A year later, however, Hitler broke his promise and invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war. Chamberlain was pushed out of office, and Winston Churchill took his place as prime minister in May You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim?
I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
In July, German fighter planes began three months of devastating air raids on Britain herself. Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide war supplies — ammunition, guns, tanks, planes — to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war. The now-former prime minister spent the next several years warning Britons and Americans about the dangers of Soviet expansionism.
In , year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister for the second time. A key figure in this is the ex-UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who clearly sees himself in Churchillian terms and as the natural inheritor of his mantle of leadership and greatness. In his account, Churchill is responsible not only for saving the world but also for inventing it and bringing it into being. Perhaps most tellingly, Johnson believes that the calling of leadership, the possession of class confidence, and the belief in your own effortless superiority to others together constitute a Churchillian template which runs between the two men, endowing each of them with the ability to champion national renewal in times of doubt and uncertainty.
Both men enjoy the good life and believe in the power of the word: while Johnson has not shown any great capacity at Churchillian spellbinding oratory, he has shown a sort of anti-gift for the printed word.
And neither man is a natural organisational type, adopting instead an impulsive, devil-may-care attitude, often driven by the big picture more than detail. But it is here that any real comparison stops, for Churchill the wartime leader in World War Two was well aware of his many inadequacies, listened to colleagues, and ran a collective government in numerous areas, including the domestic front.
These words, linking as they do the Nazi dictatorship and the overly bureaucratic, rules-based EU, are jarring: such sloppy comparisons are now commonplace in frothy, easily excitable right-wing circles, but it is shocking to see them in what is meant to be a serious book.
For Johnson and his acolytes, Europe is always beastly, domineering, and out to get dear old Blighty — whether by military means or via executive orders and procedures. Boris Johnson, famously, became a Brexiteer only when he made the judgment about what would most help his political ambitions, a motivation as far from the Churchill myth as is possible.
But underlying his interest in the man is his desire for mobilising people, and aspiration to tell a set of national stories in which people believe and see themselves. And this is where they run into major problems which no amount of wordplay can overcome. Churchill invoked a particular idea of Britain, as a place of purpose, moral certainty and national calling.
And this kind of perspective managed to maintain itself throughout the twentieth century, through good times and bad, under Labour and Liberal governments; it did so partly because its rationale extended out beyond the Tory Party into circles that included progressives.
It has been an enduring credo of the English-British ruling classes — from commerce to religion, to private education and the House of Lords — and it has contributed to shaping and blunting Liberal and Labour radicalism down through the ages. Forty years on from the onset of Thatcherism, and a decade after the banking crash, the normative assumptions of British politics are now under strain and question.
Underneath the public crises of the Conservative Party sits a longer-term set of issues: what constituencies and social forces is it giving voice to and representing? What sort of Britain is it championing? This has left the Tory Party unsure of its moorings, anchorage and direction. It can no longer get away with the English-British conceit: it long ago lost Scotland, and, more importantly, has not had an uplifting narrative about the union of the United Kingdom for quite some time.
Feeding into these territorial crises has been an even more powerful unravelling of the economic and social fabric which holds society together. The post-war settlement has been deliberately dismantled, but the subsequent Thatcherite-Blairite consensus has failed to deliver in terms of prosperity, security and social mobility.
In such an environment it is much easier to try to find your answers in an imagined, simplistic version of the past: one where the forces of good won out and everything was in black and white, including the political choices.
It is a question of badging, of political ownership. Not all judgements of Churchill are laudatory. But the continued harking back to this lost world is symptomatic of a country trapped in the past, which has seemingly given up on creating a collective future. For many people today, this seems inviting and positive leaving aside the voyeurism. All around Britain the past seems to be alive, noisy and influential, while the future has been infinitely postponed. Labour has always had a conservation element to it — it has been rightly suspicious of the claims of economic determinism, capitalism and bosses that they are the future, that they are the true agents of change.
But when it has been most successful it has also had a story to tell about the future. Something deeper is underway in present society. One dimension is the collapse of western modernity as a liberating force for progress. This has had a massive effect on the social-democratic parties of the wealthy parts of the world: not one of these parties is in a healthy place electorally; not one of them is making or remaking the political and intellectual landscape of their country.
It is not surprising, in this climate, that Churchill seems alive and ever-present, or that Attlee and Hardie are invoked in Labour circles. That particular news was kept from the public and Parliament, with the official announcement stating that he had suffered from exhaustion.
Churchill recuperated at home and returned to his work as prime minister in October. However, it was apparent even to the great statesman that he was physically and mentally slowing down, and he retired as prime minister in Churchill remained a member of Parliament until the general election of when he did not seek reelection.
There was speculation that Churchill suffered from Alzheimer's disease in his final years, though medical experts pointed to his earlier strokes as the likely cause of reduced mental capacity. Despite his poor health, Churchill was able to remain active in public life, albeit mostly from the comfort of his homes in Kent and Hyde Park Gate in London.
Honored by his countrymen for defeating the dark regime of Hitler and the Nazi Party , he topped the list of greatest Britons of all time in a BBC poll, outlasting other luminaries like Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare. To critics, his steadfast commitment to British imperialism and his withering opposition to independence for India underscored his disdain for other races and cultures. Churchill has been the subject of numerous portrayals on the big and small screen over the years, with actors from Richard Burton to Christian Slater taking a crack at capturing his essence.
John Lithgow delivered an acclaimed performance as Churchill in the Netflix series The Crown , winning an Emmy for his work in Gary Oldman took his turn by undergoing an eye-popping physical transformation to become the iconic statesman in Darkest Hour.
Churchill's standing as a towering figure of the 20th century is such that his two major biographies required multiple authors and decades of research between volumes. William Manchester published volume 1 of The Last Lion in and volume 2 in , but died while working on part 3; it was finally completed by Paul Reid in The official biography, Winston S. Churchill , was begun by the former prime minister's son Randolph in the early s; it passed on to Martin Gilbert in , and then into the hands of an American institution, Hillsdale College , some three decades later.
In , Hillsdale published volume 18 of the series. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. He is known for his policy of "appeasement" toward Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. He was succeeded by Queen Elizabeth II in Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany.
His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews. Queen Victoria was queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from to — the second-longest reign of any British monarch. The first female prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher was a controversial figurehead of conservative ideology during her time in office.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal led the nation through the Great Depression. Elected to four terms, his presidency helped ensure victory in World War II. Francis Bacon was an English Renaissance statesman and philosopher, best known for his promotion of the scientific method. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in for his many published works.
More information including archive footage can be found at the Churchill War Rooms. Winston Churchill was born on 30 November , in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire and was of rich, aristocratic ancestry. Although achieving poor grades at school, his early fascination with militarism saw him join the Royal Cavalry in As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill travelled widely, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa.
Churchill was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in , before defecting to the Liberal Party in and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of the Liberal government. Heavily criticised for this error, he resigned from this position and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from , when he controversially opted for Britain to re-join the Gold Standard.
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