This was changed before the Act was eventually passed into law.ġ7. As a young politician, Churchill was staunchly against votes for women.ġ8. Churchill's reputation in Wales and in Labour circles suffered a blow in 1910 when coal miners in Rhondda Valley kickstarted the Tonypandy Riot. Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States who knew Lord Randolph Churchill, branded the biography "a clever, tactful and rather cheap and vulgar life of that clever, tactful and rather cheap and vulgar egotist".ġ5. Churchill's political career lasted over 60 years – from winning his first seat with a meagre majority in 1900 to an elder Member of Parliament until June 1964.ġ6. Winston was a supporter of eugenics – the practice of improving the overall genetic quality of mankind – and while helping create the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, he drafted in that the feeble-minded should be sterilised instead of confined in institutions. The book received a huge amount of critical acclaim at the time. This was just months before his 26th birthday.ġ2. Successfully winning the seat for the Conservative party – Churchill then embarked on a speaking tour through Britain and north America which helped him raise £10,000 for himself (equivalent to some £1,073,195 today).ġ3. Jeremy Paxman once branded British war hero Winston Churchill "a ruthless egotist, a chancer and a charlatan".ġ4. For two years – between 19 – young Winston wrote an ambitious two-volume biography of his own father. Churchill was forced to hide in a mine shaft for three days during his great escape.ġ1. After returning as a young war hero and publishing his tales from the battlefields, Churchill contested the Oldham constituency seat – which he had lost a year earlier – and won. Churchill marched and stole rides on goods trains to travel some 300miles from the prison to Lourenço Marques, the capital of Mozambique. Two fellow prisoners had planned to escape with the young servicemen but turned back. The Boer soldier turned out to be Louis Botha – the future first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa who would work with Churchill in later life to help South Africa become a British Dominion.ġ0. Churchill was marched to a prison camp in 1899, which he soon escaped by scaling a wall in the dead of night. Defenceless, he then surrendered to the soldier who decided not to shoot. The future British PM reached for his pistol only to realise it was in the crippled train carriage. Churchill was found hunkered down in the dirt by an armed Boer soldier. The war correspondent threw himself to safety in a ditch by the side of the track after the train collided with a boulder on the track – placed over the rails for the ambush. He was captured after the armoured train he was travelling on in South Africa was stormed by Boer soldiers. By 1899, working as a correspondent for the Morning Post, Churchill negotiated a salary of £250 a month and all expenses paid – equal to more than £27,000 today – making him the highest-paid war correspondent of the day.Ĩ. Winston Churchill took some 60 bottles of booze with him when he set out for the Boer War.ĩ. Churchill was made a prisoner of war during his time as a war reporter. 7. Between 18 Churchill sought to get himself transferred into as many dangerous military zones as possible – writing up his narrow escapes from the front line for papers including the Daily Graphic, and Daily Telegraph.
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