Outstanding English and American personalities – Winston L. S. Churchill

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

If we go several miles westwards from Oxford, we come to a small village called Bladon. This village is full of very old buildings and there is also a cemetery there. There are very old graves but one of them looks very new. On the gravestone we can read the name of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
This famous politic was born on the 30th November 1874. This time was quite a mild period for England. His life story was very long. When he started his political life, people were going to meetings in carriages, and when he was dying there were satellites around the world. Winston Churchill was one of the biggest personalities in the English history. He was a man of many faces. We know him mainly as a politician and statesman, but he was also an officer during the world war and at the end of his life he was awarded the Nobel price for literature.
His career started in 1896 when he was an officer in India (it was a British colony at that time). He finished his work there in 1898, and then took part in the English march to Sudan. From 1899 to 1902 he was a war correspondent. He started his political life in 1900, when he became a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons. At this time he was very admired in England and all the people were talking about him. In the following years he held many functions: 1908 – 10 Minister of Commerce, 1910 -11 Minister of Home Office and in 1911 – 15 First Lord of Admiralty. After the failure of the Dardanel operation in 1915, he resigned from political life and in 1915 – 17 he was fighting as a British officer in France and Belgium. In 1917 he returned back to political life. He recognised, that he likes problems related to wars and therefore he accepted a position as the Minister of Armament in 1917 and next year as the Minister of War. He contributed significantly to the modernisation of the British army and he supported strongly the implementation of tanks. He was one of the main organisers of the intervention against Russia. In the thirties he suggested the brisk policy against the Nazi Germany and he criticised the Munich Treaty. When the Second World War started, he was appointed the First Lord of Admiralty. He was one of the three main representatives of the anti-nazi coalition (it was called the „Big Three”). During the war he represented Great Britain on all important conferences (Casablanca, Teheran, Postupim). He consistently protected the power of the British Empire and he tried to keep the influence of the USSR as low as possible.
In March 1946 at Fulton University he gave a speech in which he addressed the USA to unify with Britain against their common enemy – the USSR. This speech was considered as the announcement of the Cold War. In April 1955 he abdicated from his minister function, but he remained in the position of Adviser to the British Queen.
At this time he also wrote a historical novel about his ancestors and a lot of war memories. In the London Library there are more than 50 books of his. He was also a very good painter. In his seniority he was awarded many doctorates and other honours