Date of Issue: January 2, 1950

KEY DATES 1874 Born in Oxfordshire, England, on November 30. 1901 Enters House of Commons. 1911-15, 1939-40 Serves as First Lord of the Admiralty. 1940-45, 1951-55 Prime Minister of Great Britain. 1953 Knighted; wins Nobel Prize for literature. 1955 Resigns as Prime Minister 1964 Retires from House of Commons. 1965 Dies in London.

A statesman who inspired the free world
He was a kingly figure. He was his nation’s savior, Britain’s greatest statesman, the leader and inspiration of the free world. Yet Winston Churchill was an intensely human hero. He was easily moved to rage or tears; he delighted in mischief and rushed headlong into many an action he was later to regret.

	Single-handedly, Churchill rallied his people to resist Hitler and often had to be dragged protesting from rooftops as London shuddered under German attack.

Churchill was born and raised amid the splendors of Blenheim Palace, the 320-room mansion that a grateful nation gave to his ancestor, John Churchill, for his victory over the French in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. His mother was a beautiful American heiress, Jennie Jerome; his father the brilliant but unsteady politician Lord Randolph Churchill.

School bored young Winston; he was a poor student who most loved playing with enormous collection of toy soldiers. Fame and glory were always his motivation.

During the dismal era when Adolf Hitler was his rising and Britain shuttered its windows to the world, Churchill urged his fellow members of the House of Commons to take action. Thanks to a wide network of information gatherers, Churchill’s knowledge of Hitler’s ambitions was extensive. Churchill spoke out bitterly against the inaction of Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, arguing that Hitler was a bully who would only respond to force.

When Britain finally declared war against Germany in 1939, the government at last turned to Churchill. In the spring of 1940, as Hitler invaded the Low Countries and the tide turned toward Britain, Chamberlain was turned out. With Hitler preparing to pounce, Churchill took the reins as Prime Minister with the ringing declaration, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

Single-handedly, Churchill rallied his people to resist Hitler. No detail was too small to escape his attention. He never tired of inspecting troops or chatting with victims of the blitz, and often had to be dragged protesting from a rooftop as London shuddered under a German attack.

Some of the passages of Churchill’s wartime speeches are as stirring today as anything in Shakespeare. For example, Churchill vowed that Britain would fight "to the end" in a 1940 speech to the House of Commons:

"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight in the seas and oceans … we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

And fight they did. That a fee world survived in 1950, with a hope of more progress and less calamity, was due in large measure to the efforts of Winston Churchill.