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विंस्‍टन चर्चिल का जीवन परिचय। Winston Churchill Biography in Hindi

विंस्‍टन चर्चिल का जीवन परिचय। Winston Churchill Biography in Hindi! विंस्‍टन चर्चिल एक साहसी और दूरदर्शी नेता के साथ ही एक लेखक भी थे। द्वितीय विश्‍व युद्ध के दौरान विंस्‍टन चर्चिल ने अपने देश का दृढ़ और साहसी नेतृत्‍व प्रदान किया। विंस्टन लियोनार्ड स्पेंसर चर्चिल का जन्म 30 नवंबर, 1874 को ब्‍लेनहेम पैलेस में हुआ था, जो महारानी ऐनी द्वारा चर्चिल के पूर्वज, ड्यूक ऑफ मार्लबोरो को दिया गया घर था। विंस्टन ने अपनी मां का बहुत सम्मान करते थे लेकिन उनके पिता के साथ उनके संबंध अच्छे नहीं थे। वह पढ़ाई में अच्‍छे नहीं थे, विशेष रूप से लैटिन या गणित का अध्ययन करने में उनकी कोई दिलचस्पी नहीं थी।

विंस्‍टन चर्चिल का जीवन परिचय। W inston Churchill Biography in Hindi

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10 मोटिवेशनल किताबें जो आपको ज़रूर पढ़नी चाहिएं

विंस्टन चर्चिल के 49 अनमोल विचार winston churchill quotes in hindi.

Last Updated: September 26, 2018 By Gopal Mishra 14 Comments

दो बार ब्रिटेन के प्रधान मन्त्री रहे विंस्टन चर्चिल ने द्वितीय विश्व युद्ध में अपनी leadership skills के दम पे ब्रिटेन को हार के मुंह से निकाल कर जीत का स्वाद चखाया था. आइये आज हम इस महान नेता के अनमोल विचार जानते हैं.

Don’t miss the quotes in BLUE BOX

Never, never, never give up

Winston Churchill Quotes in Hindi

विंस्टन चर्चिल के अनमोल विचार.

Quote 1: A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Winston Churchill विंस्टन चर्चिल

Quote 2: A joke is a very serious thing.

In Hindi : मज़ाक एक बहुत ही गंभीर चीज होती है .

Quote 3: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Quote 4: A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Quote 5: A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

In Hindi : एक युद्धबंदी वो व्यक्ति होता है जो तुम्हे मारना चाहता है, पर मार नहीं पता,और फिर तुमसे कहता है कि उसे मत मारो .

Quote 6: All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

In Hindi : सभी महान चीजें सरल होती हैं,और कईयों को एक शब्द में व्यक्त किया जा सकता है : स्वतंत्रता,न्याय, सम्मान,कर्तव्य,दया, आशा .

Quote 7: Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

Quote 8: Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

Quote 9: Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

In Hindi : साहस मानवीय गुणों में प्रमुख है क्योंकि ….ये वो गुण है जो बाकी सभी गुणों की गारंटी देता है .

Quote 10: Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

Quote 11: Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Quote 12: Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

In Hindi : खड़े होकर बोलने के लिए साहस चाहिए होता है, बैठ कर सुनने के लिए भी साहस चाहिए होता है .

Quote 13: Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

In Hindi : सभी के दिन आते हैं और कुछ दिन औरों से ज्यादा लम्बे होते हैं .

Quote 14: Great and good are seldom the same man.

Quote 15: Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

In Hindi : स्वस्थ्य नागरिक किसी देश के लिए सबसे बड़ी संपत्ति होते हैं .

Quote 16: History is written by the victors.

Quote 17: I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

Quote 18: I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

Quote 19: I am easily satisfied with the very best.

Quote 20: I like a man who grins when he fights.

In Hindi : मैं उस आदमी को पसंद करता हूँ जो झगड़ते वक़्त मुस्कुराता है .

Quote 21: I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

In Hindi : मैं नशे में हूँ मोहतरमा, पर सुबह मेरा नशा उतर जायेगा और तुम तब भी बदसूरत ही रहोगी .

Quote 22: I never worry about action, but only inaction.

In Hindi : मैं कभी कारवाई के बारे में चिंता नहीं करता हूँ, पर निष्क्रियता के बारे में करता हूँ .

Quote 23: I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

In Hindi : मैं बस अचानक दी जाने वाली टिपण्णी के लिए तैयारी कर रहा हूँ .

Quote 24: If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

Quote 25: If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Quote 26: In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

In Hindi : युद्ध में आप एक ही बार मारे जा सकते हैं, लेकिन राजनीति में कई बार .

Quote 27: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried already.

In Hindi : लोकतंत्र सरकार का सबसे खराब रूप है सिवाय उन सरकारों के जिन्हें इससे पहले आजमाया जा चुका है .

Quote 28: It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Quote 29: Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.

Quote 30: Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

In Hindi : फ्रैंकलिन रूजवेल्ट से मिलना शैम्पेन की अपनी पहली बोतल खोलने जैसा था; उन्हें जानना उसे पीने के समान था .

Quote 31: Never, never, never give up.

Quote 32: No crime is so great as daring to excel.

In Hindi : कोई अपराध इतना बड़ा नहीं है जितना की श्रेष्ठ बनने कि धृष्टता करना.

Quote 33: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Quote 34: Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

In Hindi : रूस किसी रहस्य के अन्दर छिपे ऱाज में लिपटी पहेली है .

Quote 35: Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

In Hindi : इतिहास पढ़िए,इतिहास पढ़िए . इतिहास में ही राज्य चलाने के सारे रहस्य छिपे हैं .

Best Winston Churchill Quotes in Hindi

Quote 36: Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Quote 37 : Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

In Hindi : सफलता अंत नहीं है, असफलता घातक नहीं है : लगे रहने का साहस ही मायने रखता है .

Quote 38: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

In Hindi : पूंजीवाद की बुराई है अच्छी चीजों का बराबर से ना बंटना, समाजवाद की अच्छाई है बुरी चीजों का बराबर से बंटना.

Quote 39: The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.

Quote 40: The price of greatness is responsibility.

Quote 41: There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

In Hindi : ऐसी दो चीजें हैं जो रात के खाने के बाद भाषण देने से अधिक कठिन हैं : कोई ऐसी दीवार चढ़ना जो आपके ओर झूकी हो और ऐसी किसी ऐसी लड़की को चूमना जो आपसे दूर झूकी हो .

Quote 42: There is no such thing as a good tax.

In Hindi : अच्छे कर जैसी कोई चीज नहीं होती .

Quote 43: There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Quote 44: War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

In Hindi : युद्ध मुख्य रूप से भूलों की एक सूची है .

Quote 45: We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

Quote 46: We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Quote 47: We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

In Hindi : हमें दया दिखानी चाहिए, पर माँगना नहीं चाहिए .

Quote 48: When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

In Hindi : जब आपको किसी को मारना ही है तो विनम्र होने में क्या जाता है .

Quote 49: You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

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Note: Despite taking utmost care there could be some mistakes in Hindi Translation of Winston Churchill Quotes and Thoughts

निवेदन: कृपया अपने comments के माध्यम से बताएं कि Winston Churchill Quotes का हिंदी अनुवाद आपको कैसा लगा.

Note: You may use some of the quotes here to update your WhatsApp Status in Hindi.

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August 31, 2018 at 5:15 pm

April 21, 2017 at 5:31 pm

just beautiful

December 18, 2016 at 3:01 am

Life changing quets ..superb

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Kishan Rana on Churchill and India: A Misunderstood Relationship

• By ANDREAS KOUREAS
• | May 15, 2023
• Category: Books

Kishan S. Rana, Churchill and India: Manipulation or Betrayal? London: Routledge Publishing, 2022, 214 pages, $154.84, paperback $52.95, Kindle $50.30.

Currently the most controversial aspect of Winston Churchill’s life is his relationship with India. False accusations of genocide, imperial hatred and invented conspiracies are frequently propagated. The most common misconceptions are no better misrepresented than in Churchill and India , by Kishan R. Rana, a former Indian ambassador.

Ambassador Rana covers three main subjects: Churchill’s views on race, the 1943 Bengal Famine, and WSC’s role in the 1947 partition of British India. Uniquely, he manages to draw the wrong conclusions from each of them. The book’s ridiculous price—not atypical for academic publishers—may do more than anything to prevent people from reading it. Which, given the contents, may not altogether be a bad thing.

Churchill and Race

Rana claims that Churchill was “profoundly racist, even in an age when some degree of racial prejudice was the norm” (6). Such prejudice, he adds, was at the centre of Churchill’s supposed attitude toward India and Indians. A more considered view of is that of Andrew Roberts:

One author who had a powerful effect on [Churchill], both for good and ill, was Charles Darwin. Like so many of his contemporaries, Churchill extended the implication of the ideas behind natural selection and the survival of the fittest in Nature into the human sphere too, and came to believe that different races evolved at different speeds in the same way that animals and plants had over the millennia. 1

Churchill himself, on his first visit to India, wrote of “the great work which England was doing in India and of her high mission to rule these primitive but agreeable races for their welfare and our own.” 2 Roberts sees in this a crucial distinction:

Where [Churchill] fundamentally differed from other neo-Darwinians, especially the Fascist ones, is that he believed that the stronger and more ‘advanced’ races—in which he included the Anglo-Saxons and the Jews—had a profound moral responsibility towards what he saw as the weaker and less advanced ones.” 3

That is a far cry from the Hitlerian attitude that “inferior races” should be enslaved and systematically murdered. We also need to consider time and circumstance. Placing Churchill in context, for example, the U.S. Civil Rights Act did not pass until 1964, when he was close to 90.

Toward Indian self-government

Churchill wanted power in India to devolve carefully. He opposed federal Home Rule “until the provinces have proved that they can govern themselves well.” 4 If successful, he said, further devolution would take place “with sureness and safety.” 5 For him, the end goal was a self-governing dominion, but he considered that the process probably wouldn’t happen in his lifetime. 6

Churchill saw British governance as a foundational part of India’s socio-economic progress. If challenged too early, “the whole efficiency of the services, defensive, administrative, medical, hygienic, judicial; railway, irrigation, public works and famine prevention, upon which the Indian masses depend for their culture and progress, will perish with it.” 7

Moreover, he feared and mistrusted the Hindu caste system. The Brahmin upper caste, he believed, would subjugate the Dalits (“Untouchables”) and provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims. For him, all of those were British subjects, and it was the Empire’s duty to prevent such calamities. 8 This admitted paternalism formed the crux of Churchill’s opposition to the 1935 Government of India Act . There is no question that his view was condescending. But it is not “the extravagant, unreasoning hostility to India” that Ambassador Rana describes (5).

Birla, Gandhi and the Indian Army

Hyperbolised accusations of Churchill’s racism fill this book. One example is Churchill’s relationship with Indian industrialist, G.D Birla . In August 1935, just after passage of the India Act, Birla lunched at Chartwell. To Gandhi, Birla reported it was “one of my most pleasant experiences.” While finding Churchill ill-informed over India, Birla though him a “remarkable man.” 9

Despite Churchill’s opposition to the India Act, he harboured no resentment, being hospitable and welcoming. He gave Birla a message for Gandhi: he would be “delighted if the Reforms are a success. I have all along felt that there are 50 Indias. But you have got the things now; make it a success and I will advocate your getting much more.” 10 Rana ignores this friendly interaction, professing that Churchill met only grudgingly with Indian interlocutors (54).

Clearly Churchill had by then gracefully accepted defeat over the India Act. Quoting Lord Salisbury , he said Britons had a duty to, “accept a political defeat cordially, and to lend their best endeavours to secure the success or to neutralise the evil, of the principles to which they have been forced to succumb.” 11  For Rana to depict Churchill as more racist even than the norms of his time (5) is a gross distortion.

Next Rana accuses Churchill of contempt for the Indian Army (166). This too is false, as demonstrated on multiple occasions. WSC wrote in his war memoirs: “The unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine forever in the annals of war…. The response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.” 12 Rana ignores such quotations, pretending that Churchill never fully recognised the contribution of Indian fighting men (127).

Bengal Famine

Perhaps Rana resorts to such hyperbole because he accepts the simplistic, ahistorical narrative that British rule in India was just “relentless colonial exploitation”—that Churchill ignored the root of British imperialism. What was that? Why, stealing wealth, of course (159). The British Empire was far more complex. It encompassed both good and bad. Eminent economists and historians, like Tirthankar Roy and Latika Chaudhary , have greatly contributed to understanding the realities of British India’s economy. 13

In October 1942, a cyclone wiped out much of the rice crop in Bengal and Orissa. The following famine of 1943-44 took up to three million lives. 14 Rana asserts that both Churchill and his administration hold part of the blame for this tragedy. He claims that the War Cabinet did not treat the famine as urgent until October 1943 (124).

This is false. The news of the famine’s severity reached the War Cabinet in August. Upon hearing this, Churchill’s administration agreed to send 100,000 tons of barley from Iraq and 50,000 tons of wheat from Australia. 15 Leopold Amery, Secretary of State for India, informed Archibald Wavell, soon to be Viceroy of India, explaining that he “may come back to the Cabinet if that fails to help the situation.” 16

The Japan factor

From August 1943 to December 1944, just under a million tons of grain would be shipped to India to alleviate the famine. 17 Not all shipments got through: Beginning April 1942, Japan sent its navy into the Bay of Bengal. 18 From submarines to battlecruisers and aircraft carriers, it posed a dangerous threat to merchant shipping. A top secret map circulated to Churchill in March 1944, demonstrated the proximity of Japan’s fleet.

The estimated area penetrated by the “Japanese battleship/carrier raiding force” ranged from the south coast of Burma to near the Maldives. 19 Despite this, Rana makes the ahistorical accusation that Churchill refused to compromise military shipping to transport food to India, mentioning Australia and Canada (124). The truth is starkly different.

On 4 November 1943, Churchill thanked Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King for offering 100,000 tons of wheat to India. However, given the logistical issues, Churchill argued that the wheat should be sent from Australia. Wheat from Eastern Canada “would take at least two months to reach India whereas it could be carried from Australia in 3 to 4 weeks.” 20

Wheat couldn’t be sent from the Canadian Pacific Coast because Allied shipping was “already proving inadequate to fulfil our existing high priority requirements for aeroplane manufacture in the United Kingdom, and quantities of nitrate from Chile to the Middle East, which we are under obligation to supply to the Egyptian Government in return for foodstuffs for our Forces and for export to neighbouring territories, including Ceylon.” 21

Frustrations of war

In December 1941, Churchill suffered from what was most likely a heart attack. 22 His heart would remain weak throughout the war and he would have three episodes of pneumonia. 23

The stress of war, and in this writer’s opinion his poor health, resulted in Churchill often making outlandish statements whilst angry. Interestingly, the worst remarks are recorded only in Amery’s diaries (together with numerous waspish, racist epithets by Amery himself .)

For example, Churchill accused Indians of breeding like rabbits in a Famine meeting. Rana references this (124), but omits that WSC immediately after asked a colleague his opinion on what could be done to relieve the famine. Quoted in full, it shows that Churchill did care, but was overwhelmed and frustrated.

Another instance is when Churchill said that he hated Indians and their “beastly religion,” mentioned in the Rana foreword (xii). Contextually, this was after the Quit India movement refused to compromise over immediate independence, whilst Japan was invading the subcontinent. Can we not forgive a man, in uncertain health at the centre of a world war, for blurting a few stupid remarks? Judged in the round, Churchill clearly did not hate Indians as a people.

The contexts behind these quotations are in Amery’s diaries. It appears Rana has not bothered to read them, since he also accuses Amery of lacking a sense of urgency and remorse over the famine. In fact, the diaries express a high degree of both. 24

Churchill and Partition, 1947

Rana’s assessment on Churchill and Partition is illogical and borders on the conspiratorial. He claims that Churchill and Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah had corresponded in the 1930s, but the Churchill Archives Centre destroyed the evidence (90). This, he says, was the basis of a secret pact between the two, Pakistan being Jinnah’s reward for aiding supporting Britain in the war. Neither statement is supported by evidence.

We know that Churchill’s wartime premiership saw the beginning of negotiations for India’s independence. Churchill was partly worried about violence erupting between Hindus and Muslims 25 —one of his reasons for opposing the India Act. Churchill didn’t wish to rush independence, hence his many arguments with Amery. He was however clear that after victory over the Axis powers, independence would be granted. This included the option of leaving the Commonwealth, though Churchill naturally hoped that would not happen. 26

Rana completely misunderstands this slowness, writing that it was the reason to why the Attlee administration decided on a rapid exit, fuelling the partition and costing millions of lives in the subsequent upheaval (139).

Such an argument is without foundation. The Attlee government was from the outset keen to leave India as soon as possible, regardless of the political situation. 27 Lord Mountbatten , the last Viceroy, was given a deadline of 30 June 1948. Nevertheless he arbitrarily moved it up to August 1947, preventing a better resolution of border questions. Why this happened is not part of this review. But it certainly had nothing to do with Churchill, who was out of power.

As Leader of the Opposition, Churchill repeatedly voiced his concerns about partition. On 12 December 1946 he spoke of the need for “agreement between the Indian races, religions, parties and forces.” He deplored “the ruthless logic to quit India regardless of what may happen there.” 28  Later, in his war memoirs, Churchill would call the Attlee administration’s policy of a swift exit “a violently factional view.” 29

1 Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2018), 43.

2 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), My Early Life (London, Thornton Butterworth, 1930), 118.

3 Roberts, Walking with Destiny, 43.

4 WSC to Sir Michael O’Dwyer (Indian Civil Service officer), 1 March 1934, in Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents , vol. 12, The Wilderness Years 1929-1935 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 732.

5 WSC, Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 30 January 1931, in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963 , 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), V: 4970.

6 Ibid., 4983.

7 WSC, Royal Albert Hall, 18 March 1931, in Complete Speeches , V: 5006-07.

8 Ibid., 5008.

9 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, vol. 12, Wilderness Years, 1243-45.

11 Richard M. Langworth, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2017, 103.

12 Zareer Masani, “Churchill and the Genocide Myth: Last Word on the Bengal Famine,” Hillsdale College Churchill Project, 2021, accessed 10 March 2023.

13 See for example Latika Chaudhary, Bishnupriya Gupta, Tirthankar Roy & Anand V. Swamy, A New Economic History of Colonial India (London: Routledge, 2016).

14 Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (New York: Viking, 2018, 786. Andreas Koureas, “Winston Churchill Isn’t to Blame for The Bengal Famine,” The Spectator , 21 January 2023, accessed 10 March 2023.

15 Leopold Amery and Archibald Wavell, Private Correspondence, Churchill College Cambridge. AMEL 2/3/13.

17 C.B.A. Behrens, Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (London: HMSO, 1955), 356.

Note: the Famine Enquiry places Indian grain imports at 370,000 tons in 1943 and 700,000 tons in 1944; 58,000 tons of grain were shipped to India in spring 1943. Once the famine’s severity was known in August, shipping accelerated exponentially. The War Transport Ministry places imports slightly lower at roughly 303,000 tons in 1943 and 639,000 tons in 1944. This discrepancy is possibly due to different times set by British and Indian authorities on shipping arrivals.

18 Martin Gilbert, The Second World War (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1989), 314.

19 Chartwell Papers, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, CHAR 20/188B/164.

20 Chartwell Papers, CHAR 20/123/52.

22 Allister Vale & John Scadding. Winston Churchill’s Illnesses 1886-1965: Courage, Resilience and Determination. (Barnsley, S. Yorks.: Frontline Books, 2020), 57-73.

23 Ibid., 116, 135.

24 Amery-Wavell Correspondence, AMEL 7/37, 7/38.

25 Chartwell Papers, CHAR 9/191A-B.

27 Zareer Masani, “Partition Wasn’t Inevitable.” The Spectator , 15 August 2022.

28 WSC, House of Commons, 12 December 1946, in Complete Speeches, VII: 7410-17.

29 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War and an Epilogue on the Years 1945 to 1957 (London, Cassell, 1959) 967.

Andreas Koureas is an aspiring economist and historian, currently studying Political Economy at King’s College London. His main research focus is on Winston Churchill and the British Empire. He has written for The Spectator and is writing a future article on the Bengal Famine in a peer-reviewed journal later this year.

Excellent sir

Marxist economist Utsa Patnaik blame keynes for creating famine. She claims that keynes wanted profitable inflation in India. His indirect tax policy created Bengal famine. Is it truth? What is actually truth?

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Winston Churchill

(1874-1965)

Who Was Winston Churchill?

Early years.

Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.

From an early age, young Churchill displayed the traits of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a British statesman from an established English family, and his mother, Jeanette "Jennie" Jerome, an independent-minded New York socialite.

Churchill grew up in Dublin, Ireland, where his father was employed by his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer-Churchill.

Churchill proved to be an independent and rebellious student; after performing poorly at his first two schools, Churchill in April 1888 began attending Harrow School, a boarding school near London. Within weeks of his enrollment, he joined the Harrow Rifle Corps, putting him on a path to a military career.

At first, it didn't seem the military was a good choice for Churchill; it took him three tries to pass the exam for the British Royal Military College. However, once there, he fared well and graduated 20th in his class of 130.

Up to this time, his relationship with both his mother and father was distant, though he adored them both. While at school, Churchill wrote emotional letters to his mother, begging her to come see him, but she seldom came.

His father died when he was 21, and it was said that Churchill knew him more by reputation than by any close relationship they shared.

Military Career

Churchill enjoyed a brief but eventful career in the British Army at a zenith of British military power. He joined the Fourth Queen's Own Hussars in 1895 and served in the Indian northwest frontier and the Sudan, where he saw action in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

While in the Army, he wrote military reports for the Pioneer Mail and the Daily Telegraph , and two books on his experiences, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899).

In 1899, Churchill left the Army and worked as a war correspondent for the Morning Post , a conservative daily newspaper. While reporting on the Boer War in South Africa, he was taken prisoner by the Boers during a scouting expedition.

He made headlines when he escaped, traveling almost 300 miles to Portuguese territory in Mozambique. Upon his return to Britain, he wrote about his experiences in the book London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900).

Parliament and Cabinet

In 1900, Churchill became a member of the British Parliament in the Conservative Party for Oldham, a town in Manchester. Following his father into politics, he also followed his father's sense of independence, becoming a supporter of social reform.

Unconvinced that the Conservative Party was committed to social justice, Churchill switched to the Liberal Party in 1904. He was elected a member of Parliament in 1908 and was appointed to the prime minister's cabinet as president of the Board of Trade.

As president of the Board of Trade, Churchill joined newly appointed Chancellor David Lloyd George in opposing the expansion of the British Navy. He introduced several reforms for the prison system, introduced the first minimum wage and helped set up labor exchanges and unemployment insurance.

Churchill also assisted in the passing of the People's Budget, which introduced taxes on the wealthy to pay for new social welfare programs. The budget passed in the House of Commons in 1909 and was initially defeated in the House of Lords before being passed in 1910.

In January 1911, Churchill showed his tougher side when he made a controversial visit to a police siege in London, with two alleged robbers holed up in a building.

Churchill's degree of participation is still in some dispute: Some accounts have him going to the scene only to see for himself what was going on; others state that he allegedly gave directions to police on how to best storm the building.

What is known is that the house caught fire during the siege and Churchill prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing the flames, stating that he thought it better to "let the house burn down," rather than risk lives rescuing the occupants. The bodies of the two robbers were later found inside the charred ruins.

Wife and Children

In 1908, Winston Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier after a short courtship.

The couple had five children together: Diana, Randolph, Sarah, Marigold (who died as a toddler of tonsillitis) and Mary.

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First Lord of the Admiralty

Named First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill helped modernize the British Navy, ordering that new warships be built with oil-fired instead of coal-fired engines.

He was one of the first to promote military aircraft and set up the Royal Navy Air Service. He was so enthusiastic about aviation that he took flying lessons himself to understand firsthand its military potential.

Churchill also drafted a controversial piece of legislation to amend the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, mandating sterilization of the feeble-minded. The bill, which mandated only the remedy of confinement in institutions, eventually passed in both houses of Parliament.

World War I

Churchill remained in his post as First Lord of the Admiralty through the start of World War I , but was forced out for his part in the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli . He resigned from the government toward the end of 1915.

For a brief period, Churchill rejoined the British Army, commanding a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front and seeing action in "no man's land."

In 1917, he was appointed minister of munitions for the final year of the war, overseeing the production of tanks, airplanes and munitions.

After World War I

From 1919 to 1922, Churchill served as minister of war and air and colonial secretary under Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

As colonial secretary, Churchill was embroiled in another controversy when he ordered air power to be used on rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq, a British territory. At one point, he suggested that poisonous gas be used to put down the rebellion, a proposal that was considered but never enacted.

Fractures in the Liberal Party led to the defeat of Churchill as a member of Parliament in 1922, and he rejoined the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, returning Britain to the gold standard, and took a hard line against a general labor strike that threatened to cripple the British economy.

With the defeat of the Conservative government in 1929, Churchill was out of government. He was perceived as a right-wing extremist, out of touch with the people.

In the 1920s, after his ouster from government, Churchill took up painting. “Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time,” he later wrote.

Churchill went on to create over 500 paintings, typically working en plein air , though also practicing with still lifes and portraits. He claimed that painting helped him with his powers of observation and memory.

Sutherland Portrait

Churchill himself was the subject of a famous - and famously controversial - portrait by renowned artist Graham Sutherland.

Commissioned in 1954 by members of Parliament to mark Churchill's 80th birthday, the portrait was first unveiled in a public ceremony in Westminster Hall, where it met with considerable derision and laughter.

The unflattering modernist painting was reportedly loathed by Churchill and members of his family. Churchill's wife Clementine had the Sutherland portrait secretly destroyed in a bonfire several months after it was delivered to their country estate, Chartwell , in Kent.

'Wilderness Years'

Through the 1930s, known as his "wilderness years," Churchill concentrated on his writing, publishing a memoir and a biography of the First Duke of Marlborough.

During this time, he also began work on his celebrated A History of the English-Speaking Peoples , though it wouldn't be published for another two decades.

As activists in 1930s India clamored for independence from British rule, Churchill cast his lot with opponents of independence. He held particular scorn for Mahatma Gandhi , stating that "it is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer ... striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace ... to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."

• World War II

Although Churchill didn't initially see the threat posed by Adolf Hitler 's rise to power in the 1930s, he gradually became a leading advocate for British rearmament.

By 1938, as Germany began controlling its neighbors, Churchill had become a staunch critic of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement toward the Nazis.

On September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the war cabinet; by April 1940, he became chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee.

Later that month, Germany invaded and occupied Norway, a setback for Chamberlain, who had resisted Churchill's proposal that Britain preempt German aggression by unilaterally occupying vital Norwegian iron mines and seaports.

Prime Minister

On May 10, 1940, Chamberlain resigned and King George VI appointed Churchill as prime minister and minister of defense.

Within hours, the German army began its Western Offensive, invading the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Two days later, German forces entered France. As clouds of war darkened over Europe, Britain stood alone against the onslaught.

Churchill was to serve as prime minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945, leading the country through World War II until Germany’s surrender.

Battle of Britain

Quickly, Churchill formed a coalition cabinet of leaders from the Labor, Liberal and Conservative parties. He placed intelligent and talented men in key positions.

On June 18, 1940, Churchill made one of his iconic speeches to the House of Commons, warning that "the Battle of Britain " was about to begin. Churchill kept resistance to Nazi dominance alive and created the foundation for an alliance with the United States and the Soviet Union.

Churchill had previously cultivated a relationship with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, and by March 1941, he was able to secure vital U.S. aid through the Lend Lease Act , which allowed Britain to order war goods from the United States on credit.

After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Churchill was confident that the Allies would eventually win the war. In the months that followed, Churchill worked closely with Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to forge an Allied war strategy and postwar world.

In a meeting in Tehran (1943), at the Yalta Conference (1945) and the Potsdam Conference (1945), Churchill collaborated with the two leaders to develop a united strategy against the Axis Powers and helped craft the postwar world with the United Nations as its centerpiece.

As the war wound down, Churchill proposed plans for social reforms in Britain but was unable to convince the public. Despite Germany's surrender on May 7, 1945, Churchill was defeated in the general election in July 1945.

'Iron Curtain' Speech

In the six years after Churchill’s defeat, he became the leader of the opposition party and continued to have an impact on world affairs.

In March 1946, while on a visit to the United States, he made his famous "Iron Curtain" speech , warning of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. He also advocated that Britain remain independent from European coalitions.

With the general election of 1951, Churchill returned to government. He became prime minister for the second time in October 1951 and served as minister of defense between October 1951 and March 1952.

Churchill went on to introduce reforms such as the Mines and Quarries Act of 1954, which improved working conditions in mines, and the Housing Repairs and Rent Act of 1955, which established standards for housing.

These domestic reforms were overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises in the colonies of Kenya and Malaya, where Churchill ordered direct military action. While successful in putting down the rebellions, it became clear that Britain was no longer able to sustain its colonial rule.

Nobel Prize

In 1953, Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II .

The same year, he was named the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values," according to the Nobel Prize committee.

Churchill died on January 24, 1965, at age 90, in his London home nine days after suffering a severe stroke. Britain mourned for more than a week.

Churchill had shown signs of fragile health as early as 1941 when he suffered a heart attack while visiting the White House. Two years later, he had a similar attack while battling a bout of pneumonia.

In June 1953, at age 78, he endured a series of strokes at his office. That particular news was kept from the public and Parliament, with the official announcement stating that he had suffered from exhaustion.

Churchill recuperated at home and returned to his work as prime minister in October. However, it was apparent even to the great statesman that he was physically and mentally slowing down, and he retired as prime minister in 1955. Churchill remained a member of Parliament until the general election of 1964 when he did not seek reelection.

There was speculation that Churchill suffered from Alzheimer's disease in his final years, though medical experts pointed to his earlier strokes as the likely cause of reduced mental capacity.

Despite his poor health, Churchill was able to remain active in public life, albeit mostly from the comfort of his homes in Kent and Hyde Park Gate in London.

As with other influential world leaders, Churchill left behind a complicated legacy.

Honored by his countrymen for defeating the dark regime of Hitler and the Nazi Party , he topped the list of greatest Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll, outlasting other luminaries like Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare .

To critics, his steadfast commitment to British imperialism and his withering opposition to independence for India underscored his disdain for other races and cultures.

Churchill Movies and Books

Churchill has been the subject of numerous portrayals on the big and small screen over the years, with actors from Richard Burton to Christian Slater taking a crack at capturing his essence. John Lithgow delivered an acclaimed performance as Churchill in the Netflix series The Crown , winning an Emmy for his work in 2017.

That year also brought the release of two biopics: In June, Brian Cox starred in the titular role of Churchill , about the events leading up to the World War II invasion of Normandy. Gary Oldman took his turn by undergoing an eye-popping physical transformation to become the iconic statesman in Darkest Hour .

Churchill's standing as a towering figure of the 20th century is such that his two major biographies required multiple authors and decades of research between volumes. William Manchester published volume 1 of The Last Lion in 1983 and volume 2 in 1986, but died while working on part 3; it was finally completed by Paul Reid in 2012.

The official biography, Winston S. Churchill , was begun by the former prime minister's son Randolph in the early 1960s; it passed on to Martin Gilbert in 1968, and then into the hands of an American institution, Hillsdale College , some three decades later. In 2015, Hillsdale published volume 18 of the series.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Winston Churchill
• Birth Year: 1874
• Birth date: November 30, 1874
• Birth City: Blenheim Palace, Woodstock
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Winston Churchill was a British military leader and statesman. Twice named prime minister of Great Britain, he helped to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.
• World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Harrow School
• Brunswick School
• Royal Military College (Academy) at Sandhurst
• St. George's School
• Interesting Facts
• Winston Churchill was a prolific writer and author and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
• Churchill was a son of a British statesman father and an American socialite mother.
• In 1963 President JFK bestowed Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship, the first time a president gave such an award to a foreign national.
• Death Year: 1965
• Death date: January 24, 1965
• Death City: Hyde Park Gate, London
• Death Country: England

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Winston Churchill Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/winston-churchill
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 22, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
• I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
• A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
• Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities ... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

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Winston Churchill

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 7, 2019 | Original: October 27, 2009

Winston Churchill was one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated himself to public service. His legacy is a complicated one: He was an idealist and a pragmatist; an orator and a soldier; an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist; a defender of democracy – especially during World War II – as well as of Britain’s fading empire. But for many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Winston Churchill is simply a hero.

Winston Churchill came from a long line of English aristocrat-politicians. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was descended from the First Duke of Marlborough and was himself a well-known figure in Tory politics in the 1870s and 1880s.

His mother, born Jennie Jerome, was an American heiress whose father was a stock speculator and part-owner of The New York Times. (Rich American girls like Jerome who married European noblemen were known as “dollar princesses.”)

Did you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II.

Churchill was born at the family’s estate near Oxford on November 30, 1874. He was educated at the Harrow prep school, where he performed so poorly that he did not even bother to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, in 1893 young Winston Churchill headed off to military school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Battles and Books

After he left Sandhurst, Churchill traveled all around the British Empire as a soldier and as a journalist. In 1896, he went to India; his first book, published in 1898, was an account of his experiences in India’s Northwest Frontier Province.

In 1899, the London Morning Post sent him to cover the Boer War in South Africa, but he was captured by enemy soldiers almost as soon as he arrived. (News of Churchill’s daring escape through a bathroom window made him a minor celebrity back home in Britain.)

By the time he returned to England in 1900, the 26-year-old Churchill had published five books.

Churchill: “Crossing the Chamber”

That same year, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a Conservative. Four years later, he “crossed the chamber” and became a Liberal.

His work on behalf of progressive social reforms such as an eight-hour workday, a government-mandated minimum wage, a state-run labor exchange for unemployed workers and a system of public health insurance infuriated his Conservative colleagues, who complained that this new Churchill was a traitor to his class.

Churchill and Gallipoli

In 1911, Churchill turned his attention away from domestic politics when he became the First Lord of the Admiralty (akin to the Secretary of the Navy in the U.S.). Noting that Germany was growing more and more bellicose, Churchill began to prepare Great Britain for war: He established the Royal Naval Air Service, modernized the British fleet and helped invent one of the earliest tanks.

Despite Churchill’s prescience and preparation, World War I was a stalemate from the start. In an attempt to shake things up, Churchill proposed a military campaign that soon dissolved into disaster: the 1915 invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.

Churchill hoped that this offensive would drive Turkey out of the war and encourage the Balkan states to join the Allies, but Turkish resistance was much stiffer than he had anticipated. After nine months and 250,000 casualties, the Allies withdrew in disgrace.

After the debacle at Gallipoli, Churchill left the Admiralty.

Churchill Between the Wars

During the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill bounced from government job to government job, and in 1924 he rejoined the Conservatives. Especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again.

Likewise, the British government ignored Churchill’s warnings and did all it could to stay out of Hitler’s way. In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement giving Germany a chunk of Czechoslovakia – “throwing a small state to the wolves,” Churchill scolded – in exchange for a promise of peace.

A year later, however, Hitler broke his promise and invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war. Chamberlain was pushed out of office, and Winston Churchill took his place as prime minister in May 1940.

Churchill: The “British Bulldog”

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister.

“We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

Just as Churchill predicted, the road to victory in World War II was long and difficult: France fell to the Nazis in June 1940. In July, German fighter planes began three months of devastating air raids on Britain herself.

Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide war supplies – ammunition, guns, tanks, planes – to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war.

Though Churchill was one of the chief architects of the Allied victory, war-weary British voters ousted the Conservatives and their prime minister from office just two months after Germany’s surrender in 1945.

The Iron Curtain

The now-former prime minister spent the next several years warning Britons and Americans about the dangers of Soviet expansionism.

In a speech in Fulton, Missouri , in 1946, for example, Churchill declared that an anti-democratic “Iron Curtain,” “a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization,” had descended across Europe. Churchill’s speech was the first time anyone had used that now-common phrase to describe the Communist threat.

In 1951, 77-year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister for the second time. He spent most of this term working (unsuccessfully) to build a sustainable détente between the East and the West. He retired from the post in 1955.

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth made Winston Churchill a knight of the Order of the Garter. He died in 1965, one year after retiring from Parliament.

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• The Life of Churchill

The Official Biography of Winston Churchill

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June 18, 2008

About the official biography.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL by Randolph Churchill & Martin Gilbert

The first volume of Winston S. Churchill was published in 1966, the year after Sir Winston died. After Randolph’s death in 1968 Martin Gilbert, who had joined Randolph as a research assistant in 1962, was appointed by the Churchill family to be the official biographer.

Sir Martin died in 2015 and since that time his former assistant, Dr Larry Arnn now of Hillsdale College is working to complete the biography companion volumes, known as  The Churchill Documents . Sir Martin included the following acknowledgement: ‘The publication of [ The War Papers ] was made possible by the exceptional generosity of Wendy Reves, and by the determination of the International Churchill Society… to bring the Churchill document series, known as the Companion Volumes, back into production.’

2024 International Churchill Conference

The following volumes of the official biography have been published to date:, narrative volumes.

Volume I. Youth, 1874-1900 by Randolph S. Churchill Volume II. Young Statesman, 1901-1914 by Randolph S. Churchill Volume III. The Challenge of War, 1914-1916 by Martin Gilbert Volume IV. World in Torment, 1916-1922 by Martin Gilbert Volume V. Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939 by Martin Gilbert Volume VI. Finest Hour, 1939-1941 by Martin Gilbert Volume VII. Road to Victory, 1941-1945 by Martin Gilbert Volume VIII. Never Despair, 1945-1965 by Martin Gilbert

‘The Churchill Documents’, Companion Volumes

Volume 1.   Youth 1874-1896 Volume 2.   Young Soldier 1896-1901 Volume 3.   Early Years in Politics 1901-1907 Volume 4.   Minister of the Crown 1907-1911 Volume 5.   At the Admiralty 1911-1914 Volume 6.   At the Admiralty July 1914-April 1915 Volume 7.   The Escaped Scapegoat May 1915-December 1916 Volume 8.   War and Aftermath December 1916-June 1919 Volume 9.   Disruption and Chaos July 1919-March 1921 Volume 10. Conciliation and Reconstruction April 1921-November 1922 Volume 11. The Exchequer Years 1922-1929 Volume 12. The Wilderness Years 1929-1935 Volume 13. The Coming of War 1936-1939 Volume 14. At the Admiralty September 1939-May 1940 Volume 15. Never Surrender May 1940-December 1940 Volume 16. The Ever-Widening War 1941 Volume 17. Testing Times 1942 Volume 18. One Continent Redeemed January-August 1943 Volume 19. Fateful Questions: September 1943 – April 1944 Volume 20. Normandy and Beyond: May – December 1944 Volume 21. The Shadows of Victory: January – July 1945 Volume 22. Leader of the Opposition: August 1945 – October 1951 Volume 23. Never Flinch, Never Weary: November 1951 – February 1965

“‘Why study Churchill?,’ I am often asked.  ‘Surely he has nothing to say to us today?’  Yet in my own work, as I open file after file of Churchill’s archive, from his entry into government in 1905 to his retirement in 1955 (a fifty-year span) I am continually surprised by the truth of his assertions, the modernity of his thought, the originality of his mind, the constructiveness of his proposals, his humanity, and, most remarkable of all, his foresight.” -Sir Martin Gilbert

You will help to support the International Churchill Society by purchasing your hardcover or digital editions at Amazon.com by following this link.

Not Really “Official”

Incidentally, the name ‘Official Biography’ is somewhat misleading, as Sir Martin Gilbert noted in a 1991 interview with Brian Lamb on C-Span’s ‘Booknotes’ : ‘I’m called the official biographer, though to the enormous credit of the Churchill family they’ve never asked to see a single word of what I was writing until the books were printed and bound and ready for sale to the public. They never asked me to delete a word or to skirt around a particular issue. So ‘official’ is a misnomer if it’s thought to mean a censored or restricted biographer.’

Winston and Clementine

Churchill: Leader and Statesman

An Interview with Mary Soames

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By Richard Aldous

• Nov. 13, 2018

CHURCHILL Walking With Destiny By Andrew Roberts Illustrated. 1,105 pp. Viking. $40.

In April 1955, on the final weekend before he left office for the last time, Winston Churchill had the vast canvas of Peter Paul Rubens’s “The Lion and the Mouse” taken down from the Great Hall at the prime ministerial retreat of Chequers. He had always found the depiction of the mouse too indistinct, so he retrieved his paint brushes and set about “improving” on the work of Rubens by making the hazy rodent clearer. “If that is not courage,” Lord Mountbatten, the First Sea Lord, said later, “I do not know what is.”

Lack of courage was never Churchill’s problem. As a young man he was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery fighting alongside the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier , and subsequently he took part in the last significant cavalry charge in British history at the Battle of Omdurman in central Sudan . In middle age he served in the trenches of World War I, during which time a German high-explosive shell came in through the roof of his dugout and blew his mess orderly’s head clean off. Later, as prime minister during World War II, and by now in his mid-60s, he thought nothing of visiting bomb sites during the Blitz or crossing the treacherous waters of the Atlantic to see President Roosevelt despite the very real chance of being torpedoed by German U-boats.

Churchill had political courage too, not least as one of the few to oppose the appeasement of Hitler. Many had thought him a warmonger and even a traitor. “I have always felt,” said that scion of the Establishment, Lord Ponsonby, at the time of the Munich debate in 1938, “that in a crisis he is one of the first people who ought to be interned.” Instead, when the moment of supreme crisis came in 1940, the British people turned to him for leadership. Here was his ultimate projection of courage: that Britain would “never surrender.”

If courage was not the issue, lack of judgment often was. Famous military disasters attached to his name, including Antwerp in 1914 , the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) in 1915 and Narvik in 1940 . So too did political controversies, like turning up in person to instruct the police during a violent street battle with anarchists, defying John Maynard Keynes in returning Britain to the gold standard or rashly supporting Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. His views on race and empire were anachronistic even for those times. The carpet bombing of German cities during World War II; the “naughty document” that handed over Romania and Bulgaria to Stalin; comparing the Labour Party to the Gestapo — the list of Churchillian controversies goes on. Each raised questions about his temperament and character. His drinking habits also attracted comment.

Such is the challenge facing any biographer of Churchill: how to weigh in the balance a life filled with so much triumph and disaster, adulation and contempt. The historian Andrew Roberts’s insight about Churchill’s relation to fate in “Churchill: Walking With Destiny” comes directly from the subject himself. “I felt as if I were walking with destiny,” Churchill wrote of that moment in May 1940 when he achieved the highest office. But the story Roberts tells is more sophisticated and in the end more satisfying. “For although he was indeed walking with destiny in May 1940, it was a destiny that he had consciously spent a lifetime shaping,” Roberts writes, adding that Churchill learned from his mistakes, and “put those lessons to use during civilization’s most testing hour.” Experience and reflection on painful failures, while less glamorous than a fate written in the stars, turn out to be the key ingredients in Churchill’s ultimate success.

He did not get off to a particularly happy start. His erratic and narcissistic father, Lord Randolph Churchill, saw the boy as “among the second rate and third rate,” predicting that his life would “degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence.” His American mother, Jennie, was often not much kinder, sending letters to him at Harrow that must have arrived like a Howler in a Harry Potter novel. Parental judgments became an obvious spur to fame and attention. “Few,” Roberts writes, “have set out with more coldblooded deliberation to become first a hero and then a Great Man.”

After stints in Cuba, India and Sudan, Churchill achieved instant fame during the Boer War after a daring escape from a South African P.O.W. camp in 1899. That renown propelled him into Parliament, where he soon added notoriety to his reputation by crossing the floor of the House of Commons, abandoning the Conservative Party for the Liberals. Thereafter, wrote his friend Violet, daughter of the future prime minister H. H. Asquith, he was viewed as “a rat, a turncoat, an arriviste and, worst crime of all, one who had certainly arrived.” “We are all worms,” Churchill told her. “But I do believe that I am a glowworm.”

And glow he did, becoming in 1908, at 33, the youngest cabinet member in 40 years and subsequently the youngest home secretary since Peel in 1822. As First Lord of the Admiralty he was credited with making the navy ready for war — his single most important achievement in government before 1940. Even when disaster befell him, Churchill always managed to bounce back. A new prime minister, David Lloyd George, returned him to the wartime cabinet despite the catastrophe of the Dardanelles. When the Liberal Party disintegrated after the rise of Labour, Churchill conveniently “re-ratted” back to the Conservatives, where Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put him unhappily in charge of the nation’s finances.

By the late 1930s, out of office and despised for his opposition to appeasement, Churchill seemed finished once and for all. But he was ready. “The Dardanelles catastrophe taught him not to overrule the Chiefs of Staff,” Roberts writes, “the General Strike and Tonypandy taught him to leave industrial relations during the Second World War to Labour’s Ernest Bevin; the Gold Standard disaster taught him to reflate and keep as much liquidity in the financial system as the exigencies of wartime would allow.”

Less well known is that Churchill also learned from his successes. Cryptographical breakthroughs at the Admiralty during World War I led him to back Alan Turing and the Ultra decrypters in the second war; the anti-U-boat campaign of 1917 instructed him about the convoy system; his earlier advocacy of the tank encouraged him to support the development of new weaponry. Research for a life of Marlborough (a book that Leo Strauss called the greatest historical work of the 20th century) taught Churchill the value of international alliances in wartime.

If Churchill’s entire life was a preparation for 1940, “the man and the moment only just coincided.” He was 65 years old when he became prime minister and had only just re-entered front-line politics after a decade out of office. It would be like Tony Blair returning to 10 Downing Street today, ready to put lessons learned during the Iraq war to work. Had Hitler delayed by a few years, Roberts suggests, Churchill would surely have been away from front-rank politics too long to “make himself the one indispensable figure.”

Experience certainly did not make success inevitable. In France, Marshal Pétain, revered as the “Lion of Verdun” for his glorious career in World War I, made all the wrong decisions as prime minister from June 1940 onward, equating peace with occupation and collaboration.

Churchill was the anti-Pétain, but what was it that made him “indispensable”? Hope, certainly, and an ability to communicate resolve with both clarity and force. Recordings of wartime speeches can still provoke goose bumps. In the end, Roberts sums up Churchill’s overriding achievement in a single sentence: It was “not that he stopped a German invasion … but that he stopped the British government from making a peace.”

That turned out to be the whole ballgame. After the Battle of Britain was won and, first, the Russians and, then, the Americans came into the war, Churchill knew that “time and patience will give certain victory.” But it also meant a gradual relegation to second if not third place. Britain had entered the war as the most prestigious of the world’s great powers. By its conclusion, having lost about a quarter of its national wealth in fighting the war, Britain had become the fraction in the Big Two and a Half, and was effectively bust. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Roberts tells this story with great authority and not a little panache. He writes elegantly, with enjoyable flashes of tartness, and is in complete command both of his sources and the vast historiography. For a book of a thousand pages, there are surprisingly no longueurs . Roberts is admiring of Churchill, but not uncritically so. Often he lays out the various debates before the reader so that we can draw different conclusions to his own. Essentially a conservative realist, he sees political and military controversies through the lens of the art of the possible. Only once does he really bristle, when Churchill says of Stalin in 1945, “I like that man.” “Where was the Churchill of 1931,” he laments, “who had denounced Stalin’s ‘morning’s budget of death warrants’?”

Some may find Roberts’s emphasis on politics and war old-fashioned, indistinguishable, say, from the approach taken almost half a century ago by Henry Pelling. He is out of step with much of the best British history being written today, where the likes of Dominic Sandbrook, Or Rosenboim and John Bew have successfully blended cultural and intellectual history with the study of high politics. But it would be foolish to say Roberts made the wrong choice. He is Thucydidean in viewing decisions about war and politics, politics and war as the crux of the matter. A life defined by politics here rightly gets a political life. All told, it must surely be the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written.

Richard Aldous, the author of “Reagan and Thatcher” and “Schlesinger,” teaches at Bard.

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