-starred
with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding; Marigold
Frances Churchill|Marigold, who died in early
childhood; and Mary Churchill|Mary, who has
written a book on her parents.

Clementine's mother was Lady Blanche Henrietta
Ogilvy, second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier
and a daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie.
Clementine's paternity, however, is open to
healthy debate. Lady Blanche was well-known for
sharing her favours and was eventually divorced as
a result. She maintained that Clementine's father
was Bay Middleton|Capt. William George "Bay"
Middleton, a noted horseman. But Clementine's
biographer Joan Hardwick has surmised, due to Sir
Henry Hozier's reputed sterility, that all Lady
Blanche's "Hozier" children were actually fathered
by her sister's husband, Algernon Bertram
Freeman-Mitford, better known as a grandfather of
the infamous Mitford family|Mitford sisters of the
1920s.

Churchill's son Randolph and his grandsons
Nicholas Soames and Winston Churchill
(grandson)|Winston all followed him into Member of
Parliament|Parliament.

When not in London on government business,
Churchill usually lived at his beloved
Chartwell|Chartwell House in Kent, two miles south
of Westerham. He and his wife bought the house in
1922 and lived there until his death in 1965. 
During his Chartwell stays, he enjoyed writing
there, as well as painting, bricklaying, and
admiring the estate's famous black swans.

==Last days==

Aware that he was slowing down both physically and
mentally, Churchill retired as Prime Minister in
1955 and was succeeded by Anthony Eden, who had
long been his ambitious protégé.  Churchill
spent most of his retirement at Chartwell and in
the south of France.  

In 1963, pursuant to an Act of Congress, U.S.
President John F. Kennedy named Churchill the
first Honorary Citizen of the United States. 
Churchill was too ill to attend the White House
ceremony, so his son and grandson accepted the
award for him.


On 15 January 1965 Churchill suffered another
stroke – a severe cerebral thrombosis
– that left him gravely ill. He died nine
days later on 24 January 1965, 70 years to the day
of his father's death. His body lay in State in
Westminster Hall for three days and a State
funeral|state funeral service was held at St
Paul's Cathedral. This was the first state funeral
for a non-royal family member since that of
Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts of
Kandahar|Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar in
1914. As his coffin passed down the Thames on a
boat, the cranes of London's docklands bowed in
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 state funeral was the largest
gathering of dignitaries in Britain as
representatives from over 100 countries attended,
including French President Charles de Gaulle,
Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, other
heads of state and government, and members of
royalty. It also saw largest assemblage of
statesmen in the world until the funeral of Pope
John Paul II in 2005.

It has been suggested it was Churchill's wish
that, were de Gaulle to outlive him, his
(Churchill's) funeral procession should pass
through Waterloo Station. This is complete myth.
Though of course President de Gaulle did indeed
attend the service and the coffin departed for
Bladon from Waterloo Station, there is no
absolutely no connection. In fact, Churchill did
not plan his own funeral as commonly believed; he
made a few suggestions, but there was a private
committee which made the plans, and he was not on
it.  

At Churchill's request, he was buried in the
family plot at Saint Martin's Churchyard, Bladon,
near Woodstock and not far from his birthplace at
Blenheim.

Because the funeral took place on 30 January,
people in the United States marked Churchill's
funeral by paying tribute to his friendship with
Roosevelt because it was the anniversary of FDR's
birth.

==Churchill as historian==


Churchill was a prolific writer throughout his
life and, during his periods out of office,
regarded himself as a professional writer who was
also a Member of Parliament. Despite his
aristocratic birth, he inherited little money (his
mother spent most of his inheritance) and always
needed ready cash to maintain his lavish lifestyle
and to compensate for a number of failed
investments. Some of his historical works, such as
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, were
written primarily to raise money.

Although Churchill was an excellent writer, he was
not a trained historian, and his historical works
show many limitations. In his youth he was an avid
reader of history but within a narrow range. The
major influences on his historical thought, and
his prose style, were Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of
Clarendon|Clarendon's history of the English Civil
War, Edward Gibbon|Gibbon's The History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Thomas
Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|Macaulay's
History of England. He had no knowledge of, or
interest in, social or economic history, and he
always saw history as essentially political and
military, driven by great men rather than by
economic forces or social change. 

Churchill was the last (and one of the most
influential) exponents of "Whig history" –
the belief of the 18th- and 19th-century Whig
Party|Whigs that the British people had a unique
greatness and an imperial destiny, and that all
British history should be seen as progress towards
fulfilling that destiny. This belief inspired his
political career as well as his historical
writing. It was an old-fashioned view of history
even in Churchill's youth, but he never modified
it or showed any interest in other schools of
history. Although he employed professional
historians as assistants, they had no influence
over the content of his works.

Churchill's historical writings fall into three
categories. The first is works of family history,
the biographies of his father, Life of Lord
Randolph Churchill (1906), and of his great
ancestor, Marlborough: His Life and Times (four
volumes, 1933–38). These are still regarded
as fine biographies, but are marred by Churchill's
desire to present his subjects in the best
possible light. He made only limited use of the
available source materials and, in the case of his
father, suppressed some material from family
archives that reflected badly on Lord Randolph.
The Marlborough biography shows to the full
Churchill's great talent for military history.
Both books have been superseded by more scholarly
works but are still highly readable.

The second category is Churchill's
autobiographical works, including his early
journalistic compilations The Story of the
Malakand Field Force (1898), The River War (1899),
London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) and Ian
Hamilton's March (1900). These latter two were
issued in a re-edited form as My Early Life
(1930). All these books are colourful and
entertaining, and contain some valuable
information about Britain's imperial wars in
India, Sudan and South Africa, but they are
essentially exercises in self-promotion, since
Churchill was already a Parliamentary candidate in
1900. 

Churchill's reputation as a writer, however, rests
on the third category, his three massive
multi-volume works of narrative history. These are
his histories of the First World War – The
World Crisis (six volumes, 1923–31) –
and of The Second World War (six volumes,
1948–53), and his History of the
English-Speaking Peoples (four volumes,
1956–58, much of which had been written in
the 1930s). These are among the longest works of
history ever published (The Second World War runs
to more than two million words), and earned him
the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Churchill's histories of the two world wars are,
of course, far from being conventional historical
works, since the author was a central participant
in both stories and took full advantage of that
fact in writing his books. Both are in a sense,
therefore, memoirs as well as histories, but
Churchill was careful to broaden their scope to
include events in which he played no part –
the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,
for example. Inevitably, however, Churchill placed
Britain, and therefore himself, at the centre of
his narrative. Arthur Balfour described The World
Crisis as "Winston's brilliant autobiography,
disguised as a history of the universe." 

As a Cabinet minister for part of the First World
War and as Prime Minister for nearly all of the
Second, Churchill had unique access to official
documents, military plans, official secrets and
correspondence between world leaders. After the
First War, when there were few rules governing
these documents, Churchill simply took many of
them with him when he left office and used them
freely in his books – as did other wartime
politicians such as David Lloyd George. As a
result of this, strict rules were put in place
preventing Cabinet ministers using official
documents for writing history or memoirs once they
left office.

The World Crisis was inspired by Reginald Baliol
Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher|Lord Esher's attack on
Churchill's reputation in his memoirs. It soon
broadened out into a general multi-volume history.
The volumes are a mix of military history, written
with Churchill's usual narrative flair; diplomatic
and political history, largely written to justify
Churchill's own actions and policies during the
war; portraits of other political and military
figures, usually written to further political
vendettas or settle debts (most notably with Lloyd
George); and personal memoir, written in a
colourful but highly selective manner. Today these
books are almost useless as historical references.
As with all Churchill's works, they have nothing
to say about economic or social history, and are
coloured by his political views –
particularly in regards to the Russian Revolution.
But they remain highly readable for their
narrative skill and vivid portrayals of people and
events.

When he resumed office in 1939, Churchill fully
intended writing a history of the war then
beginning. He said several times: "I will leave
judgements on this matter to history – but I
will be one of the historians." To circumvent the
rules against the use of official documents, he
took the precaution throughout the war of having a
weekly summary of correspondence, minutes,
memoranda and other documents printed in galleys
and headed "Prime Minister's personal minutes".
These were then stored at his home for future use.
As well, Churchill wrote or dictated a number of
letters and memorandums with the specific
intention of placing his views on the record for
later use as a historian.

This all became a source of great controversy when
The Second World War began appearing in 1948.
Churchill was not an academic historian, he was a
politician, and was in fact Leader of the
Opposition, still intending to return to office.
By what right, it was asked, did he have access to
Cabinet, military and diplomatic records which
were denied to other historians? 

What was unknown at the time was the fact that
Churchill had done a deal with the Clement
Attlee|Attlee Labour government which came to
office in 1945. Recognising Churchill's enormous
prestige, Attlee agreed to allow him (or rather
his research assistants) free access to most
documents, provided that (a) no official secrets
were revealed, (b) the documents were not used for
party political purposes, and (c) the typescript
was vetted by the Cabinet Secretary, Norman
Brook|Sir Norman Brook. Brook took a close
interest in the books and rewrote some sections
himself to ensure that nothing was said which
might harm British interests or embarrass the
government. Churchill's history thus became a
semi-official one.

Churchill's privileged access to documents and his
unrivalled personal knowledge gave him an
advantage over all other historians of the Second
World War for many years. The books had enormous
sales in both Britain and the United States and
made Churchill a rich man for the first time. It
was not until after his death and the opening of
the archives that some of the deficiencies of his
work became apparent.

Some of these were inherent in the unique position
Churchill occupied as a historian, being both a
former Prime Minister and a serving politician. He
could not reveal military secrets, such as the
work of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park (see
Ultra) or the planning of the atomic bomb. He
could not discuss wartime disputes with figures
such as Dwight Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle or
Tito, since they were still world leaders at the
time he was writing. He could not discuss Cabinet
disputes with Labour leaders such as Attlee, whose
goodwill the project depended on. He could not
reflect on the deficiencies of generals such as
Archibald Wavell or Claude Auchinleck for fear
they might sue him (some, indeed, threatened to do
so).

Other deficiencies were of Churchill's own making.
Although he described the fighting on the Eastern
Front, he had little real interest in it and no
access to Soviet or German documents, so his
account is a pastiche of secondary sources,
largely written by his assistants. The same is
true to some extent of the war in the Pacific
except for episodes such as the fall of Singapore
in which he was involved. His account of the U.S.
naval war in the Pacific was so heavily based on
other writers that he was accused of plagiarism.

The real focus of Churchill's work is always on
the war in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and
North Africa, but here his work is based heavily
on his own documents, so it greatly exaggerates
his own role. He had little access to American
documents, and even those he did have, such as his
letters from Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman|Truman and
Eisenhower, had to be used with caution for
diplomatic reasons. Although he was, of course, a
central figure in the war, he was not as central
as his books suggest. Although he is usually fair,
some personal vendettas are aired – against
Stafford Cripps, for example.

The Second World War can still be read with great
profit by students of the period, provided it is
seen mainly as a memoir by a leading participant
rather than as an authoritative history by a
professional and detached historian. The war, and
particularly the period between 1940 and 1942 when
Britain was fighting alone, was the climax of
Churchill's career, and his personal account of
the inside story of those days is unique and
invaluable. But since the archives have been
opened far more accurate and reliable histories
have been written.

Churchill's History of the English-Speaking
Peoples was commissioned and largely written in
the 1930s when Churchill badly needed money, but
it was put aside when war broke out in 1939, being
finally issued after he left office for the last
time in 1955. Although it contains much fine
writing, it shows Churchill's deficiencies as a
historian at their most glaring. It is generally
regarded as tendentious and very old-fashioned,
seeing world history as a one-dimensional pageant
of battles and speeches, kings and statesmen, in
which the English occupy central stage. Events of
central importance to modern history, such as the
industrial revolution, are scarcely mentioned.
Although Churchill's enormous prestige ensured
that the books were respectfully received and sold
well, they are now little read.

== Miscellany and trivia ==

*Various secondary/high schools in Canada and the
United States are named after Churchill, such as
Sir Winston Churchill High School in Calgary,
Alberta|Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

*Churchill was an ardent supporter of Zionism,
following his meetings with Chaim Weizmann and the
visits in Eretz Israel|Eretz Israel - Palestina.
He kept supporting it (and later, Israel) even
after WWII.
http://www.jewishpost.com/jewishpost/jpn201b.html

*Churchill College, Cambridge|Churchill College, a
constituent college of the University of
Cambridge, was founded in 1960 as the national and
commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill.

*The Churchill tank, a heavy infantry tank of
World War II, was named in his honour.

*A few people have attributed Churchill's
extraordinary abilities to his being affected by
bipolar disorder. This is not widely accepted,
however, and no major biographer of Churchill has
made that claim.  In his last years, Churchill is
believed by several writers to have suffered from
Alzheimer's disease, though the Churchill Centre
disputes this. Certainly he suffered from fits of
Clinical depression|depression that he called his
"black dog."  Some researchers also believe that
Churchill was dyslexic, based on the difficulties
he described himself having at school. However,
the Churchill Centre and other experts strongly
refute this (Source:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org ). 

*Churchill also overcame a severe stammer and lisp
(speech)|lisp, but some of his speeches were still
marred with traces of them. Churchill even thought
that these added an interesting element to a
speaker's voice: "Sometimes a slight and not
unpleasing stammer or impediment has been of some
assistance in securing the attention of the
audience. . ."
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/ind
ex.cfm?pageid=814http://www.stuttersfa.org/pressrm
/chrchill.htm

*The United States Navy destroyer USS Winston S.
Churchill (DDG-81)|USS Winston S. Churchill
(DDG-81) is named in his honour. In 1963,
Churchill was the first person to be made an
Honorary Citizen of the United States. 

*Churchill's mother was American and some,
including Churchill himself, have said that his
maternal grandmother was an Iroquois, which would
make Churchill the only British prime minister of
Native American descent. Research has failed to
validate this contention, and some doubt its
accuracy.

*In 1995, a row erupted after the National Lottery
spent 12 million pounds of its 'good causes'
budget on Churchill's personal papers after his
descendants said they were tempted to sell them to
American academics. Churchill's family were
heavily criticised for not offering the papers to
the nation for free. 

*Churchill was voted as "The Greatest Briton" in
2002 "100 Greatest Britons" poll sponsored by the
BBC and voted for by the public. He was also named
TIME Magazine|TIME magazine "Man of the
Half-Century" in the early 1950s.

*John Lennon's middle name was Winston. His mother
named him after the prime minister.

*The Cigar#Sizes|Churchill cigar size actually was
named after him.

*Churchill was a Freemason between 1901 and 1912,
although there is evidence he had some involvement
subsequently.
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cf
m?pageid=547.

*In 1943 Churchill was played by Dudley Field
Malone, one of the attorneys in the Scopes Trial
in the propaganda film Mission to Moscow.

* It was alleged by W. Somerset Maugham that
Churchill once confided in him that he had once
been to bed with Ivor Novello.

*In July 1944 Churchill requested from the Chief
of Staff Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay|
General Ismay a study on the potential use of
poison gas as a means of shortening the war or
retaliating against the V-1_flying_bomb|V-1 and
V-2 rocket|V-2 rockets then falling on London: 
:I want you to think very seriously over this
question of poison gas. I would not use it unless
it could be shown either that (a) it was life or
death for us, or (b) that it would shorten the war
by a year... If the bombardment of London became a
serious nuisance and great rockets with
far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many
centres of Government and labour, I should be
prepared to do anything that would hit the enemy
in a murderous place. I may certainly have to ask
you to support me in using poison gas. We could
drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other
cities in Germany in such a way that most of the
population would be requiring constant medical
attention. We could stop all work at the flying
bomb starting points. I do not see why we should
have the disadvantages of being the gentleman
while they have all the advantages of being the
cad. There are times when this may be so but not
now... (source: Prime Minister's Personal Minute,
D.217/4, 6 July 1944)

:The study concluded and advised Churchill that
the use of such weapons would not benefit the war
effort.

== See also ==

*Lady Hermione Cobbold
*Bombing of Dresden in World War II

==Churchill's war cabinet, May 1940–May
1945==
*Winston Churchill – Prime Minister,
Minister of Defence and Leader of the House of
Commons.
*Neville Chamberlain – Lord President of the
Council
*Clement Attlee – Lord Privy Seal and
effective Deputy Leader of the House of Commons.
*Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax|Lord Halifax
– Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
*Arthur Greenwood – Minister without
Portfolio

===Changes===
*August 1940: Max Aitken, 1st Baron
Beaverbrook|Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft
Production, joins the War Cabinet
*October 1940: Sir John Anderson, 1st Viscount
Waverley|John Anderson succeeds Neville
Chamberlain as Lord President.  Sir Kingsley Wood,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Ernest Bevin,
the Minister of Labour, enter the War Cabinet.
Lord Halifax assumes the additional job of Leader
of the House of Lords.
*December 1940: Anthony Eden succeeds Lord Halifax
as Foreign Secretary.  Halifax remains nominally
in the Cabinet as Ambassador to the United States.
His successor as Leader of the House of Lords is
not in the War Cabinet.
*May 1941: Lord Beaverbrook ceased to be Minister
of Aircraft Production, but remains in the Cabinet
as Minister of State. His successor was not in the
War Cabinet.
*June 1941: Lord Beaverbrook becomes Minister of
Supply, remaining in the War Cabinet.
*1941: Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount
Chandos|Oliver Lyttelton enters the Cabinet as
Minister Resident in the Middle East.
*4 February 1942: Lord Beaverbrook becomes
Minister of Production|Minister of War Production,
his successor as Minister of Supply is not in the
War Cabinet.
*19 February 1942: Beaverbrook resigns and no
replacement Minister of War Production is
appointed for the moment. Clement Attlee becomes
Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and Deputy
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Deputy Prime
Minister. Sir Stafford Cripps succeeds Attlee as
Lord Privy Seal and takes over the position of
Leader of the House of Commons from Churchill. Sir
Kingsley Wood leaves the War Cabinet, though
remaining Chancellor of the Exchequer.
*22 February 1942: Arthur Greenwood resigns from
the War Cabinet.
*March 1942: Oliver Lyttelton fills the vacant
position of Minister of Production ("War" was
dropped from the title). Richard Casey, Baron
Casey|Richard Gardiner Casey (a member of the
Australian Parliament) succeeds Oliver Lyttelton
as Minister Resident in the Middle East.
*October 1942: Sir Stafford Cripps retires as Lord
Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons and
leaves the War Cabinet. His successor as Lord
Privy Seal is not in the Cabinet, Anthony Eden
takes the additional position of Leader of the
House of Commons. The Secretary of State for the
Home Department|Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison
(politician)|Herbert Morrison, enters the Cabinet.
*September 1943: Sir John Anderson, 1st Viscount
Waverley|John Anderson succeeds Sir Kingsley Wood
(deceased) as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
remaining in the War Cabinet.  Clement Attlee
succeeds Anderson as Lord President, remaining
also Deputy Prime Minister.  Attlee's successor as
Dominions Secretary is not in the Cabinet.
*November 1943: Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of
Woolton|Lord Woolton enters the Cabinet as
Minister of Reconstruction.

==Winston Churchill's caretaker cabinet,
May–July 1945==
*Winston Churchill – Prime Minister and
Minister of Defence
*Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton|Lord
Woolton – Lord President of the Council
*Max Aitken |Lord Beaverbrook – Lord Privy
Seal
*Sir John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley|John
Anderson – Chancellor of the Exchequer
*Sir Donald Bradley Somervell, Baron
Somervell|Donald Bradley Somervell –
Secretary of State for the Home Department
*Anthony Eden – Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs and Leader of the House of Commons
*Oliver Stanley – Secretary of State for the
Colonies
*Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess
of Salisbury|Lord Cranborne – Secretary of
State for Dominion Affairs and Leader of the House
of Lords
*Sir P.J. Grigg – Secretary of State for War
*Leopold Stennett Amery|Leo Amery –
Secretary of State for India|Secretary of State
for India and Burma
*Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery|Lord
Rosebery – Secretary of State for Scotland
*Harold Macmillan – Secretary of State for
Air
*Brendan Bracken – First Lord of the
Admiralty
*Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos|Oliver
Lyttelton – President of the Board of Trade
and Minister of Production
*Robert Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson|Robert Hudson
– Minister of Agriculture
*Rab Butler – Minister of Labour

==Winston Churchill's third cabinet, October
1951–April 1955==
*Winston Churchill – Prime Minister and
Minister of Defence
*Gavin Turnbull Simonds, 1st Baron Simonds|Lord
Simonds – Lord Chancellor
*Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton|Lord
Woolton – Lord President of the Council
*Elton John – Lord Privy Seal and Leader of
the House of Lords
*Rab Butler – Chancellor of the Exchequer
*Sir David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of
Kilmuir|David Maxwell-Fyfe – Secretary of
State for the Home Department
*Anthony Eden – Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs
*Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos|Oliver
Lyttelton – Secretary of State for the
Colonies
*Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay|Lord Ismay
– Secretary of State for Commonwealth
Relations
*James Stuart, 1st Viscount Stuart of
Findhorn|James Stuart – Secretary of State
for Scotland
*Peter Thorneycroft – President of the Board
of Trade
*Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell|Lord
Cherwell – Paymaster-General
*Sir Walter Monckton, 1st Viscount Monckton|Walter
Monckton – Minister of Labour
*Harry Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank|Harry
Crookshank – Minister of Health and Leader
of the House of Commons
*Harold Macmillan – Minister of Housing and
Local Government
*Frederick Leathers, 1st Baron Leathers|Lord
Leathers – Minister for the Co-ordination of
Transport, Fuel, and Power

===Changes===
*March 1952: Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Ismay as
Commonwealth Relations Secretary.  Salisbury
remains also Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the
House of Lords.  Harold Alexander, 1st Earl
Alexander of Tunis|Lord Alexander of Tunis
succeeds Churchill as Minister of Defence.
*May 1952: Harry Crookshank succeeds Lord
Salisbury as Lord Privy Seal, remaining Leader of
the House of Commons.  Salisbury remains
Commonwealth Relations Secretary and Leader of the
House of Lords.  Crookshank's successor as
Minister of Health is not in the Cabinet.
*November 1952: Lord Woolton becomes Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster.  Lord Salisbury succeeds
Lord Woolton as Lord President.  Philip
Cunliffe-Lister, 1st Earl of Swinton|Lord Swinton
succeeds Lord Salisbury as Commonwealth Relations
Secretary.  
*September 1953: Florence Horsbrugh, the Minister
of Education, Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Minister of
Agriculture, and Gwilym Lloyd George, 1st Viscount
Tenby|Gwilym Lloyd George, the Minister of Food,
enter the cabinet.  The Ministry for the
Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel, and Power, is
abolished, and Lord Leathers leaves the Cabinet.
*October 1953: Lord Cherwell resigns as Paymaster
General.  His successor is not in the Cabinet.
*July 1954: Alan Lennox-Boyd succeeds Oliver
Lyttelton as Colonial Secretary.  Derick Heathcoat
Amory succeeds Sir Thomas Dugdale as Minister of
Agriculture.
*October 1954: Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, now Lord
Kilmuir, succeeds Lord Simonds as Lord Chancellor.
Gwilym Lloyd George succeeds him as Home
Secretary.  The Food Ministry is merged into the
Ministry of Agriculture.  Sir David Eccles
succeeds Florence Horsbrugh as Minister of
Education.  Harold Macmillan succeeds Lord
Alexander of Tunis as Minister of Defence.  Duncan
Sandys succeeds Macmillan as Minister of Housing
and Local Government.  Osbert Peake, the Minister
of Pensions and National Insurance, enters the
Cabinet.

==References==
* Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of
the Great War by Robert Massie (ISBN 1844135284);
deals with forty years of European politics by
reference to the naval arms race between Britain
and Germany. Contains chapters on Churchill's
early life (chapter 40: "I Do Believe That I Am a
Glowworm") and period as First Lord of the
Admiralty (chapter 41: Churchill at the
Admiralty).
* Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert (ISBN
0-8050-2396-8)
* Winston Churchill by Henry Pelling, (first
issue) 1974, (Wordsworth Military Library Edition)
1999 (ISBN 1-84022-218-2), 
* Winston Churchill" by Sebastian  Haffner,
Reinbek 1967, Germany 
* http://www.worldbeyondborders.org/quotes.htm
Quotations database, World Beyond Borders.
* The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Quotations
by Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-860103-4)
* The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill,
Visions of Glory 1874-1932, 1983, Little, Brown
(Vol. I) by William Manchester, ISBN 0316545031
* The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone
1932-1940, 1988, Little, Brown (Vol. II) by
William Manchester, ISBN 0316545120
* Volume III remains unfinished as of August 2005

== External links ==

wikisource author
* http://www.winstonchurchill.org The Churchill
Centre website
*http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/sp
eech_52.html Audio of Churchill's "finest hour"
speech
* http://www.spanamwar.com/Churchillcomments.htm
Winston Churchill in Cuba
*http://www.malakand.blogspot.com Opinion piece on
Churchill's significance in history.
*http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jamesdow
/winston.htm Another bio of him including extended
quotations from his speeches
*
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive
Churchill and the Great Republic. Exhibition
explores Churchill's lifelong relationship with
the United States.
*http://www.jewishpost.com/jewishpost/jpn201b.html
Chu