II.

Early Life

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, his family's ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, on November 30, 1874. He was the elder son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a British statesman who rose to be chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. His mother was an American, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a New York financier. Churchill inherited a family tradition of statesmanship that went back to the great English general John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, in the 17th century. Young Winston attended Harrow School, on the outskirts of London, where he was schooled in the classics. He was a precocious student and, like his father, had a remarkable memory, but he was also stubborn. Churchill had little interest in learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. By his own account, he considered himself such a dunce that he 'could learn only English.' However, he said, 'I learned it thoroughly.'

From early childhood Churchill was fascinated by soldiers and warfare, and he often played with the large collection of lead soldiers in his nursery. His later years at Harrow were spent preparing to enter the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, from which he graduated with honors. Early in 1895 his father died; Churchill was only 20 years old. A few weeks later Churchill was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, a regiment of the British army.