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Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) was a British politician and twice prime minister. As a young man he worked as a war correspondent as well as having a military career, and during the 1890s he reported on conflicts in India and the Sudan. In 1899 he resigned his military commission and became the war correspondent for the Morning Post, travelling to South Africa to cover the war there. He achieved fame during the war for his escape from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp. Churchill went on to become a Conservative Party MP although a dispute about free trade saw him cross-over to the Liberal Party in 1904. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman became prime minister in 1905, Churchill was appointed as under-secretary at the Colonial Office. Since the colonial secretary, Lord Elgin, was a member of the House of Lords, Churchill was responsible for dealing with colonial matters in the House of Commons, and it was he, for example, who announced the self-government of the Transvaal in 1906, a policy to which he had made a significant contribution.

Later, after the 1910 general election Churchill was promoted to the Home Office where his handling of law and order was sometimes controversial. Although he had in principle endorsed the right of women to vote, her objected to the suffrage movement and opposed suffrage measures in parliament. Most of Schreiner's comments about Churchill relate to his hostile stance on women?s suffrage and the anger this raised in suffrage circles. Churchill later went on to become Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1924 and 1929, and to serve two terms as prime minister, most notably between 1940 and 1945 during the period of the Second World War, and then between 1951 and 1955.

For further information see:
Paul Addison (2004) 'Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965)' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32413
Geoffrey Best (2003) Churchill: A Study in Greatness Oxford: Oxford University Press
John Charmley (1993) Churchill: The End of Glory London: Hodder & Stoughton
Roy Jenkins (2001) Churchill London: Macmillan
John Keegan (2002) Churchill London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
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collection icon National Library of South Africa, Cape Town: Special Collections at the NLSA provide one of the leading locations for archival papers across many periods, organisations a... Show/Hide Collection Letters
collection icon University of Cape Town, Historical Manuscripts: Manuscripts & Archives at the University of Cape Town is a leading location for accessing archival papers across many per... Show/Hide Collection Letters
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