Winston Churchill :: essays research papers

Winston Churchill SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, (1874-1965),British leader. English on his fathers side, Americanon his mothers, Sir Winston Leonard SpencerChurchill embodied and expressed the double vitalityand the national qualities of two peoples. His designationstestify to the richness of his historic inheritanceWinston, after the chevalier family with whom theChurchills married before the English Civil WarLeonard, after his odd grandfather, LeonardJerome of New York Spencer, the married name ofa daughter of the 1st duke of Marlborough, fromwhom the family descended Churchill, the familyname of the 1st duke, which his descendents resumedafter the Battle of Waterloo. All these strands cometogether in a career that had no parallel in British fib for richness, range, length, and achievement. Churchill as wellk a leading part in laying the foundationsof the welfare pronounce in Britain, in preparing the RoyalNavy for World War I, and in settling the politicalboundaries in the Middle E ast after the war. InWORLD WAR II emerged as the leader of the unitedBritish nation and Commonwealth to resist theGerman domination of Europe, as an galvanizer of theresistance among surrender peoples, and as a primearchitect of victory. In this, and in the struggle againstcommunism afterward, he made himself anindispensable concern between the British and Americanpeoples, for he foresaw that the best defense for thefree world was the coming together of theEnglish-speaking peoples. Profoundly historicallyminded, he also had prophetic foresightBritish-American unity was the message of his last gigantic book, A History of the English-SpeakingPeoples. His dominant qualities were courage and imagination.Less open-and-shut to the public, but no less important, washis powerful, original, and fertile intellect. He hadintense loyalty, pronounced magnanimity and generosity,and an affectionate nature with a puckish humor.Oratory, in which he ultimately became a master, helearned the hard w ay, but he was a natural wit. Theartistic side of his temperament was displayed in his belles-lettres and oratorical style, as well as in his paintings.He was a combination of soldier, writer, artist, andstatesman. He was not so good as a mere partypolitician. Like Julius Caesar, he stands out not stillas a great man of action, but as a writer of it too. Hehad genius as a man he was charming, gay, ebullient,endearing. As for personal defects, such a man wasbound to be a great egoist if that is a defect. Sostrong a personality was apt to be overbearing. Hewas something of a gambler, always too willing totake risks. In his earlier career, people thought him of sore judgment partly from the very excess of