The Churchill Companion: A Concise Guide to the Life & Times of Winston S. Churchill

By The Churchill Centre and Richard M. Langworth

A fact-packed reference for anyone interested in the great twentieth-century statesman—with contributions from more than two dozen Churchill experts.
 
This revised and expanded edition of The Churchill Companion offers twenty-eight categories of ready-reference information on the life and times of Sir Winston S. Churchill for students, scholars, and researchers, together with links for further reference. It includes:
 

• A hundred-year timeline of Churchill’s life
• Lists of his books and books about him
• Information on elections
• The family tree
• Churchill’s military positions, offices, and honors
• A glossary of Parliamentary and political terms

 
Lists of British governments, prime ministers and sovereigns, and other British political facts are also highlighted in this handy, fact-filled reference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9780795347238

Book preview

Foreword

The Churchill Companion

The late David Hatter, a longtime member of The Churchill Centre United Kingdom, was in his later years a steward and tour guide at Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill’s home from 1922 to the end of his life. To answer the countless questions frequently asked by visitors to Chartwell, he compiled and self-published a booklet of ready-reference information, Churchill: His Politics and Writing (2002), reprinted as Churchill Facts (2003–04). Before his death Mr. Hatter vested all future rights to his material with The Churchill Centre, hoping it would be republished—which it finally has, in a new and greatly expanded format. We only regret that he did not live long enough to see the final result of his vision.

The chapters begin with Mr. Hatter’s outline of Churchill’s life, combined with the individually dated timelines from my book, Churchill By Himself (2008), republished as Churchill in His Own Words (2012). But that’s just the beginning.

As the contents opposite indicate, we have added or expanded on David Hatter’s content with material from the pages of our quarterly journal Finest Hour, chiefly the Ampersand column, which we usually devote to ready-reference facts and tabulations that make it easier to know what Churchill was doing, when and why—or to understand the background, including British parliamentary terms that may not be familiar outside Britain. Mr. Hatter himself drafted chapters on Churchill’s staff and secretaries and the Chartwell visitor’s book.

The purpose of this work, which also has a print counterpart, is to convey ready-reference information one normally has to search for on the web or in publications for the use of students, scholars and Churchillians of all types and ages. Its purpose is information, not expansive introductions, so we begin on the next page. Acknowledgments and author credits are at the end.

—Richard M. Langworth

Moultonborough, New Hampshire

29 August 2012

1.  Timeline

Winston Churchill, His Life & Times

David J. Hatter, Richard M. Langworth & Ronald I. Cohen

David Hatter’s Churchill Facts often summarized a year’s events rather than by individual dates: these summaries have been preserved in italics, and supplemented by the timeline in Richard Langworth’s Churchill by Himself, 2008 (Churchill in His Own Words, 2012). Ronald Cohen added key additions and corrections for this second edition. Among other uses, this chapter offers background to the events during which Churchill’s speeches were delivered and books and articles written.

1873

15 August: Jennie Jerome, daughter of Leonard and Clara Jerome of New York City, meets Lord Randolph Churchill at the Cowes Regatta, Isle of Wight.

1874

15 April: Marriage of Jennie and Randolph, British Embassy, Paris.

30 November: Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill born prematurely at Blenheim Palace. His nurse is Elizabeth Everest, who he will call Woomany. His grandfather, the Seventh Duke of Marlborough, becomes Lord Lieutenant of Ireland under Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

1876–79

Lord Randolph and family live in the Little Lodge, Dublin. Randolph serves as private secretary to his father. Young Winston’s earliest memories are of Ireland.

1880

4 February: Winston’s brother, John Strange Spencer Churchill, is born in Ireland.

10 April: Lord and Lady Randolph set up house at 29 St. James’s Place, London.

1882

3 November: Enters St. George’s School, Ascot.

1884

Summer: Leaves St. George’s for the Misses Thomson’s school, 29 & 30 Brunswick Road, Hove, Sussex.

1885

1 April: Clementine Hozier is born.

24 June: Lord Randolph made Secretary of State for India.

25 November: Election returns Liberals to power.

1886

Lord Randolph, in a meteoric rise and fall, goes from Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons to a man without office within the space of a year. As Chancellor he demands a leaner budget but the Prime Minister disagrees. Resigning but expecting to be called back to office, Randolph finds his departure accepted as permanent, his political career shattered.

17 March: Winston survives serious pneumonia.

8 May: Randolph writes The Times opposing Irish Home Rule: Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.

1 July: Election returns a huge Conservative majority.

3 August: Lord Randolph appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.

20 December: Lord Randolph resigns his posts.

1888–92

Winston Churchill enters Harrow School on 17 April 1888. He is good at fencing (becoming English Public Schools champion), swimming, English, history and rifle shooting. Contrary to popular belief, he passed Latin and maths, although that knowledge mainly passed away like the phantasmagoria of a fevered dream (My Early Life).

1893

10 January: Young Winston falls from bridge at Bournemouth and is briefly near death.

28 June: Qualifies as cavalry cadet, Royal Military College, Sandhurst; enters Sandhurst on 1 September.

1894

3 November: First public speech at the Empire music hall, London: Ladies of the Empire, I stand for liberty.

December: Passes out Sandhurst 20th in a class of 130.

1895

Churchill is commissioned a second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars. In New York he is befriended by Democratic Congressman Bourke Cockran. He joins Spanish forces in Cuba to report the revolution, though privately his sympathies are with the Cubans.

24 January: Lord Randolph Churchill dies in London, most likely of a brain tumor.

20 February: Commissioned in 4th Queen’s Own Hussars.

3 July: Mrs. Everest dies in London.

9 November: First visit to United States.

30 November: Observes fighting between the Spanish and Cubans at Arroyo Blanco, Cuba.

1896

3 October: Arrives Bangalore, India; begins a self-education by reading history, politics, philosophy and science.

3 November: Winston meets his first love, Pamela Plowden, Secundarabad; a lifelong friendship ensures.

1897

12 March: Leaves India for the last time.

26 July: First political speech, Claverton Down, Bath.

4 September: Joins the Malakand Field Force, commanded by Sir Bindon Blood, on India’s NW Frontier.

4 October: Begins writing his only novel, Savrola.

1898

Attached to 21st Lancers in the Nile expeditionary force, WSC serves as a war correspondent, despite objections of the commander, General Kitchener, who thinks him brash and pushy. Kitchener’s aim is to reconquer the Sudan from Dervishes under the Mahdi. In his 1899 book, The River War, Churchill criticizes Kitchener, notably for desecrating the grave of the Mahdi. Winston is romantically linked with Pamela Plowden, who will remain his friend for life.

14 March: Publishes his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force 1897.

2 September: Charges with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, Sudan, the last significant (though by no means the final) cavalry charge in history.

1 December: Returns to India.

1899

April: Resigns from army; returns to London to pursue a political career.

6 July: Defeated in his first attempt at Parliament, standing as a Conservative at the Oldham by-election.

14 October: Sails to South Africa as war correspondent for The Morning Post, taking sixty bottles of spirits, twelve bottles of Rose’s Lime Juice, and a supply of claret.

6 November: Publishes The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (two volumes).

15 November: Captured by the Boers in an ambush of an armoured train near Chievely, South Africa.

12 December: Escapes from prison in Pretoria and makes his way to Durban via Portuguese East Africa, the Boers offering £25 for his capture dead or alive.

"Our readers will join with us, we know, in wishing our fighting Prime Minister many happy returns of the day. here is a ‘potted’ version of his amazing career specially drawn for the News of the World by Oscar Berger, the famous international artist."

—News of the World, 30 November 1941

The newspaper had chosen well. Oscar Berger (1901–1997) was a Slovak cartoonist in Prague who studied art in Paris and Berlin. In Berlin, he worked for a large daily newspaper and was one of the few journalists admitted to the 1923 Munich trial following Hitler’s abortive putsch. After Hitler became Chancellor, Berger’s cartoons angered him and Berger was expelled. He spent time in Budapest, Paris, and Geneva, where he attended sessions of the League of Nations. He observed the Gathering Storm in London, where he settled in 1935 and worked for the Daily Telegraph. During the 1950s, Berger attended sessions at the United Nations and illustrated virtually every important world leader to be seen there.

1900

1 or 2 February: Publishes Savrola in New York. The London edition follows on 12 February.

27 February: The Labour Party is founded in London. Churchill sees Labour as the antithesis of his own politics.

16 May: Publishes London to Ladysmith via Pretoria.

5 June: Enters Pretoria with victorious British as a Lieutenant in South African Light Horse (Cockyolly Birds).

20 July: Returns to England.

28 July: Lady Randolph marries George Cornwallis-West.

1 October: Elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Oldham; spends much time preparing speeches.

12 October: Publishes Ian Hamilton’s March.

30 October: British lecture tour begins in London.

8 October: Arrives New York for U.S. lecture tour.

10 December: Meets Governor Theodore Roosevelt, Vice President-elect, in Albany. TR’s daughter later says her father disliked WSC because they were so much alike.

12 December: New York lecture chaired by Mark Twain.

31 December: Earnings from journalism are £2000 (then $10,000), highest of any contemporary journalist.

1901

22 January: Queen Victoria dies; WSC in Winnipeg.

31 January: Final lecture, Carnegie Hall, New York.

2 February: Embarks for England having earned £10,000, invested by Sir Ernest Cassell, the King’s banker.

14 February: Takes his seat in the House of Commons in the reign of Edward VII.

18 February: Maiden Speech, House of Commons.

13 May: Attacks government’s Army estimates, saying a European war would be "a cruel, heartrending