Winston Churchill, Statesman Part I

Winston is probably the most famous Prime Minister of the 20^th century.  I don’t usually blog about politicians but he was a world famous figure…and while he was a Tory most of his life, he was always an independent thinker.

Winston was born in November 1874 to a society couple, Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough and his American wife, socialite Jennie Jerome. 

 Jennie was one of the “Dollar Princesses” who came from a wealthy American family.  Her father Leonard Jerome was a financier.. But like many of these families, her mother took her and her sisters to Europe and wanted to marry the girls off to upper class English and Europeans. 

More often than not, these marriages were less than happy.  The Europeans were usually on the lookout for a wealthy wife, and did not expect love or domestic happiness.  The brides often felt that after marriage, they were treated badly and that European men saw their wives and sisters as second class citizens… But all the same, the young American wives seemed to accept the idea that there was a cachet to marrying an English or continental nobleman. 

Randolph and Jennie had made a love match, though It did not end up very happily… and so Winston grew up in a home that was full of storms. 

The young couple had produced their first child, Winston, only about 7 months after the wedding.. It is possible that he was premature, or that they had been intimate before the marriage...which may have been one reasons why they were allowed to marry....

Lord Randolph was a younger son but he was a member of the governing elite, and was involved with politics.  He was a rather unstable individual, and eventually died of a sexually transmitted disease.  He and Jennie seemed to be in love and were close for some  time, but his eccentric behaviour and their money problems put a strain on the marriage.  Jennie had another son, Jack, in 1880, but by then she and Randolph were not getting on well together.  Jennie took other lovers, and she and her husband led separate lives and it was rumoured that her second son was not fathered by Randolph.

 Her life was largely devoted to socialising, and her children while they loved her, were not close to her in childhood. 
 Winston turned for maternal affection to his Nanny, Mrs Everest, whom he called “Womany”.   Randolph was busy with politics and socialising and he was also distant from his son.

Winston was sent to boarding school, like most of his class, but he did not at first do well there.  He was a rather difficult child, and although he was intelligent, his academic performance was poor.  He managed to pass the exam for Harrow, but while he was good at some subjects, particularly English, he did not enjoy school and did not do as well as he should.  His father insisted that he should be prepared for a career in the army, believing that he wasn't fit for anything else.. So Winston was expected to go along that path and to study at Sandhurst.  He was interested in military life and keen to see action – but he had difficulty passing the entry exam for Sandhurst. 

 Eventually he graduated from army training and got into the Hussars.  His nanny died and he was very grieved, going to see her on her deathbed….

Soon after he left Sandhurst, in 1896, his regiment was sent to India, and Churchill had mixed feelings about it.  He found many of his fellow officers boorish and uneducated and tiresome and he himself believed that he had lost out on education, so he embarked on a programme of self training and learning.  There was little soldiering going on, there and he had plenty of time.  

He read the classics and studied and began to develop a taste for politics. Although his family were Conservatives, he was tending towards the Liberal side..