Winston Churchill Essays (2588 words) - Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Winston Churchill was born in 1874 and died, aged ninety, in 1965. He was active in British politics for almost sixty years and was twice Prime Minister. He was a soldier, an artist, a historian, and a journalist, as well as a politician. He was a man of great mental energy, of vivid imagination, and powerful ambition. He was frequently the center of stormy political activity; criticism and abuse were often showered upon him. But he died respected and mourned not only by his own nation, but by the world, for which he had done so much when he led the fight against Nazi tyranny and refused to surrender or to despair of victory. (Gilbert 13) On November 30, 1874, Winston Spencer Churchill was born to Lord Randolph Churchill and Jennie Churchill at Blenheim Palace. In 1888, he was placed in Harrow School. At the end of his first year at Harrow, the boy's grades were still the lowest in his class. Reluctantly his father gave up any notion of Winston's following in his own footsteps. Remembering his son's passion for playing at war, Lord Randolph asked him if he was still interested in the army. Winston was delighted over the thought that his father recognized his military genius. The sad truth that his father considered him hopeless in any other field never occurred to the self-assured lad. (Manchester 13) He was then sent to Sandhurst, a Royal Military Academy, in 1893. He joined the army and began selling articles to the Daily Graphic. In 1898, his first book, The Malakand Field Force, was published. The next year he resigned from the army to enter politics. July 6, 1899 Churchill lost his first election as a Conservative candidate. When the Boer War broke out, the London Morning Post sent Churchill as a reporter. A month after arriving in South Africa he was captured by the Boers but made a daring escape. When he returned to England in 1900 he ran for election again and won. ?Entering Parliament in 1901, he rose in the course of a very few years to a position in which every major event in England's affairs was part of his life story? (Coolidge 1). Churchill joined the Liberal party in 1904, after other Conservatives pushed for a Tariff Reform. The next year the Conservative party was defeated in the House of Commons and the Liberals offered Churchill the seat of Under Secretary for the colonies. In 1906, Churchill published another book, this one being a biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill who died in 1895. In 1908, the Prime Minister appointed Churchill as the President of the Board of Trade, which was his first seat in the cabinet. Later that year he married Clementine Hozier. In July of 1909 their first child, Diana, was born. Churchill was promoted again in 1910 as Home Secretary, which made him responsible for law and order. In the May of 1911 the Churchills had their first son, Randolph. October of 1911 brought Churchill a new position, First Lord of Admiralty. ?In the Cabinet Churchill argued with his colleagues to get money for the expansion of the Navy? (Jones 16). He felt that there had to be an expansion of the navy to compete with Germany's increase in sea power. In 1914, he strongly backed the Irish Home Rule by threatening rebellious Ulster Protestants with the Royal Navy. He was greatly criticized for his extreme method of solving the Irish problem. On August 4, 1914, war with Germany began and Churchill's expanded Navy was ready for war. Churchill was removed from the Admiralty in 1915 because of his failed plan to seize the Dardanelles from Germany. The Dardanelles haunted Churchill for years because he was removed from office before his full plan had been executed. After he was not included in the new War Cabinet, Churchill resigned from the government and joined the fighting in France during the November of 1915. Six months later he left the army to begin politics again. He felt he had learned a great deal from being in the trenches. Churchill used this knowledge to make critical speeches about the slaughter he had seen in the trenches. He championed