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Winston Churchill. --Politician, Writer and Painter. Don ’ t be content with things as they are. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. --from my early life by WSC. Politician. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst.
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Winston Churchill --Politician, Writer and Painter
Don’t be content with things as they are. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. --from my early life by WSC
Politician • Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. • Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900. • First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911 to 1915 and Second World War. • Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, in May, 1940, remained in office until 1945. Took over the premiership again in the Conservative victory of 1951 and resigned in 1955. • Honors:The dignity of Knighthood and the insignia of the Order of the Garter conferred by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. And the honorary citizenship of the United States conferred by President Kennedy in 1963.
Writer • Churchill's literary career began with campaign reports: The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899), an account of the campaign in the Sudan and the Battle of Omdurman. • In 1900, his only novel, Savrola, was published. • six years later, the biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the life of his great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, was published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938. • Churchill's history of the First World War appeared in four volumes under the title of The World Crisis (1923-29); his memoirs of the Second World War ran to six volumes (1948-1953/54).
After his retirement from office, Churchill wrote a History of the English-speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-58). • The Unrelenting Struggle (1942), The Dawn of Liberation (1945), and Victory (1946)are his magnificent speeches. • In recognition of this historical studies he received the Nobel Price for Literature in 1953.
A Gifted Amateur Painter • Churchill, a gifted amateur painter, wrote Painting as a Pastime (1948). More than half of Churchill's paintings were produced during the 1930s,over a period of some 45 years and in more than 500 paintings. • Winston Churchill was 41 when he first picked up a brush to paint. The year was 1915. His political career was in shambles. During the summer, he and his wife Clementine rented a small farm in Surrey. One of their frequent visitors was his brother Jack and his wife Goonie. Goonie loved sketching in watercolours. Encouraged by his sister-in-law, he borrowed her brush and tried painting a few strokes. So began the rest of his life as a painter.
He won his first prize in 1925, for a painting entitled, Winter Sunshine, Chartwell. • Between the two world wars, he began to enjoy some acclaim as an amateur painter. • High profile shows in England and the US followed, with one of his paintings bringing at auction a price of $39,200. Twelve years after his death in 1965, one of his paintings sold for 148,000 pounds.
In 1965, at the age of 90 he died of a stroke. His death marked the end of an era in British History and he was given a state funeral and was buried in St. Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, Oxfordshire. During all of his life he had served no less than six British monarchs: Queen Victoria, EdwardVII, GeorgeIV, EdwardVIII, GeorgeVI and ElisabethII.
