Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born in 1874, the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife. As a junior officer he fought in four campaigns; as a war correspondent in South Africa he made an epic escape from Boer captivity; in politics he held numerous ministerial posts and, from the back benches in the 1930s, increasingly warned of the dangers of German rearmament, of appeasement, and of Britain's unreadiness for war. In May 1940 he succeeded Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. His inspiring leadership of the British people, and the war-winning relationships he established with America and the Soviet Union, won him worldwide fame, while as leader of the Opposition after the war he was an overwhelming presence on the international stage. In 1951 he became Prime Minister again, resigning, aged eighty-one, in 1955. He died in 1965 and, after a magnificent state funeral, was buried in the graveyard of the tiny parish church close to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, the house in which he had been born. Remembered as a politician, as a wartime leader, and as the last of the great public orators, Churchill's reputation also rests upon his many books, notably his magisterial histories, which include The World Crisis (1923-9), Marlborough (1933-8), The Second World War (1948-54) and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-8) Dominique Enright is a freelance writer and editorChurchill, Winston L. S. is the author of 'Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill' with ISBN 9781854795298 and ISBN 1854795295.