Most of his famous speeches came within a few months of each other. Churchill took over as prime minister in May 1940 after a disastrous start to World War II in which Nazi Germany conquered much of Europe. A master orator, he did his best to rally the nation in the face of near-certain attack, giving six major speeches in four months. During the first of those, he told Parliament that he had “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”.
Early Formative Background
Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born in November 30, 1847 in his grandfather’s home, Blemheim Palace, Oxfordshire and he was of rich, aristocratic ancestry.
Through his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the brilliant Tory politician, was directly descended from John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough. The Conservative leader’s mother, Jennie Jerome, a distinguished beauty was the daughter of a tycoon, New York Times financier and horse racing enthusiast, Leonard W. Jerome. Young Winston experienced a sadly neglected childhood. Like many Victorian parents used to be detached, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill were no exception to the rule. The mere redemption was the affection of his devoted nurse, Mrs. Everest.
Winston Churchill’s birthroom at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
Son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Jennie Jerome.
Designed in the rare, and short-lived, English Baroque style, architectural appreciation of the palace is as divided today as it was in the 1720s. It is unique in its combined use as a family home, mausoleum and national monument.. The palace is also notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill.
Schoolboy
In year 1882, Winston Churchill was dispatched to a boarding school, seven years of age as it was the conventionality amongst the upper families of the time. The rigid and hostile school environment put young Churchill under severe emotional strain. He was appalled by the severity and the physical punishment implemented-the birch flogging brutality, the dreadful lessons, and the utter isolation of this new life.
As a consequence to his suffering his health deteriorated drastically to the scale that his removal from the nightmarish boarding school was imperative.
He then was sent on to another school. Winston’s second school was located in the seaside town of Brighton, administrated by two sisters. They used to be kinder figures, sympathetic and the school itself was more bearable. He was about to spend three years of his later life there, gradually regaining his strength and his health and enjoyed the school subjects he was really interested in, geography and history. As a schoolboy he was intelligent but his downfall was his imbalanced interested in the lessons. He had a fervent interest in history and geography, whereas Latin and mathematics heed no interest for him whatsoever. His manifest lack of drive and his poor results infuriated Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill and accelerated the distance between the two.
Aged twelve, Winston Churchill encountered his first school examinations with poor outcomes. His attempted entrance into Harrow was devastated. After writing his name and deposing a few blotches and smudges, the schoolboy could do no more than staring the blank examination paper. Latin was alien to him.
Whether his family name was enough to gain admittance into Harrow one cannot know for sure yet admitted he was. Much to his father’s disdain, Winston entered the lowest class possible as Harrow and remained there three times as long as any other schoolboy did.
At Harrow his conspicuously poor academic performance seemingly honored Lord Randolph Churchill’s resolution to place Churchill into a military career. At the third attempt that he managed, he succeeded his entrance to the Royal Military College, now Academy Sandhurst. Winston Churchill, being keen on geography succeeded in the preliminary exams for the army, where other boys failed. One of the tasks assigned was to draw a map of a selected country to which Churchill drew New Zealand, finding the task relatively easy. It was his first time that he ever attained such high marks.
Winston Churchill commissioned as a Cornet.
When Winston Churchill entered the Royal Military College (Sandhurst) few could foresee that he would become one of Great Britain’s greatest war leaders. He tried three times before passing the entrance exam; he applied to be trained for the cavalry rather than the infantry because the required grade was lower and he was not required to learn mathematics, which he disliked. At Sandhurst Churchill had a new start.
Juvenility
Before earning election to Parliament in 1900 for Oldham, Winston Churchill had served the Royal Cavalry in 1895. In the property of the soldier and the wartime journalist, Winston Churchill travelled far and wide, including visits to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa. Initially, on account of his two failed entrance attempts, military career was not deemed the optimal choice for him. Despite the laborious entrance period, Churchill successfully headed for the British Royal Military College. In reality, he applied for the cavalry rather than the infantry as the required grade was lower and didn’t include the detestable mathematics to him as a prerequisite. At Sandhurst Winston Churchill experienced a new start in life. For, “I was no longer handicapped by past neglect of Latin, French or Mathematics. We had to learn fresh things and we all started equal. Tactics, Fortification, Topography- map-making, Military Law and Military Fortification, formed the whole curriculum. In addition were Drill, Gymnastics and Riding”.
Work at Sandhurst inspired Churchill. He would draw contoured maps of the local hills, designed paper plans for the advanced guards and rear guards; he even devised simple tactical schemes. He was educated on how to blow up masonry bridges and build substitute bridges out of wood.
In December, 1894, Winston Churchill graduated from Sandhurst with honours, eight in the rank out of a class comprised of 150 graduates. Regardless of Churchill’s father desire to be transferred to an infantry regiment he decided to remain with the cavalry and he was commissioned as a Cornet (Second Lieutenant) in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars on 20 February 1895.
Churchill portrait by Russell & Sons. 1904
This political leaflet is from the 1899 Oldham by-election. It was here that a young aspiring man named Winston Churchill stood as a candidate for the first time and initiated a spectacular and turbulent political career. Churchill and his fellow Conservative candidate lost this by-election; a year later Winston returned from his adventures as a war correspondent in South Africa to win the Oldham seat at a general election dominated by the issue of the Boer War.
Churchill’s political fermentation
World War I
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By all accounts, although unorthodox as an officer, he was popular and courageous, and improved morale by organizing entertainment for the troops and reducing punishments. (Pictured, Churchill, centre, in army uniform with colleagues)
As with virtually every extraordinary world leading figure, Winston Churchill left behind a complicated legacy.
Churchill was first elected to Parliament in1900 shortly before the death of Queen Victoria (24 May 1819-22 January 1901). He took his seat in the House of Commons as the Conservative Member (The Tories) for Oldham in February 1901and made his maiden speech four days later.
After crossing the floor to join the Liberals, Churchill rose swiftly within the Liberal ranks and became a Cabinet Minister in1908- President of the Board of Trade. In his capacity and as Home Secretary (1910-1911) he helped to lay the foundations of the post-1945 welfare state.
Winston Churchill led a varied career during the First World War. During the outbreak of the First European War in 1914, Winston Churchill was serving as First Lord of Admiralty. In 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty he contributed to the orchestration of the calamitous Dardanelles naval campaigned and was also involved in the planning of the military landing on Gallipoli. Both designs proved disastrous. Winston Churchill, heavily criticized for his error, resigned from his office and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself as an officer in the Army.
However, Churchill could not remain withdrawn from power for long and Lloyd George, concerned to draw on his dexterity and his talents soon re- appointed him to high office. Their ties were not manifestly comfortable, particularly with Churchill’s will and effort to involve Britain in a crusade against the Bolsheviks in Russia after the Great War. In 1917, under Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s coalition government, Winston Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, a seat he held until January 1919. In1919, shortly after the war finished, he was appointed Secretary of State for Air and War. Vested in this role, he attended peace talks in Paris in 1919, in which he contributed in the discussions regarding the post-war world. He served this office until 1921.
Winston Churchill photographed with delegates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Churchill was not actively involved in the peace process but as Secretary of State for Air and War he participated in discussions about the post-war world situation.
Churchill’s Political Fermentation
Post-War period
In 1900, Churchill was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Oldham, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decades ascending the ranks of the liberal government. “Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party” he would cite.
Between 1922 and 1924 Churchill left the Liberal Party and, following his share of hesitation, he rejoined the Conservatives. To his surprise, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin (3 August 1867- 14 December 1947), an office he served from 1922 up to 1929. He was an ebullient, if increasingly anachronistic figure, returning Britain to the Gold Standard and adopting an aggressive stance in opposing the General Strike of 1926.
In a parliamentary career covering sixty four years, Sir Winston Churchill represented five constituencies and served under thirteen Prime Ministers, and of course his own wartime premierships, spanning from 1940-1945 and 1951- 1955.
He sat for Oldham from 1900 to 1906, an important cotton-spinning centre whose electorate favored the Conservative policy of Protectionism which advocated duties on cheap foreign textiles. Churchill’s free trader perception and his consequent deflection to the Liberal Party was based upon national, rather than local considerations. Following his deselecrion at Oldham, Churchill was invited to stand for North West Manchester, one of nine of that city’s constituencies with a tiny electorate. He represented the constituency for just over two years.
By now a junior minister, under Secretary of State for the Colonies he was almost entirely concerned with national and international affairs. The Liberal Government brought in an Aliens Act which angered the powerful Jewish element in Churchill’s constituency, and local Catholics were incensed because he would not commit himself over Home Rule for Ireland. When, in the Custom of the Day, he had to submit the reelection on being appointed to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, he was narrowly defeated by the Tory candidate.
Just two weeks later Churchill found a “Seat of Convenience” at Dundee. He remained Member of the Parliament for Dundee for over fourteen years, during which time he was almost continuously a Cabinet Minister. Scotland’s third largest city, Dundee was hardly a joyful place in which to arrive of a morning dark, tall and grimy, with much unemployment, poverty and drunkenness. The electorate, whilst at first felt honored to be represented by a cabinet minister and seemed willing to overlook Churchill’s long absences, the relationship become burdened after the First World War, when Churchill’s own controversial escapades compounded with much local bitterness and disillusionment that led to his defeat in the 1922 election. Shortly before polling day Churchill had been stricken with appendicitis, which limited his campaigning. He finished fourth, falling behind a Prohibitionist, a Laborite and a local Liberal. Later he wrote on that electoral defeat: “I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix”.
Churchill was out of Parliament for almost two years, unsuccessfully contesting by-elections at Leicester West and Westminster in1923-1924. In the 1924 general election he was adopted as the “Independent Constitutionalist and anti-socialist” candidate for Epping, which effectively remained his constituency for the rest of his political life.
1925-Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer
For five years, spanning from 1924 to 1929, Winston Churchill was under the “burden of statesmanship” as a Chancellor of Exchequer. During his service to the national Treasury, he was engrossed in national issues, mainly the General Strike, the pensions for widows, orphans and the elderly, as well as taxes and the Gold Standard, unemployment and of course, the Depression. Constituency concerns receive rare attention. Churchill’s visits were majorly whistle-stop tours and occasional summer fete. Nevertheless, in that “semirural constituency among the glades of Epping Forest” the voters seemed content with their Member of Parliament’s high status and prepared to neglect his limited parochial presence. Still, Churchill was popular, respected and highly-regarded.
The May 1929 election swept the Tories from Office and Churchill’s majority was diminished to 5.000-his smallest ever for Epping/ Woodford. After the Tory electoral defeat in 1929 Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the subsequent eleven years out of office, predominantly writing and making speeches. Despite his loneliness in the firm opposition to Indian Independence his warnings against the appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven valid with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. In effect, Winston Churchill was a lonely figure until his response to Adolf Hitler’s challenge brought him to leadership of a national coalition in 1940. With Franklin D. Roosevelt (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the USA, January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) and Joseph Stalin (Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953), he then shaped Allied Strategy in World War II and after the dissolution of the alliance he alerted the West with regard to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. Through 1939 he was out of office increasingly isolated from his party, first over Dominion status for India, then over rearmament.
In the 1935 election he encountered considerable hostility at several meetings, yet polled 35.000 votes and recorded his largest majority. During its second run (1935-1945), the new Parliament witnessed Churchill return triumphantly to the center of affairs, but not before he had ruffled constituency feathers with his attacks on Chamberlain’s (Arthur Neville Chamberlain, 18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940) policy of appeasement. Several constituency branches passed resolutions of censure and Churchill later regarded the episode as “one of the major political crises” he had faced during his years. In 1945 Epping was subdivided. The new Epping Division looked marginal –in effect it was defeated by Labour, so Churchill stood for the new Woodford Division. Eventually, he won by a majority of over 17.000, but nationally Labour won 393 seats to 189 for the Tories. Churchill now became Leader of the Opposition.
The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea conference and code named the Argonaut Conference, held from 4 to 11 February, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union for the purpose of discussing Germany and Europe's postwar reorganization. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively. The conference convened near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union within the Livadia, Yusupov and Vorontsov Palaces.
The aim of the conference was to shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order but a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of post-Nazi Europe.
The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. However within a few short years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy.
Yalta was the second of three major wartime conferences among the Big Three.
The Second World War
Sir Winston Churchill was a highly noted statesman, orator, historian, writer, and artist. He served a second term as Prime Minister during the Cold War from 1951-1955 and is the only U.K. P.M. to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
The finalized political persona of Churchill, as it is revoked and honored to this very day, was his Second World War and post- second World War political figure. His most daunting and fervent activity after the Second World War demise was observed during the ill- balanced years of the Cold War.
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is called to replace Neville Chamberlain (1869-1949), as British Prime Minister following the latter’s resignation after losing a confidence vote of his colleagues in the Conservative Party in the House of Commons.
There were now two Tory candidates for prime minister: Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, and Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty. The exact details of the discussions between Chamberlain, Churchill and Halifax about who would become prime minister remain unclear.
The outcome, however, was clear. Halifax, who was Chamberlain’s preferred choice and the 'Establishment' candidate, turned down the offer to become prime minister. Halifax probably believed he could restrain Churchill more effectively by serving under him rather than as his leader. If it all went wrong, he could step in from a position of strength.
In 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, giving Czechoslovakia over to German conquest but bringing, as Chamberlain promised, “peace in our time.” In September 1939, that peace was shattered by Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Chamberlain declared war against Germany but during the next eight months showed himself to be ill-equipped for the daunting task of saving Europe from Nazi conquest. After British forces failed to prevent the German occupation of Norway in April 1940, Chamberlain lost the support of many members of his Conservative Party. On May 10, Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The same day, Chamberlain formally lost the confidence of the House of Commons.
Churchill, who was known for his military leadership ability, was appointed British prime minister in his place. He formed an all-party coalition and quickly won the popular support of Britons. On May 13, in his first speech before the House of Commons, Prime Minister Churchill declared that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” and offered an outline of his bold plans for British resistance. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender.” In actual fact, they never did.
Churchill tallied the accumulated catastrophes of his first months of leadership:
“Rather more than a quarter of a year has passed since the new Government came into power in this country. What a cataract of disaster has poured out upon us since then. The trustful Dutch overwhelmed; their beloved and respected Sovereign driven into exile; the peaceful city of Rotterdam the scene of a massacre as hideous and brutal as anything in the Thirty Years War. Belgium invaded and beaten down. … our ally, France, out; Italy in against us; all France in the power of the enemy, all its arsenals and vast masses of military material converted or convertible to its use … the whole Western seaboard of Europe from the North Cape to the Spanish frontier in German hands; all the ports, all the airfields on this immense front, employed against us as potential springboards of invasion.”
“This grim talk did not dismay the British people. Instead, it braced them,” Ricks writes.
Friday 10 May 1940 was one of the most dramatic days in British history. The government was in disarray as Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister and, on the continent, Germany ended the Phoney War by invading the Low Countries.
Photo: Churchill leaving Downing Street with Sir Kingsley Wood and Anthony Eden, 10 May 1940
The royal family celebrates VE Day
Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill (c.) is joined by members of the royal family including (l. to r.) Princess Elizabeth (now the Queen), Queen Elizabeth, King George VI and Princess Margaret as they celebrate VE Day from the balcony of Buckingham Palace on May 8, 1945.
It was Winston Churchill who eventually ascended to power, though Lord Halifax (1881-1959) was the persona grata on the part of King George VI. After the King’s initial dismay over Churchill’s appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed “the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister”. For an entirety of four and a half years, every Tuesday from September 2940, the two men met privately for lunch in order to discuss the war in secrecy and frankness.
Wars tend to bring out the best and worst in people and both the British prime minister and King George were no exceptions. In their own way, they made the difference between success and failure of World War II. Churchill was in his 60’s and had led a relative lack luster life prior to his taking the helm in the early days of the war.
After the Tories were defeated in 1929 election, Churchill fell out with Baldwin over the issue of ceding India further self- government. Churchill became increasingly isolated in politics and experienced the desperation of the perpetual political opposition. He did some ambiguous moves notably the most eminent the support of King Edward VIII (23 June 1894- 28 May 1972). Largely as a repercussion of his mismanagements, people did not heed Churchill’s dire prophesies regarding the menace of Hitler and the hopelessness of the appeasement policy. Following the Munich Crisis, however, Churchill’ auguries were seen to be coming to life. When the war broke out In September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty.
Nearly 25 years have been completed after his leaving the post in pain and sorrow. The Navy emitted a signal to the fleet: “Winston is back”.
Governmental Authority
Churchill, the War Leader
Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Churchill interacted with eleven U.S Presidents-as many as the Queen. He did not meet all of them, as she has but his influence on his thought and principles has been indelible.
For the first nine months of the conflict, Winston Churchill proved that he was, as Admiral Fisher had once said “a war man”, in opposition to Chamberlain. When Chamberlain resigned following criticism in the House of Commons, the belligerent First Lord, Winston Churchill became the leader of a coalition government. The date was 10 May, 1940: Churchill’s and Britain’s finest hour.
When the German armies conquered France and Britain faced the Blitz, Churchill embodied his nation’s will for resistance. His oratory proved an inspiration for the beset nation. Winston Churchill devoted much of his energy to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt (30 January 1882- 12 April 1945) to support him in the Atlantic, where until 1943, Britain’s lifeline to the New world was always under severe threat from German U-boats.
Allied Forces: Human Dynamics
A unique feature and an entirely distinct chapter in the history of British-American affairs was the first connection established between a British Prime Minister and an American President. The Great Depression and Roosevelt’s response to it fixed his own place in history. Yet, before the war, Churchill, despite his massive political persona, seemed destined to be remembered as another figure of the minor ministers who populated British governments, though his writing would- as it did- have raised him much higher than that.
Public greatness is an enormous challenge. A personal challenge, laborious as it might be, is essentially private. World War II provided that public challenge for Churchill and Roosevelt provided both, especially Roosevelt, with an additional opportunity for historical prominence.
Absent from war, neither Churchill not Roosevelt would have led their countries in the 1940s. Churchill, who had come to support rearming and a tougher line toward Hitler was rescued from the back benches of Parliament after Germany defied the Munich agreements, occupied Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland in September 1939. However much American s may have credited Roosevelt for his New Deal policies, the two- term tradition and voter fatigue would likely have prevented him from running for a third term in office- had, as it is, the world remained at peace.
Second World War
Winston Churchill became Britain’s Prime Minister on 10th May, 1940. As he was later to write “I felt that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial”.
On the very day that Churchill fulfilled his life’s ambition, Germany had that that morning invaded France, Belgium, the Netherland and Luxemburg.
Britain faced its supreme test and Sir Winston Churchill rallied the nation in defiance of Hitler. In the words of Labour politician Hugh Dalton, Churchill was “the only man we have for this hour”.
This view was shared by the overwhelming majority of the British people. It is for the leadership through these fraught years of 1940-1941 through Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz that Churchill is best remembered.
King WL Mackenzie; US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at an Allied Conference in Quebec, 1943
Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc
During the war with Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill said “You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves”.
This remark was made when Germany had a strong advantage over Great Britain, but Churchill was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis. Even when the Nazis offered Great Britain an honorable peace in exchange to end the war, Churchill remained unmoved.
Less obviously Churchill made planning and decision- making- political and military – simpler and more efficient. His force of personality was instrumental in cementing the “Big Three” Alliance with Britain’s powerful allies, Russia and the United States. His unbounded energy and determination meant that he was not easy to collaborate with. Yet, according to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke “it is worth all these difficulties to have the privilege to work with such a man”. In July 1945, with Nazi Germany defeated and Japan near to collapse, Churchill’s conservative party lost a general election in a landslide victory for Labour. An electorate weary of war was looking ahead to a New Britain. Winston Churchill, the man who had done so much to secure eventual Allied victory was once again out of office. After six years of war and conflict, people wanted more than a return of the old order and status. People asked for reform and reconstruction of Britain. On 26th of July 1945, Churchill learnt that he and the Unionists (Conservatives) had been rejected by the people. Labour, under Clement Attlee, would thereon govern Great Britain in the post- war world.
Still, resilience was perhaps the most pronounced of his traits of character; he had already written the history of another great war in which he had been a principal actor.
The “Second World War” is a history of the period from the end of the First World War to July 1945, written by Winston Churchill. The British Prime Minister labelled the “moral of the work” as follows: In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill. As Churchill himself has reiterated, “I will leave Judgments on this matter to history but I will be one of the historians”.
The “Second World War” has been issued in editions of six, twelve, and four volumes, as well as a single-volume abridgment. The country of the first publication was the United States, preceding publication in the United Kingdom by six months. This was a consequence of the many last minute changes, which Churchill insisted be made to the London Cassell edition, which he considered to be definitive.
King, W.L. Mackenzie; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Churchill, Winston
King, W.L. Mackenzie; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Churchill, Winston
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US
US President Franklin Roosevelt and Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill discussing allied war plans at the Yalta Conference 1945.
US Army Photo
Churchill waving at crowds flooding the Whitehall on Victory Day, 8th May 1945
“God bless you all. This is your victory”, professed the opening lines of the public address to the crowds in Whitehall, in celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany on Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), 8th May 1945. The crowd roared back “No!-it is your!”For Churchill, nothing would match his wartime triumphs. What came afterwards would be “all anticlimax”, as he later wrote in his war memoirs.
Few failed to recognize Churchill’s part in Britain’s survival and victory.
Retirement and Death
A man of Churchill’s force and talents would have left his unique print on events, society and history regardless of days and age of his lifetime. Namely, he has been an inspired journalist, a biographer and historian of classic proportions, an amateur painter of talent, an orator of rare influence. Above all the aforementioned, Churchill was an excellent public figure, in all possible respects, a soldier of courage and distinction, Winston Churchill has been a figure of unprecedented versatility. It was as a wartime leader that he excelled and left his indelible imprint upon the history of Britain on the world. In this capacity, at his profound conservative devotion to the legacy of his nation’s history, his unshakable resistance to tyranny either from the right or the left, his capacity to look beyond Britain to the larger Atlantic Community and the ultimate unity of Europe. A romantic Churchill was also a realist with an exceptional sensitivity to his tactical considerations and adhered to his strategical objectives. A fervent patriot and a citizen of the world. Winston Churchill was an indomitable fighter, and eventually an generous victor.
The death of Winston Churchill marked the finale of an epoch in British history that had been as glorious as it was long.
He was 90 years old, he had suffered as massive stroke two weeks before his demise; after his stroke he was gradually slipping into a sleep from which he wasn’t ever to awake. Churchill’s last breath did not come as a surprise to anybody. He has died surrounded by his wife, Lady Clementine Churchill and other family members by his bedside.
Winston Churchill has spent the past few days of his life lying in the downstairs room that he had converted to a bedroom after a fall, four years before that had injured his back. Despite the predictability of his ending, the news seemed to be a historical hallmark. Arriving at a time when the Labour government was considering withdrawing all troops from east of Suez and so closing down the last remnants of the British Empire. “Now Britain is no longer a great power”, remarked Charles de Gaulle when he heard the news. Many commentators agreed with him and saw in the funeral ceremony at St. Paul’s the demise of the era of British Greatness.
Winston Churchill lay in state in Westminster’ s Hall for three days and nights, an honor not accorded to any English statesman since Gladstone in 1898. His coffin was draped with a Union Jack on which rested his insignia of the knight of the Garter. No fewer than 320.000 people filed past the catafalque that was guarded by members of the Services who stood statue-still, their heads bowed in respect and homage.
One break with precedent was the decision of the Queen to attend personally, a special mark of royal favour as sovereigns do not usually attend non- family funerals.
In all six sovereigns, six precedents and sixteen Prime Ministers were present that day in history.
On the morning of the funeral, Big Ben struck 9.45 a.m but thereafter remained silent for the rest of the mourning day.
The great procession left New Palace Yard on its slow journey via Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Fleet Street up to St. Paul’s. The gun carriage on which the coffin rested was pulled through the streets by 120 Royal Navy-Blue-jackets, a reminder of Churchill’s two terms as First Lord of the Admiralty. The sight as it left the Palace of Westminster was likened by one spectator to that of a great warship leaving harbor. Other troops in the procession, which included detachment of no fewer than eighteen military units, marched carrying their rifles reversed. It took four major of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars to carry all of Churchill’s order and decoration behind the gun carriage.
As the cortege passed the Cenotaph in Whitehall, 100 flags carried by men and women of the wartime resistance movements of France, Denmark, Norway and Holland were raised in a final salute.
Because, unlike Nelson and Wellington, Winston Churchill had chose not to be buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the coffin was taken aboard the launch Havengore, to the booms of a 19-gun salute. As it set off upstream, pipers played the haunting lament “Flowers of the Forest”, and then 16 RAF Lighting aircraft swooped Low in a fly-past, from Temple Pier, the coffin was taken to Waterloo station, and from there it travelled to Hanborough by train. The private burial took place in Bladon in Oxfordshire, near the Blenheim Palace where Churchill was born in 1874.
Sir Winston Churchill’s last home, 28 Hyde Park Gate, London SW7
Admittedly, the profusion of Churchill’s spirit and wit, his tumultuous political career have provided the mattress to an abundance of creative biographers, screenwriters, authors for work of never- ending interest. It is predicted that this will not cease in the near future. An Oscar-buzzed performance acts as the stoic centre of Joe Wright’s retelling of the events of 1940, played as a House of Cards style thriller in the Churchill drama “The Darkest Hour”, with Gary Oldman having joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of them in movies and 28 on television. He is one of the best three. ‘I knew I didn’t look like him,’ Oldman has said. ‘I thought that with some work I could approximate the voice. The challenge in part was the physicality, because you’re playing someone whose silhouette is so iconic.’
We all have our own mind’s-eye view of what Churchill should look and sound like, and his personality was so strong and sui generis that it is almost impossible for an actor to impose himself on the role. He is therefore almost always left with either mere impersonation or caricature. Oldman avoided this in Darkest Hour through research. ‘I went to the newsreel,’ he says, ‘and what I discovered was a man who had this very athletic tread. He would skip around at 65 like a 30-year-old, he had a sparkle, the eyes were alive, he had a very sort of cherubic grin.’
This is an insight that a number of actors who play Churchill — who came to power in 1940 aged 65 — have missed, and who thus play him as a man in late middle age. Sir Jock Colville, Churchill’s wartime private secretary, who was 41 years younger than him, wrote of how exhausting it was to keep up with the Prime Minister as he bounded up staircases, climbed bombsites and marched quickly down corridors. Oldman catches this. Others have played what Oldman calls ‘this sort of rather depressed grumpy man with a cigar’, but he wanted to ‘give him a bit of a twinkle in the eye’.
Other very good Churchills have been Albert Finney in The Gathering Storm (2002), which rightly picked up a Golden Globe and Emmy, and Brendan Gleeson in Into the Storm (2009). Just as things looked good for Churchill on screen, however, a slew of frankly ridiculous revisionist films and TV shows were released, which, with the wartime generation then dead or dying, showed a shocking disregard for historical fact, while still posing as that self-contradictory, want-it-both-ways beast, the ‘docudrama’.
Gary Oldman, by total contrast, has, through prosthetics, thoughtfulness and superb acting, caught Churchill brilliantly. He acknowledges our preconceptions about Churchill, and mildly co-opts them with charm and acuity. The supporting cast — especially Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine and Sam West as Anthony Eden — are excellent too. Although there have been very many other creditable Churchills — David Ryall, Mel Smith, Timothy Spall, David Calder and Bob Hoskins among them — Gary Oldman now joins Robert Hardy and Simon Ward in the triumvirate of the greats.
References:
History extra: https://www.history.extra.com/period/second-world-war/darkest hour-an-interview-with-director-Joe-Wright.
Imperial War Museum: https:// www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-churchill-led-britain-to-victory-in-the-second-world-war.
https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/winston-churchill.
https://winstonchurchillorg/tag/second-world-war/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/andrew-robertss-guide-to-churchill-on-screen/.
This political leaflet is from the 1899 Oldham by-election. It was here that a young aspiring man named Winston Churchill stood as a candidate for the first time and initiated a spectacular and turbulent political career. Churchill and his fellow Conservative candidate lost this by-election; a year later Winston returned from his adventures as a war correspondent in South Africa to win the Oldham seat at a general election dominated by the issue of the Boer War.
Churchill’s political fermentation
World War I
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By all accounts, although unorthodox as an officer, he was popular and courageous, and improved morale by organizing entertainment for the troops and reducing punishments. (Pictured, Churchill, centre, in army uniform with colleagues)
As with virtually every extraordinary world leading figure, Winston Churchill left behind a complicated legacy.
Churchill was first elected to Parliament in1900 shortly before the death of Queen Victoria (24 May 1819-22 January 1901). He took his seat in the House of Commons as the Conservative Member (The Tories) for Oldham in February 1901and made his maiden speech four days later.
After crossing the floor to join the Liberals, Churchill rose swiftly within the Liberal ranks and became a Cabinet Minister in1908- President of the Board of Trade. In his capacity and as Home Secretary (1910-1911) he helped to lay the foundations of the post-1945 welfare state.
Winston Churchill led a varied career during the First World War. During the outbreak of the First European War in 1914, Winston Churchill was serving as First Lord of Admiralty. In 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty he contributed to the orchestration of the calamitous Dardanelles naval campaigned and was also involved in the planning of the military landing on Gallipoli. Both designs proved disastrous. Winston Churchill, heavily criticized for his error, resigned from his office and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself as an officer in the Army.
However, Churchill could not remain withdrawn from power for long and Lloyd George, concerned to draw on his dexterity and his talents soon re- appointed him to high office. Their ties were not manifestly comfortable, particularly with Churchill’s will and effort to involve Britain in a crusade against the Bolsheviks in Russia after the Great War. In 1917, under Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s coalition government, Winston Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, a seat he held until January 1919. In1919, shortly after the war finished, he was appointed Secretary of State for Air and War. Vested in this role, he attended peace talks in Paris in 1919, in which he contributed in the discussions regarding the post-war world. He served this office until 1921.
Winston Churchill photographed with delegates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Churchill was not actively involved in the peace process but as Secretary of State for Air and War he participated in discussions about the post-war world situation.
Churchill’s Political Fermentation
Post-War period
In 1900, Churchill was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Oldham, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decades ascending the ranks of the liberal government. “Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party” he would cite.
Between 1922 and 1924 Churchill left the Liberal Party and, following his share of hesitation, he rejoined the Conservatives. To his surprise, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin (3 August 1867- 14 December 1947), an office he served from 1922 up to 1929. He was an ebullient, if increasingly anachronistic figure, returning Britain to the Gold Standard and adopting an aggressive stance in opposing the General Strike of 1926.
In a parliamentary career covering sixty four years, Sir Winston Churchill represented five constituencies and served under thirteen Prime Ministers, and of course his own wartime premierships, spanning from 1940-1945 and 1951- 1955.
He sat for Oldham from 1900 to 1906, an important cotton-spinning centre whose electorate favored the Conservative policy of Protectionism which advocated duties on cheap foreign textiles. Churchill’s free trader perception and his consequent deflection to the Liberal Party was based upon national, rather than local considerations. Following his deselecrion at Oldham, Churchill was invited to stand for North West Manchester, one of nine of that city’s constituencies with a tiny electorate. He represented the constituency for just over two years.
By now a junior minister, under Secretary of State for the Colonies he was almost entirely concerned with national and international affairs. The Liberal Government brought in an Aliens Act which angered the powerful Jewish element in Churchill’s constituency, and local Catholics were incensed because he would not commit himself over Home Rule for Ireland. When, in the Custom of the Day, he had to submit the reelection on being appointed to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, he was narrowly defeated by the Tory candidate.
Just two weeks later Churchill found a “Seat of Convenience” at Dundee. He remained Member of the Parliament for Dundee for over fourteen years, during which time he was almost continuously a Cabinet Minister. Scotland’s third largest city, Dundee was hardly a joyful place in which to arrive of a morning dark, tall and grimy, with much unemployment, poverty and drunkenness. The electorate, whilst at first felt honored to be represented by a cabinet minister and seemed willing to overlook Churchill’s long absences, the relationship become burdened after the First World War, when Churchill’s own controversial escapades compounded with much local bitterness and disillusionment that led to his defeat in the 1922 election. Shortly before polling day Churchill had been stricken with appendicitis, which limited his campaigning. He finished fourth, falling behind a Prohibitionist, a Laborite and a local Liberal. Later he wrote on that electoral defeat: “I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix”.
Churchill was out of Parliament for almost two years, unsuccessfully contesting by-elections at Leicester West and Westminster in1923-1924. In the 1924 general election he was adopted as the “Independent Constitutionalist and anti-socialist” candidate for Epping, which effectively remained his constituency for the rest of his political life.
1925-Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer
For five years, spanning from 1924 to 1929, Winston Churchill was under the “burden of statesmanship” as a Chancellor of Exchequer. During his service to the national Treasury, he was engrossed in national issues, mainly the General Strike, the pensions for widows, orphans and the elderly, as well as taxes and the Gold Standard, unemployment and of course, the Depression. Constituency concerns receive rare attention. Churchill’s visits were majorly whistle-stop tours and occasional summer fete. Nevertheless, in that “semirural constituency among the glades of Epping Forest” the voters seemed content with their Member of Parliament’s high status and prepared to neglect his limited parochial presence. Still, Churchill was popular, respected and highly-regarded.
The May 1929 election swept the Tories from Office and Churchill’s majority was diminished to 5.000-his smallest ever for Epping/ Woodford. After the Tory electoral defeat in 1929 Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the subsequent eleven years out of office, predominantly writing and making speeches. Despite his loneliness in the firm opposition to Indian Independence his warnings against the appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven valid with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. In effect, Winston Churchill was a lonely figure until his response to Adolf Hitler’s challenge brought him to leadership of a national coalition in 1940. With Franklin D. Roosevelt (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the USA, January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) and Joseph Stalin (Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953), he then shaped Allied Strategy in World War II and after the dissolution of the alliance he alerted the West with regard to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. Through 1939 he was out of office increasingly isolated from his party, first over Dominion status for India, then over rearmament.
In the 1935 election he encountered considerable hostility at several meetings, yet polled 35.000 votes and recorded his largest majority. During its second run (1935-1945), the new Parliament witnessed Churchill return triumphantly to the center of affairs, but not before he had ruffled constituency feathers with his attacks on Chamberlain’s (Arthur Neville Chamberlain, 18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940) policy of appeasement. Several constituency branches passed resolutions of censure and Churchill later regarded the episode as “one of the major political crises” he had faced during his years. In 1945 Epping was subdivided. The new Epping Division looked marginal –in effect it was defeated by Labour, so Churchill stood for the new Woodford Division. Eventually, he won by a majority of over 17.000, but nationally Labour won 393 seats to 189 for the Tories. Churchill now became Leader of the Opposition.
The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea conference and code named the Argonaut Conference, held from 4 to 11 February, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union for the purpose of discussing Germany and Europe's postwar reorganization. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively. The conference convened near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union within the Livadia, Yusupov and Vorontsov Palaces.
The aim of the conference was to shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order but a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of post-Nazi Europe.
The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. However within a few short years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy.
Yalta was the second of three major wartime conferences among the Big Three.
The Second World War
Sir Winston Churchill was a highly noted statesman, orator, historian, writer, and artist. He served a second term as Prime Minister during the Cold War from 1951-1955 and is the only U.K. P.M. to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
The finalized political persona of Churchill, as it is revoked and honored to this very day, was his Second World War and post- second World War political figure. His most daunting and fervent activity after the Second World War demise was observed during the ill- balanced years of the Cold War.
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is called to replace Neville Chamberlain (1869-1949), as British Prime Minister following the latter’s resignation after losing a confidence vote of his colleagues in the Conservative Party in the House of Commons.
There were now two Tory candidates for prime minister: Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, and Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty. The exact details of the discussions between Chamberlain, Churchill and Halifax about who would become prime minister remain unclear.
The outcome, however, was clear. Halifax, who was Chamberlain’s preferred choice and the 'Establishment' candidate, turned down the offer to become prime minister. Halifax probably believed he could restrain Churchill more effectively by serving under him rather than as his leader. If it all went wrong, he could step in from a position of strength.
In 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, giving Czechoslovakia over to German conquest but bringing, as Chamberlain promised, “peace in our time.” In September 1939, that peace was shattered by Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Chamberlain declared war against Germany but during the next eight months showed himself to be ill-equipped for the daunting task of saving Europe from Nazi conquest. After British forces failed to prevent the German occupation of Norway in April 1940, Chamberlain lost the support of many members of his Conservative Party. On May 10, Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The same day, Chamberlain formally lost the confidence of the House of Commons.
Churchill, who was known for his military leadership ability, was appointed British prime minister in his place. He formed an all-party coalition and quickly won the popular support of Britons. On May 13, in his first speech before the House of Commons, Prime Minister Churchill declared that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” and offered an outline of his bold plans for British resistance. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender.” In actual fact, they never did.
Churchill tallied the accumulated catastrophes of his first months of leadership:
“Rather more than a quarter of a year has passed since the new Government came into power in this country. What a cataract of disaster has poured out upon us since then. The trustful Dutch overwhelmed; their beloved and respected Sovereign driven into exile; the peaceful city of Rotterdam the scene of a massacre as hideous and brutal as anything in the Thirty Years War. Belgium invaded and beaten down. … our ally, France, out; Italy in against us; all France in the power of the enemy, all its arsenals and vast masses of military material converted or convertible to its use … the whole Western seaboard of Europe from the North Cape to the Spanish frontier in German hands; all the ports, all the airfields on this immense front, employed against us as potential springboards of invasion.”
“This grim talk did not dismay the British people. Instead, it braced them,” Ricks writes.
Friday 10 May 1940 was one of the most dramatic days in British history. The government was in disarray as Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister and, on the continent, Germany ended the Phoney War by invading the Low Countries.
Photo: Churchill leaving Downing Street with Sir Kingsley Wood and Anthony Eden, 10 May 1940
The royal family celebrates VE Day
Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill (c.) is joined by members of the royal family including (l. to r.) Princess Elizabeth (now the Queen), Queen Elizabeth, King George VI and Princess Margaret as they celebrate VE Day from the balcony of Buckingham Palace on May 8, 1945.
It was Winston Churchill who eventually ascended to power, though Lord Halifax (1881-1959) was the persona grata on the part of King George VI. After the King’s initial dismay over Churchill’s appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed “the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister”. For an entirety of four and a half years, every Tuesday from September 2940, the two men met privately for lunch in order to discuss the war in secrecy and frankness.
Wars tend to bring out the best and worst in people and both the British prime minister and King George were no exceptions. In their own way, they made the difference between success and failure of World War II. Churchill was in his 60’s and had led a relative lack luster life prior to his taking the helm in the early days of the war.
After the Tories were defeated in 1929 election, Churchill fell out with Baldwin over the issue of ceding India further self- government. Churchill became increasingly isolated in politics and experienced the desperation of the perpetual political opposition. He did some ambiguous moves notably the most eminent the support of King Edward VIII (23 June 1894- 28 May 1972). Largely as a repercussion of his mismanagements, people did not heed Churchill’s dire prophesies regarding the menace of Hitler and the hopelessness of the appeasement policy. Following the Munich Crisis, however, Churchill’ auguries were seen to be coming to life. When the war broke out In September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty.
Nearly 25 years have been completed after his leaving the post in pain and sorrow. The Navy emitted a signal to the fleet: “Winston is back”.
Governmental Authority
Churchill, the War Leader
Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Churchill interacted with eleven U.S Presidents-as many as the Queen. He did not meet all of them, as she has but his influence on his thought and principles has been indelible.
For the first nine months of the conflict, Winston Churchill proved that he was, as Admiral Fisher had once said “a war man”, in opposition to Chamberlain. When Chamberlain resigned following criticism in the House of Commons, the belligerent First Lord, Winston Churchill became the leader of a coalition government. The date was 10 May, 1940: Churchill’s and Britain’s finest hour.
When the German armies conquered France and Britain faced the Blitz, Churchill embodied his nation’s will for resistance. His oratory proved an inspiration for the beset nation. Winston Churchill devoted much of his energy to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt (30 January 1882- 12 April 1945) to support him in the Atlantic, where until 1943, Britain’s lifeline to the New world was always under severe threat from German U-boats.
Allied Forces: Human Dynamics
A unique feature and an entirely distinct chapter in the history of British-American affairs was the first connection established between a British Prime Minister and an American President. The Great Depression and Roosevelt’s response to it fixed his own place in history. Yet, before the war, Churchill, despite his massive political persona, seemed destined to be remembered as another figure of the minor ministers who populated British governments, though his writing would- as it did- have raised him much higher than that.
Public greatness is an enormous challenge. A personal challenge, laborious as it might be, is essentially private. World War II provided that public challenge for Churchill and Roosevelt provided both, especially Roosevelt, with an additional opportunity for historical prominence.
Absent from war, neither Churchill not Roosevelt would have led their countries in the 1940s. Churchill, who had come to support rearming and a tougher line toward Hitler was rescued from the back benches of Parliament after Germany defied the Munich agreements, occupied Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland in September 1939. However much American s may have credited Roosevelt for his New Deal policies, the two- term tradition and voter fatigue would likely have prevented him from running for a third term in office- had, as it is, the world remained at peace.
Second World War
Winston Churchill became Britain’s Prime Minister on 10th May, 1940. As he was later to write “I felt that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial”.
On the very day that Churchill fulfilled his life’s ambition, Germany had that that morning invaded France, Belgium, the Netherland and Luxemburg.
Britain faced its supreme test and Sir Winston Churchill rallied the nation in defiance of Hitler. In the words of Labour politician Hugh Dalton, Churchill was “the only man we have for this hour”.
This view was shared by the overwhelming majority of the British people. It is for the leadership through these fraught years of 1940-1941 through Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz that Churchill is best remembered.
King WL Mackenzie; US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at an Allied Conference in Quebec, 1943
Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc
During the war with Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill said “You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves”.
This remark was made when Germany had a strong advantage over Great Britain, but Churchill was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis. Even when the Nazis offered Great Britain an honorable peace in exchange to end the war, Churchill remained unmoved.
Less obviously Churchill made planning and decision- making- political and military – simpler and more efficient. His force of personality was instrumental in cementing the “Big Three” Alliance with Britain’s powerful allies, Russia and the United States. His unbounded energy and determination meant that he was not easy to collaborate with. Yet, according to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke “it is worth all these difficulties to have the privilege to work with such a man”. In July 1945, with Nazi Germany defeated and Japan near to collapse, Churchill’s conservative party lost a general election in a landslide victory for Labour. An electorate weary of war was looking ahead to a New Britain. Winston Churchill, the man who had done so much to secure eventual Allied victory was once again out of office. After six years of war and conflict, people wanted more than a return of the old order and status. People asked for reform and reconstruction of Britain. On 26th of July 1945, Churchill learnt that he and the Unionists (Conservatives) had been rejected by the people. Labour, under Clement Attlee, would thereon govern Great Britain in the post- war world.
Still, resilience was perhaps the most pronounced of his traits of character; he had already written the history of another great war in which he had been a principal actor.
The “Second World War” is a history of the period from the end of the First World War to July 1945, written by Winston Churchill. The British Prime Minister labelled the “moral of the work” as follows: In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill. As Churchill himself has reiterated, “I will leave Judgments on this matter to history but I will be one of the historians”.
The “Second World War” has been issued in editions of six, twelve, and four volumes, as well as a single-volume abridgment. The country of the first publication was the United States, preceding publication in the United Kingdom by six months. This was a consequence of the many last minute changes, which Churchill insisted be made to the London Cassell edition, which he considered to be definitive.
King, W.L. Mackenzie; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Churchill, Winston
King, W.L. Mackenzie; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Churchill, Winston
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US
US President Franklin Roosevelt and Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill discussing allied war plans at the Yalta Conference 1945.
US Army Photo
Churchill waving at crowds flooding the Whitehall on Victory Day, 8th May 1945
“God bless you all. This is your victory”, professed the opening lines of the public address to the crowds in Whitehall, in celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany on Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), 8th May 1945. The crowd roared back “No!-it is your!”For Churchill, nothing would match his wartime triumphs. What came afterwards would be “all anticlimax”, as he later wrote in his war memoirs.
Few failed to recognize Churchill’s part in Britain’s survival and victory.
Retirement and Death
A man of Churchill’s force and talents would have left his unique print on events, society and history regardless of days and age of his lifetime. Namely, he has been an inspired journalist, a biographer and historian of classic proportions, an amateur painter of talent, an orator of rare influence. Above all the aforementioned, Churchill was an excellent public figure, in all possible respects, a soldier of courage and distinction, Winston Churchill has been a figure of unprecedented versatility. It was as a wartime leader that he excelled and left his indelible imprint upon the history of Britain on the world. In this capacity, at his profound conservative devotion to the legacy of his nation’s history, his unshakable resistance to tyranny either from the right or the left, his capacity to look beyond Britain to the larger Atlantic Community and the ultimate unity of Europe. A romantic Churchill was also a realist with an exceptional sensitivity to his tactical considerations and adhered to his strategical objectives. A fervent patriot and a citizen of the world. Winston Churchill was an indomitable fighter, and eventually an generous victor.
The death of Winston Churchill marked the finale of an epoch in British history that had been as glorious as it was long.
He was 90 years old, he had suffered as massive stroke two weeks before his demise; after his stroke he was gradually slipping into a sleep from which he wasn’t ever to awake. Churchill’s last breath did not come as a surprise to anybody. He has died surrounded by his wife, Lady Clementine Churchill and other family members by his bedside.
Winston Churchill has spent the past few days of his life lying in the downstairs room that he had converted to a bedroom after a fall, four years before that had injured his back. Despite the predictability of his ending, the news seemed to be a historical hallmark. Arriving at a time when the Labour government was considering withdrawing all troops from east of Suez and so closing down the last remnants of the British Empire. “Now Britain is no longer a great power”, remarked Charles de Gaulle when he heard the news. Many commentators agreed with him and saw in the funeral ceremony at St. Paul’s the demise of the era of British Greatness.
Winston Churchill lay in state in Westminster’ s Hall for three days and nights, an honor not accorded to any English statesman since Gladstone in 1898. His coffin was draped with a Union Jack on which rested his insignia of the knight of the Garter. No fewer than 320.000 people filed past the catafalque that was guarded by members of the Services who stood statue-still, their heads bowed in respect and homage.
One break with precedent was the decision of the Queen to attend personally, a special mark of royal favour as sovereigns do not usually attend non- family funerals.
In all six sovereigns, six precedents and sixteen Prime Ministers were present that day in history.
On the morning of the funeral, Big Ben struck 9.45 a.m but thereafter remained silent for the rest of the mourning day.
The great procession left New Palace Yard on its slow journey via Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Fleet Street up to St. Paul’s. The gun carriage on which the coffin rested was pulled through the streets by 120 Royal Navy-Blue-jackets, a reminder of Churchill’s two terms as First Lord of the Admiralty. The sight as it left the Palace of Westminster was likened by one spectator to that of a great warship leaving harbor. Other troops in the procession, which included detachment of no fewer than eighteen military units, marched carrying their rifles reversed. It took four major of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars to carry all of Churchill’s order and decoration behind the gun carriage.
As the cortege passed the Cenotaph in Whitehall, 100 flags carried by men and women of the wartime resistance movements of France, Denmark, Norway and Holland were raised in a final salute.
Because, unlike Nelson and Wellington, Winston Churchill had chose not to be buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the coffin was taken aboard the launch Havengore, to the booms of a 19-gun salute. As it set off upstream, pipers played the haunting lament “Flowers of the Forest”, and then 16 RAF Lighting aircraft swooped Low in a fly-past, from Temple Pier, the coffin was taken to Waterloo station, and from there it travelled to Hanborough by train. The private burial took place in Bladon in Oxfordshire, near the Blenheim Palace where Churchill was born in 1874.
Sir Winston Churchill’s last home, 28 Hyde Park Gate, London SW7
Admittedly, the profusion of Churchill’s spirit and wit, his tumultuous political career have provided the mattress to an abundance of creative biographers, screenwriters, authors for work of never- ending interest. It is predicted that this will not cease in the near future. An Oscar-buzzed performance acts as the stoic centre of Joe Wright’s retelling of the events of 1940, played as a House of Cards style thriller in the Churchill drama “The Darkest Hour”, with Gary Oldman having joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of them in movies and 28 on television. He is one of the best three. ‘I knew I didn’t look like him,’ Oldman has said. ‘I thought that with some work I could approximate the voice. The challenge in part was the physicality, because you’re playing someone whose silhouette is so iconic.’
We all have our own mind’s-eye view of what Churchill should look and sound like, and his personality was so strong and sui generis that it is almost impossible for an actor to impose himself on the role. He is therefore almost always left with either mere impersonation or caricature. Oldman avoided this in Darkest Hour through research. ‘I went to the newsreel,’ he says, ‘and what I discovered was a man who had this very athletic tread. He would skip around at 65 like a 30-year-old, he had a sparkle, the eyes were alive, he had a very sort of cherubic grin.’
This is an insight that a number of actors who play Churchill — who came to power in 1940 aged 65 — have missed, and who thus play him as a man in late middle age. Sir Jock Colville, Churchill’s wartime private secretary, who was 41 years younger than him, wrote of how exhausting it was to keep up with the Prime Minister as he bounded up staircases, climbed bombsites and marched quickly down corridors. Oldman catches this. Others have played what Oldman calls ‘this sort of rather depressed grumpy man with a cigar’, but he wanted to ‘give him a bit of a twinkle in the eye’.
Other very good Churchills have been Albert Finney in The Gathering Storm (2002), which rightly picked up a Golden Globe and Emmy, and Brendan Gleeson in Into the Storm (2009). Just as things looked good for Churchill on screen, however, a slew of frankly ridiculous revisionist films and TV shows were released, which, with the wartime generation then dead or dying, showed a shocking disregard for historical fact, while still posing as that self-contradictory, want-it-both-ways beast, the ‘docudrama’.
Gary Oldman, by total contrast, has, through prosthetics, thoughtfulness and superb acting, caught Churchill brilliantly. He acknowledges our preconceptions about Churchill, and mildly co-opts them with charm and acuity. The supporting cast — especially Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine and Sam West as Anthony Eden — are excellent too. Although there have been very many other creditable Churchills — David Ryall, Mel Smith, Timothy Spall, David Calder and Bob Hoskins among them — Gary Oldman now joins Robert Hardy and Simon Ward in the triumvirate of the greats.
References:
History extra: https://www.history.extra.com/period/second-world-war/darkest hour-an-interview-with-director-Joe-Wright.
Imperial War Museum: https:// www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-churchill-led-britain-to-victory-in-the-second-world-war.
https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/winston-churchill.
https://winstonchurchillorg/tag/second-world-war/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/andrew-robertss-guide-to-churchill-on-screen/.
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