On Tuesday November 30, 2010, Winston Churchill would celebrate his 136th birthday if he were still alive. Much has been written about the political life of the British Prime Minister who became an icon of World War II (1939-1945) only to be voted out by the people of the country at the war’s end, but less has been written about the personal events in the life of Sir Winston Churchill.
Birth and Childhood of Winston Churchill
On November 30, 1874, Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace. His birth was not expected for two months, but it seems that Winston could wait no longer to enter public life.
His father, Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-1895), was the younger surviving son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and Lord Randolph was a successful MP. Lord Randolph, who had been educated at Eton and Oxford, rose to being the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but his political career was cut short by the griping onset of syphilis, which he is thought to have contracted while studying at Merton College in Oxford.
Lady Randolph Churchill (1854-1921) was formerly Jennie Jerome, a celebrated beauty and the middle of the three daughters of the Brooklyn, New York financier, Leonard Jerome (1817-1891). At age six, the family welcomed the birth of Winston’s only sibling, John “Jack” Strange Spencer-Churchill (1880-1947).
Young Winston was intelligent, but he did not take to school. Ultimately, he was educated at Harrow, and after three attempts to pass the entrance exam, he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. As a young man, Winston Churchill gained note in the military and as a reporter. Then, he entered politics.
Clementine and the Churchill Children
In 1904, Winston Churchill met his future wife, Clementine Hozier (1885-1977), at a ball in Crewe House, and in 1908, the two met again, at a dinner party. It was in 1908 that the two began their courtship, and later in the year, Winston proposed to Clementine during a visit to Blenheim. The proposal took place in the palace’s temple of Diana, and the couple married on September 12, 1908.
Diana, their first child, was born in July of 1909. Their next child was their only son, Randolph, who was born in 1911. Sarah, their third child, was born in October of 1914.
Sarah’s birth occurred near to the start of World War I (1914-1918), and Marigold, the Churchills’ fourth child, was not born until four days after the Armistice in November 1918. Sadly, Marigold died of septicemia in August of 1921. Winston and Clementine would also live to see the death of their eldest daughter, Diana, who committed suicide in 1963.
In September 1922, the couple welcomed their youngest child, Mary. Mary, Baroness Soames, is the last of Winston Churchill’s children to remain alive. Randolph Churchill died in 1968, and Sarah Churchill died in 1982.
Winston Churchill’s Career and Hobbies
Winston Churchill had a tumultuous political career, but he served as Prime Minster of Great Britain twice (1940-1945 and 1951-1955). He was also a respected historian and writer, even winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.
To relax, Churchill enjoyed painting, and he took great interest in Chartwell, the home in Kent that he had purchased for his family in 1922.
On January 24, 1965, the seventieth anniversary of his father’s death, Winston Churchill died at the age of ninety. He was honored with a state funeral, and he was buried in the graveyard at St. Martin’s Church in Blandon, near Blenheim Palace.
Further Reading
- Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill by Ralph G. Martin, Prentice Hall Trade (1990)
- Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage by Mary Soames, Mariner Books (2003)
- Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert, Holt Paperbacks (1992)
Elizabeth Fredericks - Elizabeth Fredericks is a graduate of Oxford University, and she has worked as a freelance writer since her first paid assignment as a ...
Join the Conversation