Winston Churchill: His Dogged Determination Was Vital To His Country

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was the most important 20th century political figure in Britain who served twice as its Prime Minister and whose determination to resist the Germans during World war 2 was inspiring to his country both in terms of his leadership and the courage he displayed in some of his nations darkest and most desperate hours.
He was born on November 30 1874 the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife Jenny Jerome. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and after serving in India he resigned from the cavalry and became a correspondent during the Boar War. In 1899 he was captured and held prisoner but he managed an amazing escape and returned to Britain a national hero. He spent the first decade of the new century in various positions in government starting with his election to Parliament in 1900. By 1911 he had become First Lord of the Admiralty, during which time he spent most of his efforts modernizing the Navy.
His career was nearly destroyed during World war 1 when he supported the campaign at Gallipoli which was a disaster and forced his resignation.
In the years before World war 2 he is engaged in opposing the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Nevillle Chamberlain and is boisterous in his insistance that England must arm herself to prepare for the Germans whom he believed correctly were planning for war. He rises to become Prime Minister just in time for some of the darkest days in his country's history when the bombings of London begin and France collapses to the Germans in 1940.
Under his leadership and tireless efforts to cordinate military strategy with England's greatest ally the United States, the Germans were defeated by 1945 and the "Great Alliance" as he called it prevailed in the war.
After the war ended there was a desire among the British public to put the war behind them and that included Churchill and so he was voted out as Prime Minister the same year the war ended.
He spent the following years writing as a historian of many works and giving speeches, most notably his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946 in which he warned of the impending dangers that the Soviet Union posed to the west.
In 1951 He is elected Prime Minister for the second time and served for four years before he resigned in 1955 due to his poor health. At this point he was older and had lost much of his energy and vigor for leadership.
He would live for 10 more years in retirement spending the bulk of his time painting and writing books about history for which he won the Nobel Prize for literature and was knighted in 1953. He died on January 24 1965. After a state funeral he was buried at Bladon, near Blenheim Palace. He was 90 years old.