Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.

Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at his family's ancestral home, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

On his father's side, he was a member of the British aristocracy as a descendant of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, representing the Conservative Party, had been elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Woodstock in 1874.

His mother, Jennie, was a daughter of Leonard Jerome, a wealthy American businessman.

In 1876, Churchill's paternal grandfather, John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom.

Randolph became his private secretary and the family relocated to Dublin.

Winston's brother, Jack, was born there in 1880.

Throughout much of the 1880s, Randolph and Jennie were effectively estranged, and the brothers were mostly cared for by their nanny, Elizabeth Everest.

In 1884, he transferred to Brunswick School in Hove, where his academic performance improved.

In April 1888, aged 13, he narrowly passed the entrance exam for Harrow School.

His father wanted him to prepare for a military career and so his last three years at Harrow were in the army form.

He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Mahdist War (also known as the Anglo-Sudan War), and the Second Boer War, later gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns.

When she died in 1895, Churchill wrote that "she had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of the twenty years I had lived".

Churchill began boarding at St George's School in Ascot, Berkshire, at age seven but was not academic and his behaviour was poor.

Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904.

In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security.

As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli campaign, but after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire into the wealthy, aristocratic Spencer family.

He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months.

In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East.

Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies.

After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

Out of government during his so-called "wilderness years" in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.

Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955.

In May 1940, he became prime minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945.

After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition.

Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an "iron curtain" of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity.

Between his terms as prime minister, he wrote several books recounting his experience during the war.

He lost the 1950 election but was returned to office in 1951.

His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and preservation of what remained of the British Empire with India now no longer part of it.

Domestically, his government emphasised housebuilding and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor).

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

In declining health, Churchill resigned as prime minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964.

Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and the rest of the Anglosphere where he is generally viewed as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy against the spread of fascism.

While he has been criticised for his views on race and empire alongside some of his wartime decisions, historians often rank Churchill as the greatest prime minister in British history.