Winston Churchill

Portrait of an Unique Mind

Andrew Norman

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781781598061
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill is known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War Two. He served as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, writer and artist. To date, he is the only British Prime Minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the second person to be recognized as an Honorary Citizen of the United States. During his army career, Churchill saw military action in India, the Sudan and the Second Boer War. He gained fame and notoriety as a war correspondent and through contemporary books he wrote describing the campaigns. He also served briefly in the British Army on the Western Front in World War One, commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. At the forefront of the political scene for almost fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. After losing the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition. In 1951 he again became Prime Minister, before finally retiring in 1955. Upon his death, the Queen granted him the honor of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen in the world.This unique images title contains many rare and unpublished photographs of Churchill throughout his military and political career.

CHAPTER 1

Formative Years

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, family seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and then the home of his paternal grandfather, John, the 7th Duke and his wife Frances, daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. The palace, a country house with 320 rooms, built in the English baroque style and set in 2,700 acres of parkland, was designed by architect, Sir John Vanbrugh. It was presented to Winston’s ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Queen Anne’s commander-in-chief during the War of the Spanish Succession, by a grateful Parliament. This followed the Duke’s victory over the French in the Battle of Blenheim, which took place on 13 August 1704.

Years later, Winston’s granddaughter, Celia Sandys, declared:

My grandfather was born in one of the grandest places in England. He was pugnacious looking, with bright red hair. He was quite clearly a very curious [i.e. full of curiosity] child, and one of the subjects that fascinated him was history, and in particular, battles. He couldn’t have failed to have been impressed by the sight of his ancestor on his horse [as depicted] in the tapestry in these huge rooms – they would have seemed huge to a little boy.¹

Winston’s father was Conservative (Tory) politician, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill. His mother, Jeanette (Lady Randolph) née Jerome, and known as Jennie, was the daughter of a New York financier whose ancestors had fought against Britain in the American War of Independence. The Churchill family home was 48 Charles Street, Mayfair, London. Money was not plentiful, Lord Randolph being the second son (and therefore not the heir to the Blenheim Estate), but it helped matters that on her marriage to Lord Randolph, his wife was able to provide a dowry of £50,000.

Winston’s birth followed ‘a rather imprudent and rough drive in a pony carriage’² by his mother, Lady Randolph, as she was returning to Blenheim Palace, where she was staying. This brought on labour pains and caused the infant to be born prematurely.

From January 1877 until spring 1880, the Churchills lived in Ireland in the capital city of Dublin, where Lord Randolph served as unofficial private secretary to his father, John, the 7th Duke, who had been appointed Lord-Lieutenant of that country by Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. It was here, at the family home ‘The Little Lodge’, says Winston, that he was ‘first menaced with education’.³ Reading, writing, and, in particular, arithmetic, which he found difficult, taught to him by his governess (unidentified), ‘cast a steadily gathering shadow over my daily life … [and] took away from [i.e. detracted from] all the interesting things one wanted to do in the nursery, or in the garden’.⁴ However, when he did have the opportunity to retreat to the nursery, there were ‘wonderful toys’ to play with, which included ‘a real steam engine, a magic lantern [apparatus for projecting pictures or slides onto a screen], and a collection of soldiers – already nearly a thousand strong’.⁵

Winston’s brother, John Strange Spencer Churchill – known as Jack (who was his only sibling) – was born on 4 February 1880. Jack was, therefore, fully five years Winston’s junior. However, the brothers were to develop an excellent relationship, despite the difference in their ages. As for their mother, Lady Randolph, she was popular in Ireland for the way she assisted her husband, Lord Randolph, in his role of secretary of a fund set up by the Duchess of Marlborough, the object of which was to combat the famine caused by repeated failures of the harvest from 1878 to 1880. In that same month of February 1880 the Churchills returned to England in preparation for the general election to be held in March/April. The outcome was that the Conservative Party, led by Benjamin Disraeli, was defeated by William Gladstone’s Liberal Party. However, Lord Randolph retained his parliamentary seat as Member for Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The Churchills now took up residence at 29 St James’s Place, Westminster.

To Winston, Lady Randolph, whom he idolized, seemed like ‘a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power’.⁶ In January 1882, and now aged seven, he wrote to her when she was absent from home, to thank her ‘for the beautiful presents [of] those Soldiers and Flags and Castle’.⁷ And in March, Winston wrote to his father, Lord Randolph, describing how, in the grounds of Blenheim Palace he had found ‘a lot of primroses every day [and had] bought a basket to put them in’.⁸

In November 1882, Winston was sent as a boarder to St George’s Preparatory School, Ascot, Surrey – an experience which he later described as ‘penal servitude’.⁹ Said the aggrieved Winston, ‘I was no more consulted about leaving home than I had been about coming into the world. After all, I was only seven, and I had been so happy in my nursery with all my toys. How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years.’¹⁰ ‘Terror’ might have been a more appropriate word than ‘anxiety’, for St George’s was run by the Reverend Herbert William Sneyd-Kynnersley, a headmaster renowned for his sadistic attitude towards the boys in his charge. According to Roger Fry, once a pupil at the school, when boys were flogged by the headmaster with a birch rod, as was frequently the case,

the swishing was given with the master’s full strength and it took only two or three strokes for drops of blood to form everywhere and it continued for 15 or 20 strokes when the wretched boy’s bottom was a mass of blood.¹¹

At St George’s, Winston was frequently in trouble with the power-that-be. Man of letters, Maurice Baring, who became a pupil there after Winston had left the school, for example, stated how the latter

had been flogged for taking sugar from the pantry, and so far from being penitent, he had taken the headmaster’s sacred straw hat from where it hung over the door and kicked it to pieces.¹²

With the sugar incident, Winston had taken a great risk, and been punished for it by perhaps the most cruel and sadistic headmaster in the land. Why then, did he take another risk by destroying his tormentor’s hat, when he knew that the consequences would be equally, if not more, dire? Winston’s propensity for living dangerously, regardless of the likely outcome, was a feature of his personality which will be further discussed later.

To add to his woes, Winston missed his parents greatly, as the numerous plaintive letters which he sent to them reveal. This is not to suggest that Winston was alone in thinking himself to be neglected, for his brother, Jack, when he was, in turn, sent to boarding school, wrote equally plaintive letters to his parents complaining that they did not visit him. What is more, said Winston, at this school, neither ‘my reason, imagination or interest were … engaged’.¹³ On 3 December 1882, Winston told his mother how, three days previously, he had ‘spent a very happy birthday’ and reminded her to ‘come down’ to visit him on the 9th of that month. ‘With love and kisses I remain your loveing [sic] son, Winston xxx.’¹⁴ At about this time the Churchills moved house, yet again, this time to 2 Connaught Place, Bayswater.

When, on 5 January 1883, Lord Randolph heard that Winston had recovered from yet another chest complaint – to which he was prone – he wrote to his wife to say, ‘I am so glad to hear that Winnie is all right again. Give him a kiss from me.’ Shortly afterwards, in another letter to Lady Randolph, he said, ‘I suppose Winston will be going back to school in a few days. Give him a little money from me before he goes.’¹⁵ (Winston’s chest complaint was a legacy of the time when the family had lived in Ireland.)

In June 1883, Winston wrote to his mother imploring her to visit his school for ‘the athletics’, hopefully together with his brother, Jack, and his nanny, ‘Mrs’ Elizabeth Ann Everest.¹⁶ (‘Mrs’ Everest was in fact a spinster whom Winston called ‘Woom’, or ‘Woomany’. Born in Chatham, Kent, previously she had been governess to Ella, daughter of the Venerable Thompson Phillips, Archdeacon of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumberland). When Lord Randolph’s father, John, 7th Duke of Marlborough died at his home, Blenheim Palace, aged sixty-one on 5 July, he was succeeded by his brother, George, as 8th Duke.

In October 1883, Winston informed Lady Randolph that ...