British statesman.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born with the castle from Blenheim, property of his paternal family, that of the dukes of Marlborough, one of largest of the English aristocracy. His/her father, Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-1895), was appointed at twenty-five years and made career in the preserving rows. However, it wished democratic reforms and a peaceful foreign policy.
Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister for Finance) in 1886, it proposed a program which his/her colleagues refused; he resigned and spent his time travelling. He had married American and the couple was looked like one of most eccentric of the aristocratic company and the political world of Victorian England; at that time one and the other was largely confused and the public life constituted for the young person Winston Churchill a natural vocation.
In a rather Bohemian family atmosphere, the first education of Winston Churchill was neglected. Envoy with the college of Harrow, Churchill made there of the poor studies; then it passes by the military academy of Sandhurst. It leaves there with the taste the adventure and the desire to be quickly made know. Winston Churchill leaves for Cuba, where the Spanishs fight local revolts; he accompanies then the Kitchener general in Sudan, and appears on the battlefield of Omdourman in 1898. The Second Boer War brings it in South Africa, where it is made prisoner by Boers (1899), but manages to escape. Consequently, mid--officer, mid--journalist, of Cuba, of India or Egypt, it sends to the London newspapers coloured articles which are appreciated and into 1900 the doors of the House of Commons open to him.
A great man of State
Preserving appointed elected official of Oldham, Churchill, by admiration for the liberal chief Lloyd George, leaves soon his party to join the liberals and to begin a brilliant ministerial career. Under-secretary of State to the colonies (1905), trade minister (1908) and for the Interior (1910), it supports Lloyd George, then chancellor of the Exchequer in his reform projects social. In 1911, at thirty-seven years, he becomes First Lord of Admiralty (Minister for the Navy). Persuaded that the United Kingdom will be trained in a European conflict, it prepares the British fleet with the war by taking radical measures. In 1915, it has the idea of a Franco-British naval forwarding against Turkey, allied of Germany, to occupy the straits and to restore communications with Russia: following tactical errors, after one year of combat and heavy losses, the forwarding of Dardanelles fails. The ministry falls. Churchill then takes the command of a regiment on the French face, but Lloyd George again recalls it to the government and the wallet of the Armament entrusts to him, then those of the War and the Air (1918-1921).
With the failure of the liberal party, in 1922, Churchill loses his seat of deputy. He then reinstates the conservative party, which accommodates it without resentment; in 1924, he is again appointed and he is named chancellor of the Exchequer in the Baldwyn government. Until 1929, it will practice a rigid monetary policy: industry and the economic expansion are sacrificed to the revaluation of the pound sterling, with the re-establishment of its parity of pre-war period and its gold convertibility. The price to be paid is that of a considerable unemployment; the crisis of 1929 carries delivers it, massively devaluated, convertibility is removed, and the members of the Labor Party gain the elections. Churchill, very criticized, will not appear any more in the conservative governments until 1939. He writes historical works, travels and, understanding very early that the conflict with Hitler is inevitable, he condemns the agreements of Munich firmly.
A great tenacity
In September 1939, after the declaration of war, Chamberlain recalls Churchill to his old station of First Lord of Admiralty. The allied military defeat, in June 1940, constrained Chamberlain to leave the government. Churchill succeeds to him and becomes Prime Minister on on May 10th, 1940. Consequently and until the victory, it will animate with an inflexible will the resistance of the British people to which it proclaim his determination to be fought: “I have to offer only blood, sweat and tears to you”. By its capacity for work, its obstinacy, its faculty to inspire the hope - whereas the failures follow one another the beginning of the war - it will become without question one of the principal architects of victory allied.
At the end of the war, Churchill tries to bring Roosevelt to a firmer attitude towards the USSR, but it cannot prevent, with the conference of Yalta, the division of Europe between Soviets and Americans. In 1945, the workers party carries it with the elections. Churchill, who animates the opposition to the government of Attlee, does not remain about it less one international personality of foreground. In Fulton, in the United States, it starts again the idea of an association of the Anglo-Saxon countries which will be at the base of the future pact of the North Atlantic. In its famous speech of Zurich, he proposes in continental Europe to link himself. But, in its spirit, Great Britain must remain with the variation, with special responsibilities in the world: Churchill insists on the importance of the Commonwealth and the privileged relations with the United States. From return to the post of Prime Minister in 1951, it will endeavor to carry out this plan before withdrawing public life in 1955 definitively.
Nobel Prize of literature in 1953, Sir Winston Churchill is the author of many works, in particular of a Life of Lord Randolph Churchill (1906), of a test on the World-wide crisis (1923-1929) and, especially, of Memories of war (1948-1954), invaluable testimony on its extraordinary tenacity in one of the darkest periods of Great Britain and the free world. Ignored, its pictorial work counts a hundred fabrics carried out between 1915 and 1965 (year of its death) having for subjects of predilection of the provençaux, Moroccan or Egyptian landscapes and of dead natures.