CHURCHILL, WINSTON (1874-1965)

British statesman and writer Winston Churchill was born in Oxfordshire on 30 November 1874. He was the eldest son of aristocrat Lord Randolph Churchill. Following his graduation form the Royal Military College he entered the army and joined the Boer War as a war corespondent. He was captured during the Boer War. After his escape, he became a National Hero. Ten months later he was elected as a member of the Conservative Party.

In 1904, he joined the Liberal Party and in 1911, he became first Lord of the Admiralty. His successful career was almost destroyed as a result of the unsuccessful Gallipoli Campaign. He was the father of the idea of an expedition to the Dardanelles, which would easily succeed with a naval attack. Nevertheless, the Turks defended the strait stronger than expected and the Allies failed to capture Istanbul. Churchill was the main actor of this failure and his opponents forced him to resign from the Admiralty. However, he returned to the government as the Minister of Munitions in 1917.

In 1924 he returned to Conservative Party and was given the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-1929). In 1939, he was appointed once more first Lord of the Admiralty and in 1940 he succeeded Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. During World War II he followed a successful military and social policy and established close relations with Roosevelt. It was in the same period he co-operated with Russia about the allies' Balkan policies. However, he was afraid of a Russian domination in that region, thus, he tried to persuade Turkey to join the war. He negotiated with Turkish statesmen in Cairo and in Adana, but refused to accept Turkey's conditions. After the war, he worked for establishment of NATO and EC.

Churchill won the election in 1951 and once more became the Prime Minister. In 1955, he resigned and A. Eden succeeded him.

He spent much of his last years writing and painting. In 1953, he received the Nobel Prize for literature and in 1963, US Congress conferred on him honorary American citizenship. At the age of 90, he died in 1965, in Blenheim Palace.

Some of His Works: Life of Lord Randolph Churchill (1906); The World Crisis (4 volumes, 1923-1929), Marlborough (4 volumes, 1933-1938); War Memories (6 volumes, 1948-1954)