Volume II of this magisterial eight-volume biography takes Churchill’s story from his entry to Parliament in 1901 to the outbreak of war in 1914. When he took his seat in the House of Commons he was twenty-six years old. An independent spirit and rebel, on his maiden speech he was cheered by the Leader of the Opposition.

On 31 May 1904, three years after entering Parliament, Churchill joined the Liberals. In December 1905 he entered the government as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. In April 1908 he joined the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. On 12 September 1908 he married Miss Clementine Hozier. Their daughter Diana was born in 1909 and their son Randolph in 1911.

In the years leading up to the First World War, Churchill was at the center of British political life and change. At the Home Office he introduced substantial prison reforms and took a lead in curbing the powers of the House of Lords. At the Admiralty from 1911 he helped build the Royal Navy into a formidable fighting force. He learned to fly, and founded the Royal Naval Air Service. He was active in attempts to resolve the Irish Question and to prevent civil war in Ireland.

In 1914, as war in Europe loomed, Churchill wrote to his wife from the Admiralty: “The preparations have a hideous fascination for me, yet I would do my best for peace, and nothing would induce me wrongfully to strike the blow. I cannot feel that we in this island are in any serious degree responsible for the wave of madness which has swept the mind of Christendom.”

When war came, the fleet was ready. It was one of Churchill’s great achievements.

About the Author

RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL, the only son of Winston Churchill, was born on 28 May 1911. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he became a widely-read journalist in the 1930s, reporting first-hand on the German elections of 1932 and warning of Hitler’s military ambitions. In the Second World War he served as an intelligence officer at General Headquarters, Middle East, and in the Special Forces in the Western Desert. In 1944 he volunteered to parachute behind enemy lines to serve as a liaison officer with the Yugoslav partisans. For his war services he was awarded the MBE (Military).

Between 1938 and 1961 he edited six volumes of his father’s speeches. His own books include The Rise and Fall of Sir Anthony Eden; The Six Day War, a history of the six-day Arab-Israeli war of 1967, written with his son, Winston; and the first two main and five document volumes of the biography of his father: Youth, 1874–1900 and Young Statesman, 1901–1914. An Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, Randolph Churchill died at his home, Stour, East Bergholt, Suffolk, on 6 June 1968.

About the Work

In the official biography of Sir Winston Churchill, his son Randolph—and later Sir Martin Gilbert, who took up the work following Randolph’s death—had the full use of Sir Winston’s letters and papers, and also many hundreds of private archives. The work spans eight volumes, detailing Churchill’s youth and early adventures in South Africa and India, his early career, and his more than fifty years on the world stage. No other statesman of modern times—or indeed of any age—has left such a wealth of personal letters, such a rich store of private and public documentation, such vivid memories in the minds of those who worked closest to him. Through these materials, assembled over the course of more than twenty years, one is able to know Churchill in a way never before possible.