Short History Of... - Winston Churchill

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Winston Churchill is one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th Century. Voted in 2002 as ‘the greatest Briton’, he’s remembered for his unfailing leadership throughout the Second World War, as he steered Britain through its darkest hour to eventual victory. But what is the real story behind Churchill? How did the rise of Hitler thrust him into the spotlight? What sort of controversy surrounded the famed politician? And why was he dumped by the British electorate just after winning the war in Europe? This is a Short History Of Winston Churchill. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Andrew Roberts, historian and author of ‘Churchill: Walking With Destiny’.  For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's November 1899 on a stretch of railroad near the Blaukrantz River in Natal, South Africa. A steel-armoured train rattles along the line as it battles a steep gradient up a rugged, brush-covered hillside. On board are a seven-pound naval gun and 120 troops with orders to patrol the area. and 120 troops with orders to patrol the area. War is raging between the British and the Boers, white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans descended from 17th century Dutch settlers. This is dangerous territory to be in. The train also carries a 25-year-old British journalist.

Once a soldier himself, he rarely shies away from danger, and the chance to hitch a ride has been too good to miss. With newspaper deadlines to meet, he has a gut instinct that this trip will provide good copy. Puffing on a cigar, he wipes his hand across his brow. It's unbearably humid here. Then, without warning, the train screeches to a halt so rapidly that several of the trucks come off their tracks. Peering from a window, the journalist discovers the cause of the chaotic stop.

A large boulder blocks the route onward. A few senior officers call out instructions, but the sound of an explosion quickly stills their voices. There's another boom, and another. The percussive beat of shellfire is joined by the deathly rattle of machine guns. It's an ambush. Everywhere is a bewildering cacophony of weapons firing, glass shattering, and wounded men screaming. In the heat of the battle, the journalist's old soldier instincts kick in,

and he scrambles from his carriage, attending to casualties even as bullets ping all around. Then, after assembling a contingent of the strongest uninjured men, he sets about uncoupling the stricken wagons from the engine. That way at least some might make their escape. Keep cool, he repeatedly urges them. Keep cool, he repeatedly urges them. Before long, the track is cleared and the engine is on its way, with 50 men crammed on board, putting distance between themselves and their Vur attackers. But there isn't space for everyone.

The journalist decides to stay and rally those left behind. They dig in, taking whatever defensive positions they can on the exposed terrain. The reporter watches on as the enemy, some of them on horseback, advance over the surrounding hills. He secretes himself in a ditch, keeping absolutely still and praying that he somehow evades discovery. But after a moment, he senses a shadow moving over him. Looking up, he sees a Boer officer sat on his horse, peering down at him. The man raises his Mauser pistol and cocks it. Knowing the Boer cannot kill a man in the act of surrendering,

the journalist raises his hands to show he is unarmed. He gets to his feet, and soon he is being route-marched to another train which will take him to a prisoner of war camp in Pretoria. As he speeds along to an uncertain future, he is already planning his escape. Within weeks, the world will learn of this intrepid maverick's extraordinary acts of daring. But it's still only a run on the ladder of his fame. Because his name is Winston Churchill, and he will one day become one of the most feted political figures in British history. Despite unpromising beginnings as an aristocratic underachiever, Churchill enjoyed a spectacular

career. From seeing frontline action across the continents as a young soldier, he grew to be perhaps the most celebrated journalist of his age. And after that, his stellar political career saw him serve in the highest offices of the British government. Cited in a 2002 BBC poll as the greatest Briton, Churchill's professional life was marked by mighty peaks and deep troughs. Leading the nation with a steady hand at its direst moment, he was nonetheless no stranger to catastrophe and controversy too. But what caused his retreat from politics in the 1930s, before the rise of Hitler thrust him back into the spotlight? And after the Second World War became his finest hour, why was he then unceremoniously dumped by the British electorate? I'm John Hopkins. From Neuser, this is a short history of Winston Churchill.

It's 1882, and eight-year-old Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill has been summoned to the headmaster's office. He attends an expensive boarding school, St. George's, in the affluent town of Ascot, near London. One of about forty boys, he does well in most of his lessons, but he somehow always finds himself on the wrong side of the headmaster. Winston is not sure what his crime is today, but he prepares himself for yet another ferocious beating. He longs to be reunited with his beloved nanny back home, Elizabeth Everest. She is his greatest confidant, a rock in what has otherwise been a tumultuous childhood. Though he has begged his American-born mother, Jenny, to visit him, she rarely does, and there are still weeks left of term to endure.

To the world at large, the boy seems to have it all. Born in a palace, no less, he is a descendant of John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, one of England's greatest military figures. The family's resplendent Oxfordshire estate, Blenheim, is named after the 1704 battle that secured the Duke's fame. Politics is the lifeblood of the Churchill clan. Winston's grandfather, John Spencer Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. And his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, is a serving conservative politician, who will rise to become Chancellor of the Exchequer before Winston is in his teens.

But the family dynamic is a troubled one. teens. But the family dynamic is a troubled one. Andrew Roberts is a historian and author of Churchill Walking with Destiny. Nonetheless, there were problems, primarily the fact that his father didn't really appreciate that there was anything special about Winston. He was constantly putting his son down. He was not visiting him, and neither did his mother. And so in that sense, although he was ignored quite a lot as a child, he did worship his parents. He thought his father was the greatest man on earth and attempted to emulate him. And he loved his mother unreservedly even though rather sadly he said she shone for me like the evening star brilliant but at a distance lonely and beset by poor health winston also contends with both a lisp

and a stammer which mark him out for bullying at school. After two unhappy years at St. George's, he moves first to another preparatory school on England's south coast, and then, when he is 13, to Harrow. One of the most prestigious English public schools, it already boasts six British prime ministers among its alumni. In years to come, he will suggest that he is an academic slouch. But the truth is not so straightforward. He wasn't as good at Latin as some of the other children, but neither was he a complete dunce. He was the public school's fencing champion,

which was no mean feat. And overall, he showed a much more impressive scholastic record than he claimed later on. In 1893, aged 18, he completes his schooling. His frequently unhappy childhood behind him, it is now time for Winston Churchill to begin writing his own story. When many of his contemporaries went to Oxford or Cambridge, he instead wanted to become a soldier. He went off to Sandhurst and was commissioned into the cavalry, and this was not a rejection so much of Oxford and Cambridge

as an appreciation that what he wanted to do in life was to be a great man. He had decided from the age of 16 or so that he was going to, as he told a friend, save England and save the Empire and save London. So he thought the best way to go about that was to become a famous soldier. In January 1895, tragedy strikes. When Randolph Churchill dies, aged just 45, and only weeks after his son finishes at Sandhurst. Churchill now signs up with the 4th Queen's Own Hussars and begins a hybrid career as military man-cum-newspaper correspondent.

Within a matter of months, he negotiates permission to fight with Spanish forces engaged in suppressing a burgeoning national liberation movement in Cuba. His senior officers positively welcome him gaining real-world experience. Sure enough, he is soon under enemy fire for the first time but he also monetizes the experience sending dispatches from the front to the london-based daily graphic who have employed him as a war correspondent before he returns to england he visits new york it cements his lifelong love for the united states whom he always considers vital allies. He had lots of American friends. He was somebody who felt at home in America. He went to America 14 times.

And so he really did sort of understand the American continent in a way that, surprisingly enough, very few other British politicians did at the time. He heads home, but he doesn't stay for long. In 1898, at Omdurman on the west bank of the Nile in Sudan, he leads 25 lancers to meet the army of the Mahdist state, intent on expelling Anglo-Egyptian forces. It proves to be the last major cavalry charge in British history, and Churchill himself downs several of the enemy with his pistol before the Mardists are eventually routed. His experiences fuel his writing. He publishes his first book, The Story of the Mallikand Field Force, to positive reviews,

although a novel, Savrola, is less kindly received. There are newspaper contracts to fulfill, too. Fairly soon after starting his journalistic career, he was the best-paid war correspondent in the world, which is a tremendous thing. Partly, of course, this was because he had a famous name, but it was also because he had a great knack of being in the right place at the right time, and he would be able to write very stirring prose about it.

Just before the turn of the century, Churchill resigns his army commission to explore new opportunities. He makes a bid for a parliamentary seat, standing for the Conservatives, the party of his father. When he is narrowly defeated, he instead sets off for South Africa, where the Second Anglo-Boer War is raging. But though he's captured after an ambush at the Blaukrantz River, he's not a man to simply wait for rescue. wait for rescue. After a couple of weeks in captivity in a Pretoria jail, it's time to put into action the daring scheme he's been planning with two other British prisoners of war. Out of sight of the guards, he scales a wall and runs to a garden. There,

he waits for his co-conspirators for an hour, almost paralyzed with fear. conspirators for an hour, almost paralysed with fear. Eventually he accepts that they have abandoned the escape, so he sets off on his own. For a week and a half he travels cross-country, smuggling himself onto trains and hiding in mine shafts. At one point he spots a vulture tracking him, hopeful for its next meal. But somehow he makes it hundreds of miles to the safety of the British consulate in what is now Maputo, Mozambique. From there he heads to Durban, safely under British rule. After his escape, a letter is discovered in Churchill's cell, written two days prior

to the breakout and addressed to the Secretary of War for the South African Republic. In it, Churchill complains about his treatment in prison and announces that, I have decided to escape from your custody. The boy's own adventure story of his getaway makes him a household name. Capitalizing on this wave of popularity, he returns home and in October wins the seat of Oldham at the general election. But he soon finds himself on a collision course with his party. A believer in free trade, he is disconcerted when conservative colleagues impose trade tariffs to protect British interests. So in 1904 he takes the momentous decision to move to the Liberal Party.

Despite socially conservative views on many issues, like votes for women, he finds a natural home with the Liberals who are set on a path towards creating a welfare state. The unnatural gap between rich and poor, Churchill says, harbors the seeds of imperial ruin and national decay. 1908 proves a landmark year, both personally and professionally. In March, he is at the Society dinner party, when he strikes up a conversation with a young woman named Clementine Hosier. A socialite, well-known on the London scene, she confidently holds forth on all manner of subjects, and is unawed by the parliamentarian before her, despite being ten years his junior.

Churchill had previously spotted her at a ball four years ago, but failed to pluck up the courage to speak to her. Tonight, though, he will not let the opportunity pass again. But the matter is delicate. He is all but officially engaged to another woman, Violet Asquith, and she happens to be the daughter of Herbert Asquith, who is destined to become Prime Minister in a matter of weeks. But love has its way. Churchill draws back from Violet and in August proposes to Clementine. They are married a month later at St. Margaret's Church in Westminster. After he married Clementine Hosier, he said that he was living happily ever

after. It was the perfect marriage for him. She put him first. She was a good advisor to him. She was somebody who was constantly on his side and supportive of him and therefore was absolutely the sort of best, the ideal political wife for him. On occasion, she would let him know that she disagreed with him. Nonetheless, when it came to fighting his corner and being a tigress in his interests, really he couldn't have married anybody better. A baby, Diana, arrived in July 1909, the first of five children. In the meantime, despite his own daughter's hurt feelings, Asquith brings Churchill into his government. He appoints him President of the Board of Trade, where he is instrumental

in organizing labor exchanges and championing unemployment insurance. In February 1910, he is promoted to Home Secretary, but both his military and journalistic instincts prove hard to suppress, and he can't resist getting right into the centre of the action. It is January the 3rd, 1911, on Sydney Street, off the Commercial Road in London's East End. The sort of place where people like to keep their heads down, and not seek out trouble,

for fear that trouble will find them. Today though, trouble is everywhere. A clock chimes 1pm, but it can hardly be heard above the din of fire engines arriving on the scene. Cyril Morris, Assistant Divisional Officer of the London Fire Brigade, follows just behind in a car. Under a sky turned orange from licking flames and with smoke filling his nostrils, he can hardly believe what he is seeing.

Behind a cordon at one end of the street is a densely packed crowd, maybe 200 feet deep. It's as if the whole of the East End is here. He has to fight his way through, but once he's passed the throng, he sees a small army of armed men scattered across the street, finding cover wherever they can. In total, there are about 200 troops and police officers hiding in doorways, on roofs, and secreted behind the windows of buildings ranged across from one particular property, 100 Sydney Street. Its residents were cleared out by the police earlier, and now there are just three fugitives inside, the remnants of a gang believed to be Latvian anarchists.

Back in December, they robbed a jeweller's in London's Houndsditch neighbourhood, killing three policemen and wounding two others. Under the glare of the press, they have at last been tracked down. Now the building is ablaze, flames crackling high and white ash wafting out. Every so often, there is a monstrous crash as another beam or piece of masonry plummets to the ground. Great, fiery splinters are launched into the sky like shooting stars. Worse still, as the fire rages, a terrifying shootout is underway. The troops fire off round after round, receiving sporadic sprays of automatic pistol fire in return from within the inferno.

Cyril is keen to get his orders from one of the army or police chiefs on the ground, but instead he is gestured towards a shop. There, a distinctive figure is peering round the corner at the action. He's not in uniform, but wears a fur-collared overcoat and a top hat. Cyril recognizes him from the newspapers. It's Winston Churchill, surrounded by rifle-wielding officers. But what on earth is he doing here? Someone explains that though Churchill was only asked to sign off on sending troops to deal with the crisis, it seems his desire to be at the center of events got the better of him. He has been on the scene for an hour now.

Cyril approaches and introduces himself with a handshake. He explains that his men need to get within reach of the house to start fighting the flames. But Churchill is having none of it. He commands that Cyril and his officers stand by. Under no circumstances are they to approach the fire. Cyril feels he has no choice but to obey. Over the next two hours, the gunfight subsides as the fire rages out of control. At last, a little before three, Churchill departs the scene. Cyril's men begin to tame the Inferno and eventually discover two bodies inside. The third member of the gang

has seemingly escaped. In the days to come, Churchill is widely criticized in the newspapers and in Parliament for taking a command role at the siege. newspapers and in parliament for taking a command role at the siege. He faces many other challenges as Home Secretary. There are growing calls for votes for women, but he opposes such a move, believing it a threat to the existing social structure. It's a position that leads to a militant suffragist hitting him with a dog whip at a railway station in Bristol in 1909. There are also several bouts of civil discord related to industrial disputes. It is around this time that Churchill feels himself succumbing to dark moods.

The question of the extent, if at all, of his depression has occupied historians ever since. of the extent, if at all, of his depression has occupied historians ever since. It's often said that Winston Churchill suffered from a kind of manic depression, a black dog depression. It's true that he used the phrase once in July 1911 to describe himself. At that time, though, the phrase black dog was used by governesses as a way of explaining their ill-tempered children. It didn't have the same connotations of quite severe mental distress that we associate with it today. Churchill's stint as Home Secretary is relatively short-lived, and after 18 months, Asquith makes him First Lord of the Admiralty.

There, he prepares the Navy for possible war with Germany, which duly arrives in August 1914. As hostilities progress, he calls for an attack on the Dardanelles, a strategically important strait in Turkey controlled by the Ottomans who have come out in support of Germany. But it turns into a military disaster, with some 50,000 Allied lives lost for no discernible gain. Churchill understood how in politics some people have to take the fall for decisions, and he recognized that the Dardanelles had gone wrong, and it led to the killing or wounding of some 147,000 Allied troops. And so the whole thing really was a tremendous disaster.

And it got blamed, slightly unfairly, all on Churchill. And so what he did was to resign. And even though he didn't need to, because he was a married man and was 40 years old, he joined up and went to the trenches and essentially attempted to redeem himself through personal risk and danger. He doesn't have to wait long for a route back to frontline politics. In December 1916, a change of prime minister sees Churchill invited back into the cabinet. First, he's Minister of Munitions, then Secretary of State for War, and from 1921, Secretary of State for the Colonies.

His focus in this last post is the thorny issue of Irish Home Rule. Despite bitter opposition from the Conservatives, he helps to secure the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which splits a self-governing Irish Free State from British-ruled Northern Ireland. But the following year he loses his parliamentary seat as the Liberals are dumped out of government. 1923 sees another general election, but he fails to win a seat. Even a switch to becoming an independent candidate in a 1924 by-election is unsuccessful. His wily political instinct tells him it's time for a change. in a 1924 by-election is unsuccessful. His wily political instinct tells him it's time for a change. He begins a reconciliation with the Conservatives

and in 1924 makes a sensational return to the fold. So he had this reputation for being a flip-flopper, somebody who couldn't be trusted. Actually, in fact, it was the Conservative Party who had returned to free trade, which was his original stance. So, in a sense, you could say that it was the party that had moved rather than Winston Churchill. To cap his return, in November that year, the new Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin appoints him Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is, however, a poisoned chalice. Firstly, he faces the conundrum of what to do about the gold standard.

This complex monetary system has underpinned global economies for over half a century by fixing most of the world's leading currencies to a specified amount of gold. In theory, it provides stable values across nations and prevents individual countries from printing lots of new money or changing its value in its own interests. The UK left the standard in 1914 to better cope with the extraordinary economic demands of the First World War. But when Churchill has Britain rejoin, trade slumps, deflation hits, and there is mass unemployment. In May 1926, the Trades Union Congress calls a general strike. Over one and a half million workers down tools, bringing the economy

to a virtual standstill for over a week. Troops are called in to run basic services, and social cohesion feels at breaking point. Churchill, fearful of such coordinated civil disruption, adopts a tough stance. At one point, he calls for troops to be armed, but Baldwin overrules him. After nine agonizing days, the strike is called off. Millions of workers, however, do not forget Churchill's role in it, and his relationship with the trade unions is fractured. Despite the uproar, he keeps his job. Churchill remains in office until Labour sweep to power in 1929, triggering his long exile in the political wilderness.

Already in his 60s, Churchill finds himself once more disagreeing with many of his colleagues. The question of India, long the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, is particularly problematic. Winston Churchill was a convinced imperialist. He believed that the British Empire had a lot of positive aspects to it, that it was overall a beneficial institution, that the things that it had given India were something that was better than India had had before. His beliefs are wrapped up with ideas that have been prevalent since his childhood, but which are increasingly losing their hold. Gandhi, for example, attracts particular disdain when leading a campaign of resistance in India.

Churchill reportedly suggests he ought to be laid, bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with a new viceroy seated on its back. Though such attitudes chime with large swathes of the public, they are at odds with the changing dynamics between imperial powers and their colonies, not to mention modern standards of morality and equality. colonies, not to mention modern standards of morality and equality. As somebody who was 10 years old at the time that Charles Darwin died, he did believe in a hierarchy of races, with the whites at the top and the British at the top of the whites, and so very much thought that the British had a great deal to give to the rest of the

empire at precisely the time that some Indians, classic example of course being Mahatma Gandhi, were no longer thinking that way at all. When Baldwin lines up with the Labour Party in support of increased home rule for India, Churchill resigns from the shadow cabinet. He remains active on the back benches, but is increasingly seen as a dinosaur, out of step with the times. But at least he has time to indulge his many passions. Whining and dining at the classiest establishments, he jokes that he is easily satisfied with the best of everything. He continues to write prodigiously, loves horse racing, and is a talented painter, even catching the eye of Picasso.

Word gets out that he is skilled at bricklaying, too. Everybody knows that Churchill is a character, but politically he's becoming irrelevant. His reputation reaches its nadir in 1936, during the abdication crisis. His reputation reaches its nadir in 1936, during the abdication crisis. The king, Edward VIII, wishes to marry a divorced American, Wallace Simpson. It's widely seen to be at odds with the monarch's role as head of the Church of England, but Churchill nonetheless supports him. Churchill essentially made a bit of a fool of himself during the abdication crisis. He put his emotional friendship with King Edward VIII before his rational view of the matter, and he ranged himself against the whole of the establishment and lost. And he was, for a short period of time, ridiculed,

and probably slightly rightly so. But it is another issue, even more serious, that marks him out as swimming against the tide, something to which, by his own admission, he is naturally inclined. For most of the 1930s, the British political class, still wearied by the First World War and contending with a ravaged economy, are hell-bent on avoiding war. Churchill, however, spends most of the decade as one of a desperately small number of voices warning of the danger posed by Nazi Germany. As early as 1930, three years before Hitler took power, Churchill was issuing warnings about the Nazi leader. Specifically, he feared a massacre of the Jewish population. He wrote of his concerns in 1933, when others, not least Edward VIII, were fostering admiration for the new German Chancellor.

Churchill was a philo-semite. He liked Jews. He'd grown up with Jews. He'd gone on holiday with them. His father had been very friendly towards the jews and this wasn't necessarily the case with a lot of people of his age and class and background in that period and so he had a sort of early warning system when it came to hitler and the nazis that was not shared by an awful lot of other people in the house of commons Around the time of the abdication debacle, he writes that Europe is at a tipping point. He implores the government to begin a program of rearmament, but it drags its feet in the face of a struggling economy. The guiding policy is appeasement,

giving concessions to Hitler in the hope that he will not flex his military muscle. in the hope that he will not flex his military muscle. On the 30th of September, 1938, the Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns from talks in Munich. At a West London airport, he tells journalists that Hitler has promised no further invasions in exchange for Britain's approval of his annexation of a swathe of Czechoslovakian territory. Chamberlain triumphantly waved the signed agreement in the air. I have returned from Germany, he says, with peace for our time. There is widespread hope that he is correct, but Churchill has no doubt he is wrong.

It wasn't really until it became clear to everybody that Adolf Hitler was not somebody who could be appeased, and that wasn't until after the Munich Agreement of September 1938, that people came round to Churchill's way of thinking about Hitler and recognised that he'd been right all along. Within a year, Hitler has invaded Poland, and Chamberlain declares war on Germany. By now, Churchill is less the dinosaur and more the sage. Bowing to pressure, Chamberlain reinstates Churchill to his old job of First Lord of the Admiralty. But there will soon be a further promotion. It is Friday the 10th of May, 1940, a little before six in the evening. Churchill is in his office at the Admiralty, studying the latest updates from the continent.

There is bustle all around him, secretaries tap at their typewriters, phones ring, and there is a constant flow of visitors to his desk. He asks for a drink, and immediately someone appears to pour him a brandy, heavy on the soda. He takes a long, deep, satisfying gulp. It has been a tiring day. The war cabinet has already met three times. The first few months of the war were so quiet that journalists took to calling it the Phoney War. But things have recently turned intensely busy.

A few weeks ago, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. Today came the news they've also moved in on France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. These last few days, Parliament has been debating the UK's ill-conceived attempts to land forces in Norway. It has turned into a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister and his government. Though he just about won, Chamberlain is badly damaged. Although he now intends to create a coalition government to consolidate his authority, the Labour Party leadership is refusing to serve under him. the Labour Party leadership is refusing to serve under him.

Now a secretary approaches meekly and hands a message to his boss. Churchill starts to read it, placing his ubiquitous cigar between his lips as he does so. But after recognising the sender's address, he slowly puts the cigar into the ashtray and leans forward. It is from the king he requests Churchill's presence at Buckingham Palace. Churchill explodes into action. He straightens his bow tie, checks the time on his pocket watch and grabs his Homburg hat and trusty walking cane.

By the time he has made it down the steps at the front of the Admiralty building, his ministerial car is already there, engine running. The driver ushers him into the back, shuts the door, and puts his foot down. It is only a couple of minutes' drive along the Mall to the Palace. They pass the usual array of office workers making their way home at the end of the day, the newspaper vendors barking out the evening headlines. But there is no great crowd at the palace gates to greet Churchill, nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinaries in the offing. Moments later, he finds himself on the threshold of the king's audience room.

The door is swept open by a palace official, and there stands the king. The door is swept open by a palace official, and there stands the king. The two men exchange pleasantries, and the king ushers Churchill to sit down. He looks at him searchingly, then asks, I suppose you don't know why I have sent for you. Churchill has a fair idea, but feigns ignorance. Sir, I simply couldn't imagine why. The king laughs before explaining that he wants Churchill to form a government.

Nodding, Churchill assures him that it would be an honor. When he leaves the building a few moments later, he does so as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The new Prime Minister later tells how this evening he feels as if he is walking with destiny, and that all his life up until now has been mere preparation for this moment. He immediately sets about constructing the coalition government regarded by political grandees as key to guiding the country during the war. Three days later, he makes his maiden speech as premier in the commons. It is a stirring affair. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat, he tells the house, before going on to explain that their single aim should be victory. Victory at all costs, he says. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory

however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. We can recognize that from the moment, pretty much, that Churchill took over, from the blood, toil, tears, and sweat speech of the 13th of May 1940, the British public took to Winston Churchill in a way that some Tory MPs still hadn't. They loved him. He was constantly at 80 or sometimes 90% approval ratings. These are numbers that have never been seen in Britain before or since for any prime minister. That Churchill can stiffen the nation's resolve is vital, since the war continues to go badly. Within weeks of his taking office,

the Dunkirk evacuations see several hundred thousand Allied troops extracted from northern France after weeks of fruitless fighting against the Germans. While some frame the evacuation itself as a miracle of sorts, militarily it has been a disaster. Britain is then forced to fend off German aerial assaults, ultimately triumphing in the so-called Battle of Britain. But months of vicious and deadly nighttime aerial attacks follow in what becomes known as the Blitz. deadly nighttime aerial attacks follow in what becomes known as the Blitz.

Churchill understands that his first challenge is to simply keep Britain in the fight, in the hope that the tide might eventually change. The pubs all over Britain at nine o'clock would turn up the radio and people would all listen to his speeches. And of course, they are the most wonderful sort of Shakespearean language. He was somebody who projected a image of defiance for the Nazis, which is something that an awful lot of people were desperate to see. And he held out the prospect of ultimate victory. He wasn't really able to explain, frankly, very logically or rationally, how on earth this victory was going to take place. Because at the time, America wasn't in the war. Russia was allied to the Germans.

And there didn't seem to be any prospect of this. But nonetheless, by keeping British morale high in 1940 and 1941, he made sure that we stayed in the game. And ultimately, of course, we were on the winning side. he made sure that we stayed in the game and ultimately, of course, we were on the winning side. In 1941, Germany's attack on Russia draws the Soviet Union into the war, while Japan's raid on Pearl Harbor forces the hand of the White House. But even with a second front to the east and two new powerful allies, there is little sign of an upturn.

Things look so bleak that Churchill has to fight off two votes of no confidence. Then, in the Egyptian desert, there is a glimmer of hope. Egypt is of immense strategic importance, since the British control access to the Suez Canal and the vast oil reserves of the Middle East. It's crucial it's defended. And in November 1942, British troops decisively overpower the invading Axis army in the Second Battle of El Alamein. Churchill greets the news with cautious optimism. It's not the end, he says, nor even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. It undoubtedly changes the direction of the war. Before El Alamein there had been no serious Allied

victory. After it, there is never another defeat. The Allies gradually take control in North Africa and Italy, while Russia wrestles control of the Eastern Front. In 1943, the three principal Allied leaders, Churchill, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, meet to discuss Europe's post-war future. It's a sure sign of growing confidence that victory is in sight. What might have been a really difficult relationship,

what was called the Big Three, between him and Stalin and Roosevelt, did work extremely well in the Second World War, and that was largely down to him. He was the glue, really, essentially, that kept the Big Three together. When Allied troops pour into France from the Normandy coast in May 1944,

it really is the beginning of the end. With the Russians also advancing from the east, Germany's stranglehold over Europe is finally released. It is Monday, the 7th of May 1945, a week since Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. A week since Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. When Churchill awakes in Downing Street, he is greeted with a telegram. So many in the past have contained bad news, but not today. Germany, he reads, has unconditionally surrendered. The Prime Minister goes over it again, just to make sure, then initials and hands it back. The next day is declared a public holiday, and at 3pm Churchill takes to the airwaves

to give the nation the news it has longed for. The German war is over, he tells them. Incredibly, he can hear the cheers from the crowds who have gathered half a mile away in Trafalgar Square. But he's already looking to the future, and it's one that bears little resemblance to the world order of the past. Though he forged a successful wartime relationship with Stalin, he maintains his distrust of the Soviet Union.

He understands, however, that peace depends on collective security and that Europe must somehow come together in the aftermath of unprecedented conflict, regardless of ideology. Before he can get to work on all this, though, he has an election at home to fight. It seems almost inevitable that his extraordinary wartime work will be rewarded by another term as Premier, but he's been in the game long enough to know that there's no such thing as a sure thing. Even so, Labour's landslide win wounds him deeply. Churchill was hugely surprised when he lost the 1945 general election. But, of course, he was only standing in one constituency.

And an awful lot of the other constituencies had Conservative MPs who had been appeasers, who had been elected in 1935, and who were unpopular, whilst the Labour Party was offering a new Jerusalem, a welfare state. who had been elected in 1935 and who were unpopular, whilst the Labour Party was offering a new Jerusalem, a welfare state, and the nationalisation of the Bank of England and the health service and so on. So it's perfectly understandable from the historical point of view why the Tories lost. But Churchill himself, because he had been so well received, it came as a shock. He takes himself off to Lake Como in Italy for a painting holiday, to get over the disappointment. When Clementine suggests that the defeat might be a blessing in disguise, a chance to wind

down after years of Herculean effort, he tells her that if it is, it's remarkably well disguised. that if it is, it's remarkably well disguised. He is soon back in Parliament, as leader of the opposition, warning of the great challenges ahead. The divide between the West and Communist East troubles him especially. At an address to students in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, he prophetically warns of the iron curtain that is falling across Europe. From wartime hero, he evolves into beloved elder statesman.

Then in 1951, Labour calls an ill-advised snap election. It backfires for them when Churchill grabs the initiative and he is returned to Downing Street for a last hurrah. Although this term proves less turbulent than the last, there are still moments of high drama. None more so than the anti-colonial Mau Mau uprising in Kenya that sees nationalists rebelling against the British. that sees nationalists rebelling against the British. And then in 1952, the king dies, and Churchill finds himself counsellor to the new young monarch, Elizabeth II. There is a magnificent personal triumph too, when in 1953 he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature,

largely in recognition of his mighty, multi-volume account of the Second World War. The Honor recognizes his literary mastery as well as what it calls brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values. But he is well into his 70s by now and his energies are fading fast. are fading fast. He was unfortunate that in the July of 1953, he suffered a stroke and was forced to go to Chartwell, his manor house in Kent, in order to get over it. By the time of the Tory party conference in Margate in the October of that year, he was able to make a speech that was vigorous enough to persuade the cabinet to let him stay on. And it was probably a mistake. That was the time when he

should have handed over to his lieutenant, Anthony Yeadon. So there were some missed opportunities. Maybe his 80th birthday was another time that Churchill could have retired. But he wanted to carry on. He was a fighter. He was not a quitter. He cannot outrun time, though. His health ailing, he retires as Prime Minister in April 1955, although he stays on as an MP. It is only in 1964 that he finally leaves Parliament, a year after he loses his oldest child, Diana, to suicide. On the 12th of January 1965, he suffers the last of eight strokes. At his London home, twelve days later, as he lapses in and out of consciousness, he tells his son-in-law,

Christopher Soames, I'm so bored with it all. A little while later he is dead, at the age of ninety. One morning, a couple of weeks later, a watery sun is trying to force its way through the slate grey sky. Churchill has been lying in state for three days at Westminster Hall, and over 300,000 mourners have come to pay their respects. Now a million or more people line London's streets, pulling their coats tightly around themselves against the cold wind as his coffin, draped in a Union flag, makes the journey to St. Paul's Cathedral. Big Ben chimes to mark the beginning of proceedings, and then falls silent for the rest of the day. In Hyde Park, a 90-gun salute is fired in Churchill's honor. At the

cathedral, he receives the rare honor of a state funeral, with hundreds of millions watching around the world. Afterwards, the coffin travels by boat along the River Thames to Waterloo Station, where it is loaded onto a special train. Its final journey ends at the Churchill family plot at St. Martin's Church in Blaydon, close to Blenheim Palace, his childhood home. Churchill's funeral took place in the January of 1965, and it was an extraordinary affair. And his reputation was immensely high at that point. It stayed high, really, until fairly

recently. Nonetheless, I think overall, most people, not just Britons, but all around the world, recognized that the services he gave for the defense of freedom when it was under most vicious attack in all of history, that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, was so spectacular and so successful. so spectacular and so successful. Winston Churchill was a soldier, a wily politician, a great war leader, a prodigious writer with no fewer than 37 books and millions upon millions of words to his name, but he is by no means an unproblematic character. Some of his attitudes and beliefs do not sit easily alongside modern-day values, and his many decisions, often taken in extreme circumstances, draw intense scrutiny even now.

From the treatment of workers during the Great Strike, to the blanket bombing of Dresden, to his perceived inaction during the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, his record is far from unblemished. Yet still, he remains a figure of extraordinary historical importance. A man at the forefront of public life for the best part of seven decades and who, at a moment of unique national and international crisis, fulfilled a role of which no one else seemed capable. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the Colosseum. I think the Colosseum is really important today

to different groups of people for different reasons. For historians like me, it's a way of imagining the living people of the city of Rome. Imagine those crowds sitting there. Imagine them ordered by the wealthy, the less wealthy, the poor. Imagine where the emperor stood. In a way, you can't for a lot of ages. You can actually stand in one spot and say, that's where it happened. So it's a moment where the veil between the past and the present seems just a little bit thinner than elsewhere. That's next time.