Voted in a national televised poll as the "Greatest Briton", the remarkable career of Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) stretched from the later Victorian years through into the reign of the second Queen Elizabeth. He charged with horse-mounted cavalry in 19th century warfare, served on the battlefields of the first world war, and led his nation in the second. He was, however, much more than a political and wartime leader.
Although born at Blenheim Palace into the high aristocracy of Britain he was not rich. He earned his living with his pen, first as a journalist, and later as a biographer and historian. In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
WSC is sometimes confused with another Winston Churchill who was at the same time producing popular novels in the United States. He himself, however, wrote only one novel, Savrola, in the late 1890s. In common with the work of many great novelists of that era it was first serialised (in Macmillan's Magazine) before publication as a book, but Winston was not a great novelist and quickly learned to concentrate on his strengths.
His early works were a combination of reportage and opinion on military and political matters, often in the context of his own hair-raising adventures. Today he would probably be known as a free-lance war correspondent. From Cuba to India to the Sudan and South Africa he followed the sound of battle, at times combining his writing with a formal commission in the army, not infrequently to the irritation of his superiors.
After the turn of the century, it may come to many as something of a surprise that, although now an active politician, if we ignore for the moment his short magazine articles, letters to editors and speeches, only a few of Churchill's published writings were on matters of contemporary political policy. "Mr. Brodrick's Army" in 1903 challenged the military budgets. Another small book, though, published in 1910 with the title, "The People's Rights", stands out from most of his work. It was adapted from material accumulated for a series of speeches given in the industrial towns of Lancashire, and illustrates both the thoroughness with which he prepared himself for such speaking tours and the extent to which, even though himself from a very different level of society, he was concerned for the difficulties faced by the ordinary working people of the country.
Even by the standards of that time, his father could not be credited with good parenting skills, but Churchill worshipped him all the same. Lord Randolph Churchill had been a political shooting star. He achieved the eminence of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer (roughly equivalent to Finance Minister in many other countries, and effectively No. 2 in the British governmental system), was briefly brilliant but then rapidly declined as his final illness took hold. Winston spent years researching the background and work of the father he did not really know during his lifetime, and in 1906 published an outstanding two-volume biography.
Going further back in time, the high position of the Churchill family derived from John Churchill, "Britain's greatest soldier", hero of major military campaigns in Europe during the 18th century, and ennobled as the first Duke of Marlborough,. WSC's four-volume biography of his famous ancestor, published between 1933 and 1938, was a further considerable literary achievement.
In addition to compilations of short pieces such as the biographical "Great Contemporaries", and the autobiographical, "My Early Life", there were to be three more major works. The 1920s saw the appearance of "The World Crisis", his five-volume history of the First World War, and from 1948 to 1953 came the six volumes of "A History of the Second World War". Both of these were strongly influenced by his own points of view based on having been in high office during both of the conflicts. The latter especially has often been criticised by later (often iconoclastic and revisionist) historians as lacking objectivity, but one has to ask how else people can write about matters in which they have been so deeply and personally involved. He never claimed that this was the last word in factual history; he was well aware, for example, that he had left out matters which could have had serious diplomatic implications in those early years of the Cold War as the world struggled to adapt to a bipolar system with two confronting, and confrontational, superpowers.
Churchill's writing of history, like his politics, was conditioned by his belief system, his worldview, and this was never more apparent than in his final four-volume work: "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples." Although much of the detailed work (he was now in his 80s) was carried out by his "syndicate" of supporters there is no doubt as to who was in charge of the final product or who determined its philosophy and style. To many in the early 21st century, when the traditional British values are widely derided and Britain's former role in the world castigated as no better than arrogant imperialism, Churchill's view of the world must seem strange. Reading him now, however, might help to rebuild an appreciation of the degree to which the past is the foundation for the life we presently enjoy. Was he a perfect man? No! Of course not, but it is probably true that in a world where no-one is without some weaknesses Churchill was not only the "Greatest Briton" but was the great man of his times, standing head and shoulders above the rest.
At the time of the 1953 Nobel Prize presentation in Stockholm, Churchill was in Bermuda meeting the American President and French Prime Minister (taking the seventeen hour flight in spite of having, unknown to the wider world, recently suffered a stroke). His wife, Clementine, attended and delivered his acceptance speech in which he had written: "The roll on which my name has been inscribed represents much that is outstanding in the world's literature of the twentieth century. The judgment of the Swedish Academy is accepted as impartial, authoritative, and sincere throughout the civilized world. I am proud but also, I must admit, awestruck at your decision to include me. I do hope you are right. I feel we are both running a considerable risk and that I do not deserve it. But I shall have no misgivings if you have none."
S. Siwertz of the Swedish Academy had no such misgivings and in the presentation ceremony declared: "Churchill's political and literary achievements are of such magnitude that one is tempted to resort to portray him as a Caesar who also has the gift of Cicero's pen. Never before has one of history's leading figures been so close to us by virtue of such an outstanding combination." As President Eisenhower once wrote, "Neither England nor the world shall soon look upon his like again."
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David Murray has been an adviser on managerial and ethical issues to companies, governments and voluntary agencies for almost thirty years, and as a speaker has addressed appreciative audiences on every continent except Antarctica. A collector of books about Churchill for more than thirty years, he now advises the family book-selling business and is the creator of its new initiatives: www.Read-the-World.com and www.the-Churchill-file.co.uk |
