A Difference Between Natures

Although very different in personality, the self-contained and often inflexible Neville Chamberlain and the emotional and often impulsive Winston Churchill had four things in common during their formative years.

First, both had fathers who were amongst the most dynamic and controversial figures in late-Victorian politics. Lord Randolph Churchill rose and fell meteorically in the Conservative Party of the 1880s, whilst the radical Liberal Joseph Chamberlain broke with his party over Home Rule for Ireland in 1886, joined a coalition government with the Conservatives in 1895, and then shattered that party’s unity by resigning from the cabinet in 1903 to advocate “tariff reform”—the campaign for protectionism that led Winston Churchill to cross the floor of the House of Commons and join the Liberal Party in 1904.

Second, neither was expected by his father to have a political career, but instead Churchill was to enter the army and Chamberlain to go into business; in both cases, they did not enter the House of Commons until several years after their fathers’ death.

Third, neither attended one of the old universities—Churchill went to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and Chamberlain attended Mason College in his home city of Birmingham, studying metallurgy and engineering as a preparation for managing in the region’s manufacturing industries.

Finally, both spent a period in early adulthood in a remote part of the British empire: Churchill for two years as a junior officer on India’s north-west frontier, and Chamberlain in much greater isolation for six years in an unsuccessful attempt to grow