He was born to an American mother, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of New York Times' co-owner Leonard Jerome, and English father, statesman Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill's grandfather was the Seventh Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer-Churchill.
He received his education at the Harrow School in London and at the British Royal Military College, but it took him three attempts to pass the exam to be enrolled.
In March 1895, he was a lieutenant at the Fourth Hussars. From 1896 to 1989, he served in India. He was a war correspondent in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902.
In November 1899, Churchill was taken hostage by commander-in-chief of the Boer forces Louis Botha, the future first prime minister of the Union of South Africa and Churchill's close friend.
In 1900, Churchill became a Conservative member of parliament. In 1904, he became a Liberal Party member, and in 1906 a House of Commons member.
In 1908, he became the President of the Board of Trade, moving to the post of the British Home Secretary in 1910.
From 1911 to 1916, he was the First Lord of the Admiralty. He was one of the people behind the Dardanelles operation, the failure of which led to his resignation.
In 1916, he served as a commander of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in Flanders.
Between 1917 and 1918, he was the Minister of Munitions, while from 1919 to 1922 he was the Secretary of State for Air and the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
From 1924 to 1929, Churchill was the Minister of Exchequer, being also a Conservative member of parliament.
In September 1939, with the outbreak of World War II, Churchill was once again appointed the First Lord of the Admiralty, under the pressure from the British public.
Between 1940 and 1945, he occupied the posts of the British Prime Minister and Defense Minister, as well as the leader of the House of Commons and the leader of the British Conservative Party.
Threat posed on the UK by Nazi Germany and the possibility of losing sovereignty forced Churchill to side with the Soviet Union against Germany and participate in the creation of the Anti-Hitler Coalition.
In August 1942 and October 1944, he met with Stalin in Moscow and had several meetings with US President Franklin Roosevelt. He was an active participant of the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945, as well as the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
In 1945, having resigned after the victory of the Labour Party in the parliamentary elections, Churchill did not cease his political activities. On March 5, 1946, in Fulton, Missouri, he called on the Western nations to create an Anglo-American alliance to fight communism. It was then that Churchill used the expression "iron curtain" for the first time.
In 1917, Winston Churchill called on US Senator Styles Bridges to convince US President Harry Truman to carry out a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, which could, in his opinion, help to stop the spread of communism to the West.
From 1951 to 1955, Churchill once again held the post of the Prime Minister. Having reevaluated the balance of power between the West and the East in terms of nuclear weapons, he expressed doubts about the necessity to put pressure on the USSR. While speaking in favor of jointly developing Western defense, he also suggested seeking ways to come to an agreement with the Soviet Union.
After Churchill resigned as the Prime Minister in 1955 due to health issues, he stopped playing a major role in the country's policy, although he remained a member of parliament until 1964.
Winston Churchill is also the author of many books. In the 1930s he completed his multivolume work "The World Crisis" and autobiography titled "My Early Life: A Roving Commission". He also authored "Marlborough: His Life and Times", "The Second World War", "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples" among other works, the total number of which exceeds 40.
In 1953, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The same year he accepted knighthood as Garter Knight. In 1963, he was made an honorary citizen of the United States.
On January 24, 1965, Winston Churchill died in London.
Since 1908, he was married to Clementine Hozier, with whom he had five children: Diana, Randolph, Sarah, Marigold and Mary. Randolph took care of his father's literary legacy, prepared for publication a multivolume edition of collected works and helped to open the Churchill Archives Centre, while Sarah contributed to the process of opening museums dedicated to her father. Thanks to her efforts, a library was opened in Livadia Palace in Crimea where documents from the Yalta Conference are housed.
Mary Spencer-Churchill worked for the Red Cross and the Women's Voluntary Service. She accompanied her father on his trips on a number of occasions, including a trip to Potsdam. She went on to write several biographical works.
In 1973, a monument to Winston Churchill was erected in Parliament Square in London. In 1998, a Churchill monument was opened in Paris in the Champs Elysees. In 2005, a Churchill War Rooms museum was opened in the basement offices of the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster that served as the nerve center of UK's war effort during the World War II.
In May 2008, a monument to Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt was revealed in the Russian city of Sochi.
