丘吉尔英文介绍

Winston Churchill (30 November 1874 –24 January 1965) was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, historian, writer, and artist. He is the only British Prime Minister who has ever received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

During his army career, Churchill saw action in India, in the Sudan and the Second Boer War. He gained fame and notoriety as a war correspondent and through contemporary books he wrote describing the campaigns. He also served briefly in the British Army on the Western Front in World War I, commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

At the forefront of the political scene for almost fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of the Asquith Liberal government. During the war he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli caused his departure from government. He returned as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. In the interwar years, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative government.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led Britain to victory against the Axis powers. Churchill was always noted for his speeches, which became a great inspiration to the British people and embattled Allied forces.

After losing the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition. In 1951, he again became Prime Minister before finally retiring in 1955. Upon his death the Queen granted him the honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen in the world.

Winston Churchill was also an accomplished artist and took great pleasure in painting, especially after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. He found a haven in art to overcome the spells of depression—or as he termed it, the "Black Dog"—which he suffered throughout his life. As William Rees-Mogg has stated, "In his own life, he had to suffer the 'black dog' of depression. In his landscapes and still lives there is no sign of depression". He is best known for his impressionist scenes of landscape, many of which were painted while on holiday in the South of France, Egypt or Morocco. He continued his hobby throughout his life and painted hundreds of paintings, many of which are on show in the studio at Chartwell as well as private collections. Most of his paintings are oil-based and feature landscapes, but he also did a number of interior scenes and portraits.

Despite his lifelong fame and upper-class origins Churchill always struggled to keep his income at a level that would fund his extravagant lifestyle. MPs before 1946 received only a nominal salary (and in fact did not receive anything at all until the Parliament Act 1911) so many had secondary professions from which to earn a living. From his first book in 1898 until his second stint as Prime Minister, Churchill's income was almost entirely made from writing books and opinion pieces for newspapers and magazines. The most famous of his newspaper articles are those that appeared in the Evening Standard from 1936 warning of the rise of Hitler and the danger of the policy of appeasement.

Churchill was also a prolific writer of books, writing a novel, two biographies, three volumes of memoirs, and several histories in addition to his many newspaper articles. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".Two of his most famous works, published after his first premiereship brought his international fame to new heights, were his six-volume memoir The Second World War and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples; a four-volume history covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914).

In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone on the brink of invasion. At that crucial time, one man, Winston Churchill, defined what it meant to be British. We like to think of ourselves as tolerant and long-suffering people. But Churchill, through his leadership and his example, reminded us that if all we hold dear – our democracy, our freedom – is threatened, we will show courage and determination like no other nation:

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. You ask what is our policy? I can say it is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all our strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be.”
3 This was the moment when Britain had to be at its greatest. And in Churchill we found the greatest of Britons.

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 into one of Britain’s grandest families. The Churchills had been fighting for king and country for generations. Young Winston always believed he’d do the same. But self-belief was something he maintained despite rather than because of his family. His father Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895), and his mother, Jennie (1854–1921), were both cold and distant people. Winston was packed off to Harrow. He wasn’t good-looking or clever; he was sickly, with a lisp and a stammer. He was bound to be bullied – and he was. Far from giving support, Winston’s father predicted his child would “degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence”.

He left school and, after three attempts, got into the military academy at Sandhurst. After Sandhurst he went looking for military action – wherever it was. He paid for himself by doubling up as a war correspondent. He used his dispatches to promote himself as a hero of the Boer War, and returned to England in 1900 renowned and all set to become an MP.

He was elected as Tory MP for Oldham in the same year. Then he swapped to the Liberals, then back. He was never really a Party animal. He cared about Britain. His vision was of a place with better living standards for ordinary people, but with a fierce regard for law and order. Though he wasn’t a vicious man, Churchill’s attitude to suffragettes, trade unionists or anyone who challenged the system was brutal. His weapon of first resort was the army.But then he’d always wanted to be a general. This ambition dated back to the days when he spent his school holidays playing with toy soldiers in the corridors of Blenheim Palace, below the tapestries of his heroic ancestors. He must have been delighted when, in 1911, he was made First Lord of the Admiralty – and even more so when the First World War offered him the opportunity to plan a major military offensive at Gallipoli, in 1915.

Gallipoli was a disaster, costing Winston his job and nearly his sanity. This was the onset of his first major bout of depression, a curse he called his “black dog”. Thankfully he now had a wife, Clementine, to help him through it. She was 11 years younger than him, beautiful, clever and unswervingly loyal. She kept him together, but he got himself out of it, in true Churchillian fashion. To make amends for his mistake, he took himself off to the trenches of France to fight. He must be one of the few soldiers to have written home from the First World War that he had “found happiness and content such as I have not known for months”. He was a man made for war.

By the time Churchill returned to England, he’d already achieved many great things. He’d been a successful journalist, he’d fought for his country and he’d held high office, as he was to do again in the 1920s as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But by 1930, Labour was in power and he was on the backbenches, a nobody and a has-been. He largely sat out the 1930s at his country retreat Chartwell.

In September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) famously brandished an agreement he’d signed with Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and declared he’d secured peace in our time. You could almost hear the sighs of relief. But not from Winston. He’d predicted – long before anyone else – what German nationalism was leading to. By the time he was proved right, and war had been declared, King George VI (1895–1952) knew that “there was only one person I could send for to form a Government who had the confidence of the country. And that was Winston”. When the call came, Churchill was 65 years old. It had been a long wait, but destiny had arrived.

People talk of 1066, of the Armada, of Trafalgar. But 1940 was the most important year in British history. It was the year of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz. It was the year when every single Briton, civilian as well as soldier, found themselves at war. The cause appeared hopeless, yet Winston, reviving the V sign for victory from the fields of Agincourt 500 years before, told us we could win.

Churchill was an instinctive, daring, often infuriating war leader. He was rude and unpleasant to his staff, who struggled to keep up with his limitless capacity for hard work and hard liquor. But he was also an inspiration. When victory was finally declared in Europe on 8 May 1945, it was quickly followed by a general election.

The billboards said “Cheer Churchill, Vote Labour”, and that’s what people did. That was the irony. The very democracy that Churchill was prepared to lay down his life to defend was the same democracy that knew the difference between the needs of peace and the needs of war.

When Churchill died in 1965, the new rock-and-roll Britain stood still. If Britain – its eccentricity, its strength of character, its big-heartedness – had to be summed up in one person, it was him. He had gone, but, thanks to him, Britain lived on. And what could be greater than that?