Winston Churchill was born on November 3rd, 1874, in Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. He was the first son of Lord Randolph Churchill and American heiress Jennie Jerome. Winston did not like school and he did not pay much attention to his work. His behaviour was not very good and he was moved to a school in Brighton in 1884, where his work improved. In 1888 he graduated to Harrow School even though he was still not very good at his work. He hated the school but eventually began to try hard at his work and after three attempts he passed the final exam.

Winston joined the Royal Military Academy on September 1st, 1893 where he would be trained as an infantry officer. He enjoyed his work and for the first time in his life he tried to do well. Winston joined the army and wanted to fight in Cuba. He was granted permission and it was agreed that he would write newspaper articles on the war and send them back to England. He arrived in Cuba on November 20th, 1895, and stayed there for six weeks. He became quite well known back in Britain when he won a medal for gallantry. In October, 1896, Churchill went to fight in India. He expanded his education while he was there and when he came back to England eight months later, he became involved in politics and on July 26th, 1897, began making speeches on behalf of the Conservative Party. Winston enjoyed the excitement of warfare and later that year hhe went back to India to write reports on the war for the Daily Telegraph.

In 1898 Winston went to South Africa to report the Boer War for the London Morning Post. In November, 1899 Churchill was captured and put in a prisoner of war camp in Pretoria. However, he was not in prison for long and on December 12th, Churchill and two other men escaped.

Winston Churchill

Churchill returned to London and in 1900 he became Conservative MP for Oldham. In May 1904, Churchill left the Conservatives and joined the Liberal Party. When he was only 31 he became under-secretary of the state for the colonies. In 1908, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, promoted Churchill to the cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. In the same year Winston married Clementine Hozier and in their 57 years of marriage they had four children. While in the Board of Trade, Churchill worked closely with Lloyd George. The two men said that the rich should be taxed to pay for more social programmes. This caused an up-roar in Parliament and split the government. New elections were held and after the Liberal victory, Winston Churchill was switched from the Board of Trade to the Home Office.

In 1911 Germany began to turn against France and there was a slight chance that they would declare war. This would involve the whole of Europe because France had an alliance with England and Russia to help whenever there was a war and Germany had an alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy. Winston was now transferred from the Home Office to the Admiralty. Churchill was given the task of making sure our Navy was ready in case war broke out. He made many changes, including replacing Admirals he did not think were good enough. He also asked the Parliament for the naval budget to be increased to cover costs of new ships and all the changes he was making. He changed the ships from coal to oil fuelling and added heavier guns on them. Churchill insisted that Britain needed twice as many ships as the Germans and was constantly asking for an increase in his budget.

In June 1914 the Germans opened a new canal which would help the naval ships access the North Sea more quickly. Just after this news came that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, had been assassinated by a Serb in Sarajevo. It was thought that Austria and Germany might attack Serbia, which was also part of the British alliance. On August 3rd, 1914 Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium the next day. Parliament issued an ultimatum to the Germans and if they did not retreat, Britain would declare war. The Germans did not reply in the time allowed and Britain declared war.

Churchill was very excited about the war and put many of his ideas about strategy towards the War Council, which consisted of Prime Minster Asquith, his Cabinet and several military advisers. Winston Churchill believed that if Britain won an early battle at sea it would bring a quick end to the war. In the end a lot of his time spent on the navy was wasted as the war mainly took place on land. Just over 80,000 men from the British Expeditionary Force were soon sent to France. During the first few weeks of the war Churchill was sent to the trenches to advise the Generals on what strategy they should use and how they should do things. He stopped doing this because he was just getting in the way rather than helping.

Winston worked with Lord Kitchener and decided to send soldiers to a port in Belgium called Antwerp. This however did not do any good, the troops were not trained very well and they were defeated by the Germans. Churchill made many strategic mistakes and the British Navy seemed to be losing against the Germans at sea.

In January, 1915, the British government became concerned about the advances being made by Turkish troops in southern Russia. Winston Churchill had the idea of forcing an army through the Dardanelles, a thin strait above Turkey and advancing into the capital city of Constantinople. This would be a dangerous operation because the Dardanelles was mined and there were many Turkish forts manned with guns protecting it. The operation went ahead and eight British and four French ships were brought in and on February 19th, 1915 they began shelling the forts and got through but the Turkish began to shoot back and the ships were forced to retreat.

Five weeks later they tried again but more heavy guns had been brought in from Germany and after six months the British gave up. Over 214,000 men were killed in the operation. Churchill was blamed for the losses and was removed from the Admiralty. Churchill now became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He became depressed and resigned on November 11th, 1915 to rejoin the army and fight in the front line trenches. In May 1916 he returned home and Lloyd George, the recently elected Prime Minster, gave him a job as Minister of Munitions. Churchill was now in charge of new weapons and he played an important role in the production of thousands of tanks.

Sarah Quirico

Sackville School, East Grinstead