My Early Life

Product Information

By May he was well immersed in the game: “Polo progresses steadily and I am I think improving fast,” he wrote. “It is the finest game in the world and I should almost be content to give up any ambition to play it well and often. But that will no doubt cease to be my view in a short time.”[15]

There is much here to cheer us non-glow worms. He was, for example, a flat failure at school. Mathematics and languages frustrated him as much as they frustrated you and me (well, me at least). He lost his first election—a local by-election—by 1,300 votes. His first foray in the public arena—a speech excoriating the barriers that had been erected in music halls to separate the sexes—was never delivered. And perhaps most oddly of all, considering his later reputation, he had to learn to like the taste of whiskey. Churchill had taken the entrance exam for Sandhurst three times before he passed. His final test score was too low for him to be accepted in the Infantry and qualified him only for the Cavalry — a great disappointment to his father, who remarked, 1 ‘In the infantry one has to keep a man; in the cavalry a man and a horse as well.”‘‘Little did he foresee not only one horse, but two official chargers and one or two hunters besides,” Churchill recalled later, “to say nothing of the string of polo ponies!”[6] Churchill was born at the family’s estate near Oxford on November 30, 1874. He was educated at the Harrow prep school, where he performed so poorly that he did not even bother to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, in 1893 young Winston Churchill headed off to military school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Battles and BooksMy Early Life, however, is more than just a ripping yarn. It is also a surprisingly direct and reflective, even intimate, self-portrait of an extraordinary character during his formative years, full of ironic wit and self-deprecating good humour. Churchill is also candid about his peculiar upbringing as the child of an Anglo-American marriage, his adored but distant mother (Jeanette Jerome), his doomed father (Lord Randolph Churchill), and his own miserable schooling at Harrow. In a famous passage, he confesses his enduring love for Mrs Everest, his nanny. On her death, he wrote: “She had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of the 20 years I had lived.” I have the clearest recollection of seeing her for the first time. It was at the Vice-Regal Lodge at Dublin. She stood on one side to the left of the entrance. The Viceroy was on a dais at the farther end of the room surrounded by a brilliant staff, but eyes were not turned on him or on his consort, but on a dark, lithe figure, standing somewhat apart and appearing to be of another texture to those around her, radiant, translucent, intense. A diamond star in her hair, her favourite ornament -- its lustre dimmed by the flashing glory of her eyes. More of the panther than of the woman in bet look, but with a cultivated intelligence unknown to the jangle. Her courage not less great than that of her husband -- fit mother for descendants of the great Duke. With all these attributes of brilliancy, such kindliness and high spirits that she was universally popular. Her desire to please, her delight in life, and the genuine wish that all should share her joyous faith in it, made her the centre of a devoted circle.' Despite his departure from the home of polo, Churchill continued to love and play the game. An appointment book for 1901, his first year in Parliament, showed notations for polo seven times in May, (mostly Thursday and Saturday at 3:30), including Crystal Palace on the 30th. In June polo was scheduled for three days; the 20th had the notation “Windsor.” Listed for Saturday July 6th was “House of Commons versus Guards” and Monday-Wednesday August 5th-7th were again marked “Windsor.” Winston informed his mother that he had “decided definitely to play polo this year [1901] in a team which is being formed by some of my young military friends, and I think if I get two days a week at Hurlingham or Ranelagh, it will provide me with the physical exercise and mental countercurrent which these late hours and continual sitting of the house absolutely require.”[38] Though the future looked grim, Churchill did all he could to keep British spirits high. He gave stirring speeches in Parliament and on the radio. He persuaded U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide war supplies – ammunition, guns, tanks, planes – to the Allies, a program known as Lend-Lease, before the Americans even entered the war.

Did you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II. Winston returned to Bangalore — “to polo and my friends” — in October 1897. But the success of his writing, and the realization that it could be a serious source of income, had taken the edge off his consumption with polo. “I am off to Hyderabad on Sat for a polo tournament,” he wrote his mother. “It is a nuisance having to go when I am so busy.”[26] He referred to the writing of his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. In January 1898 he added, “We are all thinking of the Big Polo Tournament now — but it fills a vy different position in my mind to what it did last year.”[26] His work on behalf of progressive social reforms such as an eight-hour workday, a government-mandated minimum wage, a state-run labor exchange for unemployed workers and a system of public health insurance infuriated his Conservative colleagues, who complained that this new Churchill was a traitor to his class. Churchill and Gallipoli In February 1901, Churchill took his seat in the House of Commons, where his maiden speech gained widespread press coverage. [144] [145] He associated with a group of Conservatives known as the Hughligans, [146] [147] although he was critical of the Conservative government on various issues. He condemned the British execution of a Boer military commandant, [148] and voiced concerns about the levels of public expenditure; [149] in response, Prime Minister Arthur Balfour asked him to join a parliamentary select committee on the topic. [150] He opposed increases to army funding, suggesting that any additional military expenditure should go to the navy. [151] [152] This upset the Conservative front bench but gained support from Liberals. [153] He increasingly socialised with senior Liberals, particularly Liberal Imperialists like H. H. Asquith. [153] In this context, he later wrote, he "drifted steadily to the left" of British parliamentary politics. [148] He privately considered "the gradual creation by an evolutionary process of a Democratic or Progressive wing to the Conservative Party", [154] or alternately a "Central Party" to unite the Conservatives and Liberals. [155]At Hyderabad, the 4th Hussars strategy of buying a seasoned stud on arrival in Bombay was vindicated. “This performance is a record,” Churchill continued, “no English regiment ever having won a first-class tournament within a month of their arrival in India. The Indian papers express surprise and admiration. I will send you by the next mail some interesting instantaneous photographs of the match — in which you will remark me — fiercely struggling with turbaned warriors.”[21] Harrow School prepared him to attend the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and become an officer in the army, specifically in a cavalry unit. He was an avid polo player in his years as an army officer. Once out of formal schooling, he was eager for experiences, taking every opportunity to be where the action was. He was an observer in Cuba when Spain fought the rebels there and that same itch for experience took him to battles in the North-West Frontier Province of India (an area now in Pakistan), and to the Second Boer War, in South Africa. Senior editor Dalton Newfield says, “Whenever anyone says they really want to understand Churchill, I invariably recommend My Early Life (published in USA as A Roving Commission.) This reviewer would certainly second the motion, although I was predisposed to like it: I found Woods 37b in a New England flea market for one dollar! During the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill bounced from government job to government job, and in 1924 he rejoined the Conservatives. Especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Churchill spent a great deal of time warning his countrymen about the perils of German nationalism, but Britons were weary of war and reluctant to get involved in international affairs again.

But his letters at the time made no mention of this incident. In one message, sent just a few days after arriving in India, he wrote that ” . . . nearly 500 tons of luggage had to be moved we were busy from 4 in the morning till late at night.”[35] It was his habit to mention injuries — an injured knee in December 1896; being hit with splinters from a rifle target in April 1897. (“I managed to play polo with the reins fastened on to my wrist. . .”[36]) From the evidence of his letters we may conclude that Churchill’s shoulder dislocation stemmed from falling down stairs at Sir Pertab Singh’s home in Jodhpore in February 1898, rather than the (much more romantic) quayside ring episode he records in his autobiography. The next several years were busy political times for the young statesman, but polo was not forgotten and was occasionally mentioned in his letters. “I am going to spend Sunday with Ivor [Guest] at Ashby — with polo on Saty & Monday.”[40] . . . “I stay (at Blenheim) for the next ten days, writing in the mornings & playing polo at Rugby in the afternoons.”[41] . . . “We are having a pleasant week on this . . . splendid yacht [H.M.Y. Victoria & Albert], though the rainy weather has . . . spoiled . . . polo”[42] . . . “I hope . . . that I shall see [Alfonso XIII, King of Spain] . . . in the seclusion of the polo world.”[43] Rhodes James, Robert (1970). Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-02-97820-15-4. The early life of Winston Churchill covers the period from his birth on 30 November 1874 to 31 May 1904 when he formally crossed the floor of the House of Commons, defecting from the Conservative Party to sit as a member of the Liberal Party.Haffner, Sebastian (2003). Churchill. John Brownjohn (translator). London: Haus. ISBN 978-19-04341-07-9. OCLC 852530003. Mr. Churchill’s record of his youth and young manhood is his finest literary achievement. This book is as regards style – or, one may say, styles – better than anything which has gone before. Its variation and development in this matter of style are the greatest of its charms. One fancies one hears the small boy, the youth at Sandhurst, the young soldier, the slightly older politician each telling his story in his own way. Of course no gentleman cadet, still less a small boy, could write like that; that Mr. Churchill should contrive to bewitch his readers into the momentary impression that they can is proof that he has at his command the art of the autobiographer.”– The Times Literary Supplement, London