Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965

Abstract

No man has been better known throughout the world than Winston Churchill; no man has had a life more faithfully documented; and no man’s memory less needs a re-statement of his words and deeds. The fullness of his life has many facets; so many, indeed, that some may be missed in the brilliance of those for which he is most admired—leadership, language, courage, humour. While in biography proper these must command the highest place, there are some special facets—science, technology, education, philosophy—which are natural to the context of this Memoir, and which I therefore hope to trace through the wide, unfolding pattern of his thoughts and actions. The character of the Memoir changes as it approaches 1940. Up to that time, drawing in the main on his own comments and writings, it deals with episodes that illustrate his character or which helped to form the experience that matched him so uniquely to 1940. After that time, drawing in addition on personal knowledge, it deals at closer range with the fewer facets of special relevance. Personal knowledge can easily be overdrawn, for the difference in our ages was nearly forty years and the difference in our backgrounds no less marked. But his qualities transcended the gaps of age, society and education, and it was easy to talk to him for what he was. Even so, I am reminded of his own regrets that he had not had more chance to know his father—there are so many things that in retrospect the younger man would like to have asked the older but which he has barely realized before the older man is borne away beyond questioning. So it is with this Memoir.