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Winston Churchill

Personal Profile

Winston Churchill
  • Date of Birth:
    November 30, 1874
  • Zodiac Sign:
    Sagittarius
  • Place of Birth:
    Blenheim, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
  • Place of Death:
    Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom
  • Date of Death:
    January 24, 1965
  • Sex:
    Male
  • Nationality:
    British
  • Education:
    Harrow School, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

Family

Winston Churchill
  • Father:
    Lord Randolph Churchill
  • Mother:
    Lady Randolph Churchill
  • Spouse:
    Clementine Churchill
  • Daughter:
    Diana Churchill
    Sarah Tuchet-Jesson
    Marigold Churchill
    Mary Soames
    Randolph Churchill

Career

Winston Churchill

Trivia

Winston Churchill
  • He is buried in a modest churchyard in Bladon, not far from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace. Chartwell, his country house, is open to the public. Much of his painting was done there.
  • The first American combat ship named after a foreigner, the guided-missile cruiser USS Winston S. Churchill, was launched on 17 April 1999.
  • In 1963, by Act of Congress, he was bestowed with honorary U.S. citizenship, the first recipient since Lafayette. He was too infirm to travel to Washington, DC, to receive the honor in person.
  • He was awarded the Order of the Garter in 1953, becoming Sir Winston. Both he and his Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden had declined this honor in 1945, feeling it inappropriate following the landslide General Election defeat.
  • "Battling Bessie Braddock", fiery Labour MP from Liverpool once said to Churchill, "Winston, you`re drunk!" To which he replied, "Bessie, you`re ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober."
  • Nancy Astor once said to Churchill, "If I was your wife I`d poison your coffee!" He replied, "If I was your husband I`d drink it.".
  • Awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in literature, he was allegedly disappointed that it wasn`t the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent the Cold War between the East and West from deteriorating into nuclear conflict.
  • Said to have refused to allow his successor to nominate him for a peerage after his final resignation as Prime Minister in 1955, ostensibly to allow his son to contest a seat in the House of Commons.
  • Was a member of The Tuna Club in southern California, the oldest fishing club in the United States. Its members at one time also included Theodore Roosevelt, George S. Patton, Charles Chaplin, and Bing Crosby.
  • Early in his life, he briefly worked as a greeting card designer for Hallmark.

Quotes

Winston Churchill
  • “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.”
  • “Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”
  • “It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
  • “Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.”
  • “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.”
  • “There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.”
  • “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
  • “History is written by the victors.”
  • “Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”
  • “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
View all Quotes: Winston Churchill

Biography

Winston Churchill
Last Updated: Monday, October 12, 2009

Winston ChurchillThe Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill , the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and an American mother, was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. After a brief but eventful career in the army, he became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900. He held many high posts in Liberal and Conservative governments during the first three decades of the century.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty - a post which he had earlier held from 1911 to 1915. In May, 1940, he became Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and remained in office until 1945. He took over the premiership again in the Conservative victory of 1951 and resigned in 1955.

However, he remained a Member of Parliament until the general election of 1964, when he did not seek re-election. Queen Elizabeth II conferred on Churchill the dignity of Knighthood and invested him with the insignia of the Order of the Garter in 1953. Among the other countless honours and decorations he received, special mention should be made of the honorary citizenship of the United States which President Kennedy conferred on him in 1963.

Winston ChurchillChurchill's literary career began with campaign reports: The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899), an account of the campaign in the Sudan and the Battle of Omdurman. In 1900, he published his only novel, Savrola, and, six years later, his first major work, the biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. His other famous biography, the life of his great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, was published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938.

Churchill's history of the First World War appeared in four volumes under the title of The World Crisis (1923-29); his memoirs of the Second World War ran to six volumes (1948-1953/54). After his retirement from office, Churchill wrote a History of the English-speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-58). His magnificent oratory survives in a dozen volumes of speeches, among them The Unrelenting Struggle (1942), The Dawn of Liberation (1945), and Victory (1946).

Churchill, a gifted amateur painter, wrote Painting as a Pastime (1948). An autobiographical account of his youth, My Early Life, appeared in 1930.

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