My Early Life

The first twenty-five years of Churchill’s life were full of adventure: night marches, cavalry charges, skirmishes on the North West Frontier, escape from a Boer prison camp and a visit to the Cuban War. Acknowledged as his best book, his zest for life bursts right off the pages of My Early Life.
Yet this is more than just an adventure story. It is an elegiac portrayal of the halcyon period before the First World War, and deeply revealing of one of the dominating personalities of the twentieth century. Here lie the roots of that restless, questing energy and dauntless ambition, born of absent parents and miserable schooling.

Author Biography

Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire in 1874. He was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, and was gazetted to the 4th Hussars in 1895. With the military he travelled to Egypt, among other places. During the Boer War he was captured while acting as a London newspaper correspondent, but escaped. In 1900 he became Conservative MP for Oldham, only to join the Liberals in 1906. He held several posts under their government including home secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty. In World War One he was minister of munitions under Lloyd George, then after the war, secretary of state for war. In 1924 he became a Conservative MP for Epping and was Chancellor of the Exchequer for the next 5 years. He spent the 1930s in the political wilderness before forming a coalition government in 1940 when Chamberlain fell. After the victory of World War Two he lost the election of July 1945. He became prime minister again in 1951, age 77, until 1955. He wrote several books including The World Crisis (1923-29), Marlborough (1933-8) and The Second World War (1948-54). He died in 1965.