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| Sir Winston Churchill |
Sir Winston Churchill is one of the most important figures of the last century. His biography is full of important events because he had to take some important decitions that changed the British History. He's a controversial figure but, without any kind of doubt, someone who must be studied and read, if you want to understant our recent history.
It's very difficult to create a short biography about Churchill because his life is full of important dates and events but today, The Grandma wants to remember her as a writer because, on a day like today in 1953, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Before talking about Winston Churchill, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 38).
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874-24 January 1965) was a British politician, statesman, army officer, and writer, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
As Prime Minister, Churchill led Britain to victory in the Second World War. Churchill represented five constituencies during his career as Member of Parliament (MP). Ideologically an economic liberal and British imperialist, he began and ended his parliamentary career as a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, but for twenty years from 1904 he was a prominent member of the Liberal Party.
Winston Churchill, in addition to his careers of soldier and politician, was a prolific writer under the pen name Winston S. Churchill. After being commissioned into the 4th Queen's Own Hussars in 1895, Churchill gained permission to observe the Cuban War of Independence, and sent war reports to The Daily Graphic. He continued his war journalism in British India, at the Siege of Malakand, then in the Sudan during the Mahdist War and in southern Africa during the Second Boer War.
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| Sir Winston Churchill |
Churchill's fictional output included one novel and a short story, but his main output comprised non-fiction. After he was elected as an MP, over 130 of his speeches or parliamentary answers were also published in pamphlets or booklets; many were subsequently published in collected editions.
Churchill received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.
In 1895 Winston Churchill was commissioned cornet, second lieutenant, into the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. His annual pay was £300, and he calculated he needed an additional £500 to support a style of life equal to that of other officers of the regiment. To earn the required funds, he gained his colonel's agreement to observe the Cuban War of Independence; his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, used her influence to secure a contract for her son to send war reports to The Daily Graphic.
More information: International Churchill Society
He was subsequently posted back to his regiment, then based in British India, where he took part in, and reported on the Siege of Malakand; the reports were published in The Pioneer and The Daily Telegraph. The reports formed the basis of his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, which was published in 1898. To relax he also wrote his only novel, Savrola, which was published in 1898. That same year he was transferred to the Sudan to take part in the Mahdist War (1881–99), where he participated in the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. He published his recollections in The River War (1899).
In 1899 Churchill resigned his commission and travelled to South Africa as the correspondent with The Morning Post, on a salary of £250 a month plus all expenses, to report on the Second Boer War. He was captured by the Boers in November that year, but managed to escape. He remained in the country and continued to send in his reports to the newspaper. He subsequently published his despatches in two works, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March, both 1900. He returned to Britain in 1900 and was elected as the Member of parliament for the Oldham constituency at that year's general election.
As a serving MP he began publishing pamphlets containing his speeches or answers to key parliamentary questions. Beginning with Mr Winston Churchill on the Education Bill (1902), over 135 such tracts were published over his career. Many of these were subsequently compiled into collections, several of which were edited by his son, Randolph and others of which were edited by Charles Eade, the editor of the Sunday Dispatch.
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| Sir Winston Churchill's Nobel Prize |
In addition to his parliamentary duties, Churchill wrote a two-volume biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, published in 1906, in which he presented his father as a tory with increasingly radical sympathies, according to the historian Paul Addison.
In the 1923 general election Churchill lost his parliamentary seat and moved to the south of France where he wrote The World Crisis, a six-volume history of the First World War, published between 1923 and 1931. The book was well-received, although the former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour dismissed the work as Winston's brilliant autobiography, disguised as world history.
At the 1924 general election Churchill returned to the Commons. In 1930 he wrote his first autobiography, My Early Life, after which he began his researches for Marlborough: His Life and Times (1933–38), a four-volume biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Before the final volume was published, Churchill wrote a series of biographical profiles for newspapers, which were later collected together and published as Great Contemporaries (1937).
In May 1940, eight months after the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill became Prime Minister.
He wrote no histories during his tenure, although several collections
of his speeches were published. At the end of the war he was voted out
of office at the 1945 election; he returned to writing and, with a
research team headed by the historian William Deakin, produced a
six-volume history, The Second World War (1948–53). The books became a best-seller in both the UK and US.
More information: National Churchill Museum
Churchill served as Prime Minister for a second time between October 1951 and April 1955 before resigning the premiership; he continued to serve as an MP until 1964. His final major work was the four-volume work A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58).
In 1953 Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values. Churchill was almost always well paid as an author and, for most of his life, writing was his main source of income. He produced a huge portfolio of written work; the journalist and historian Paul Johnson estimates that Churchill wrote an estimated eight to ten million words in more than forty books, thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, and at least two film scripts. John Gunther in 1939 estimated that he earned $100,000 a year ($1.39 million nowadays) from writing and lecturing, but that of this he spends plenty.
In 1899 Churchill became aware of the American novelist of the same name. He wrote to his American contemporary and offered to sign his own works Winston Spencer Churchill, adding the first half of his full surname, Spencer-Churchill, which he did not otherwise use. In practice the middle name was turned into an initial, and his pen name subsequently appeared as Winston S. Churchill. The two men met in Boston the following year.
There are around 135 published booklets of Churchill's individual speeches, including Mr Winston Churchill on the Education Bill (1902), The Fiscal Puzzle: Both Sides Explained by Leading Men (1903), Why I am a Free Trader (1905) and Prisons and Prisoners (1910).
More information: History Extra
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill
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