Born into aristocracy at Blenheim Palace, Churchill overcame a difficult childhood and early political setbacks to become Britain's defining 20th-century statesman. As prime minister from 1940, his defiant oratory and refusal to negotiate with Hitler rallied Britain during the Blitz and helped steer the Allies to victory.
Churchill arrived two months premature, born in a ground-floor room at Blenheim Palace after his mother, Jennie Jerome, went into sudden labor during a shooting party weekend. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a rising Tory politician; his American mother brought both fortune and scandal to the marriage.
Churchill's early career was a rollercoaster—cavalry officer, war correspondent captured and daringly escaped from a Boer POW camp, then a young MP who switched parties twice. The Gallipoli disaster of 1915, which he championed as First Lord of the Admiralty, nearly ended his career for good.
Yet it was in 1940, at age 65, that Churchill found his defining moment, becoming prime minister as France fell and Hitler's forces stood poised across the Channel. His speeches—promising to 'fight on the beaches' and never surrender—became touchstones of democratic resistance, even as Britain stood almost alone against Nazi Germany.
Key people: Winston Churchill