SIR
WINSTON CHURCHILL: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
by
JOANNE
LYNCH
RIVERSDALE COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
4B.
Sir Winston Churchill was born on November 30
1874. His parents were Randolph
Churchill
and Jennie Jerome. He went to school at Harrow school and then became
a cadet at
the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He later dropped out in Febuary
1895 as a
second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars. He served as a
cavarly
officer in India and the Sudan, where he rode in the cavalry charge at
Omdurman in
1898 under the command of Herbert Kitchener. He wanted to become a newspaper
correspondent in the South African Wars (the Boer Wars). After he was captured
by the Boers, he escaped from prison he was made a national hero and in 1900 he
was elected to parliament as Conservation Member of parliament(MP)Oldham.
In 1904 he
went over to the Liberal Party, having broken with the
Conservaties
on the issue of free trade.This angered his constituents. Having found a new
Manchester seat to contest he swept back into parliament in the Liberal
“landslide”
of 1906. In 1908 he became president of the Board of Trade in the
Liberal
cabient of Herbert Henry Asquith, where he worked closely with the radical
Chancellor
of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, in promoting social reform.
After a
while as secretary (1910-1911), during which he pursured the same policies, he
became First Lord of Admiralty (1911-1915). Before World War 1 he had insisted
on maintaining the British Navy superiorty over that of its nearest rival, the
German Navy, against the pressure of Cabinet economizers like Lloyd George for
reductions in the naval estimates.
Churchill’s
role in World War One was controversial and almost desroyed his career.He was
an energetic First Lord, but his sponsorship of the ill-fated Gallipoli
campaign and the subsequent failure of the Anglo-French fleets to force the
Dardanelles Strait led Asquith to the powerless office of Chancellor of the
Duchy of
Lancaster in
May 1915. Deprived of any influence on the war, he resigned from this
post in
disgust in November. Following service as a battalion commander on the Western
Front, he was brought back to political life in 1917 by the new Prime Minister,
Lloyd George, who appointed him Minister of Munitions. After the war he
served in
Lloyd George’s coalition Cabinet from 1919 to 1922, as Secretary for War and
Air and as Colonial Secretary. The collapse of Lloyd George’s government in the
September 1922, after a war scare over Turkey in which Churchill played a
typically
bellicose role, left him out of office and out of parliament. He lost his seat
at the
subsequent general election and was not returned to parliament until October
1924, as
“Constitutionalist” (Conservative) MP for Epping. Much to his surprise
the
Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, offered him the post of
Chansellor of the Exchequer, where he demonstrated his new Conservative
credentials by returning Britain to the gold standard and vigorously condemning
the trade
unions during the 1926 General Strike.
From 1929,
when Baldwin’s government fell, until 1939, Churchill found himself
back in the
political wilderness. His outspoken opposition to the Indian nationalist
movement and
his support for Edward VIII during the 1936 abdication crisis alienated
Baldwin, who now regarded Churchill as a political liability, while his
subsequent clamour for rearmament and his attacks on appeasement, particularly
in 1938, earned him the implacable hostility of Neville Chamberlain, who
dominated the 1931-1940 National governments.
When
Chamberlain was forced to declare war on Germany in September 1939, Churchill’s
previous warnings about German ambitions were vindicated, and public pressure
led Chamberlain to bring him into the war Cabinet as First Lord of the
Admiralty. There he proved to be as energetic as he had in 1914, but curiously
it was his championing of another disastrous amphibious operation, the
Anglo-French expedition to Norway to take Narvik, which led to Chamberlain’s
resigation in 1940. Many Conservaties blamed the Prime Minister, not the First
Lord, for the debacle-and to Churchill’s replacing him on May 10, 1940, in a
coalition government with all-party support.
Churchill
was undoubtedly an inspiration wartime leader. His pugnacity and rousing
speeches rallied the nation to continue the fight after the fall of France and
the Evacuation of Dunkirk. During the dark days of 1940, through the Battle of
Britain and the Blitz when Britain stood alone against the Axis Powers, he
urged his compatriots to conduct themselves so that, “if the British Empire and
its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: ‘This was their
finest hour.’ He successfully resisted pressure from inside the War Cabinet for
a compromise peace with Germany in May 1940 and placed his hopes for eventual
victory on the intervention of the United States in the war on Britain’s side.
There was little sign of this during the summer of 1940, but with the
successful outcome of the Battle of Britain, President Franklin D. Roosvelt
decided to support Britain, not by direct American intervention but with naval
assistance and military lend-lease aid. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union
in June 1941, Churchill welcomed this new adherent to the Allied cause, this
despite his implacable hostility towards the Soviet regime in the 1920’s. He
was overjoyed when the United States enteredthe war in December 1941 after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Chuchill established close ties with
Roosevelt and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, forming a triumvirate at the
head of what he termed the “Grand Alliance”. Travelling ceaselessly, he
laboured to coordinate military strategy against Adolf Hitler and the Axis.
For a time
Roosevelt generally adopted Churchill’s strategic ideas, such as the prime
minister’s invasion of North Africa in 1942 instead of a cross-Channel assault,
which the American army chiefs wanted. However after 1943, as the United States
had become immeasurably more powerful, Churchill was forced increasingly to
accept American-imposed war plans, despite his vigorous courting of Roosevelt
by means of face-to-face meetings in the United States, Canada, and North
Africa. Churchill’s warnings after the Yalta Conference in early 1945 about
Stalin’s European ambitions were ignored-Roosevelt wanted to work with Stalin
for a peaceful post-war order. British general election’s were held during the
Potsdam Conference, the last great “Big Three” conference in thye summer of
1945, with Churchill present for part of the time. Given his popularity as
wartime leade, he was not expected to be defeated at the election. However, the
Labour Party won by a landslide. British public opinion was alienated by
Churchill’s repugnance for social and economic reform, nor did it wish to
return to the slump and unemployment of the 1930’s with which the Conservatives
were now identified. 
Churchill’s
death in 1965 marked the end of an era
in British history. Born into an aristocratic family, he participated in
Britain’s transformation from british empire to welfare state and its decline
as a world power, developments which he bitterly regretted. He is particularly
remembered for his courageous stand as Prime Minister in 1940 and 1941, when
Britain stood alone against perhaps the most dangerous adversary it had faced
in its long history.
Short questions
Question
One: Review
Churchill:A
Biography Roy Jenkins
One of the
books used for this essay was Churchill by Roy Jenkins. This is an exhaustive
biographical picture of one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th
century. From the admiralty to the miner’s strike, from the Battle of Britain
to the Nobel Prize, Churchill oversaw some of the most important events the
world has ever seen. Roy Jenkins presents these events, while also managing to
convey the contradictions and quirks in Churchill’s character.
Book buyers
will never tire of reading about Winston Churchill, for “the greatest adventure
of modern political history” led a life of action-packed drama and global
significance. Roy Jenkins’ Churchill is the latest biography of this great
Briton, following closely in the tailwind of Geoffrey Best’s Churchill:A study
in Greatness. Where Best restore altitude to Churchill’s dipping reputation,
seeing off academic critics of the last decade or so, Jenkins provides a
jumbo-size old-fashioned biography, lauding his subject’s achievements,
sympathising with his quirks, and stepping light over his well-known mistakes.
As he did in his earlier biographhioned biography, lauding his well-known
mistakes. As he did in his earlier biographies of Dilke, Asquith and Gladstone,
Jenkins sticks closely on the published record, utilising in particular the
definitive researches of Martin Gilbert, but he brings the authority and the
inside knowledge of British politics to his book, slipping in his own memories
of Churchill, and his own comparable experience sat the Cabient table. It is
all here, from the Boer Wars to the nuclear bomb, from the husting in Oldham to
the diplomacy of Yalta, with due coverage of the big moments—at the Board of
Trade and at the Admiralty in Asquith`s peacetime and wartime cabients, taking
on the appeasers in the 1930s and Hitler in the 1940s.
Perhaps the
greatest tribute to the work of author Roy Jenkins is that, at times, he seemed
to know what Winston Churchill was actually thinking- and you`re pretty sure
he`s right.When the mind you`re reading about belongs to perhaps the greatest
Prime Minister in history of Great Britain, Noble-prize winner Winston
Churchill, that is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Jenkins` biography is
essentially unsentimental, and reveals Churchill`s idiosyncrasies and errors in
an honest manner that serves only to elevate, rather than tarnish, the legacy
of the man who rallied the free world to resist the tyranny of National
Socialism.
Short Question Two
Bibliography.
Gilbert,
Martin. Second World War,
Fontana/Collins, London, 1990.
Jenkins,
Roy. Churchill, Penguine, London, 1999.
Question Three :Skills
Studying for
my history project, I was introduced to the skills of research.
1. While
doing my project I have learnt to look book’s in my local libraries to find
suitable book’s on my project.
2. By using
the internet I found more information for my essay.
3. I new
learnt skills on microsoft word.
4. I have
also learnt to read and compare many different sources for my project.
Question Four :
1. When we
came back in January in transition year i learnt about the essay and what
procentage it held.
2. I was
given a week to think about a topic.
3. I went to
my local library and got book`s that were about my project
I was doing.
4. Then I
went on the Internet to look up more information for my project.
5. Then I
searched Microsoft Incarta and found information related to my project.
6. Then I
read the book information from the internet.
7. Then I
got all my information about my essay then planed it out and wrote out my first
draft and then I added in my own bit`s from other book`s and checked the dates.
8. I typed it up on Microsoft Word then I made
change`s and correction`s and then printed it out.
9. When I
printed it out I put it up on the school website.