Winston Churchill
...leader. English on his father's side, American
on his mother's, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer
Churchill embodied and expressed the double vitality
and the national qualities of both peoples. His names
testify to the richness of his historic inheritance:
Winston, after the Royalist family with whom the
Churchills married before the English Civil War;
Leonard, after his remarkable grandfather, Leonard
Jerome of New York; Spencer, the married name of
a daughter of the 1st duke of Marlborough, from
whom the family descended; Churchill, the family
name of the 1st duke, which his descendents resumed
after the Battle of Waterloo. All these strands come
together in a career that had no parallel in British
history for richness, range, length, and achievement.
Churchill took a leading part in laying the foundations
of the welfare state in Britain, in preparing the Royal
Navy for World War I, and in settling the political
boundaries in the Middle East after the war. In
WORLD WAR II emerged as the leader of the united
British nation and Commonwealth to resist the
German domination of Europe, as an inspirer of the
resistance among free peoples, and as a prime
architect of victory. In this, and in the struggle against
communism afterward, he made himself an
indispensable link between the British and American
peoples, for he foresaw that the best defense for the...
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