70 Fun Facts About Winston Churchill

At which grand house was Churchill born in November 1874?

He was a descendant of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, whose home it was.

Churchill's mother Jennie was the daughter of an American businessman named what?

His mixed English and American parentage made him proud of both nations.

Whom did Churchill mourn as 'my dearest and most intimate friend' when she died in 1895?

His parents were effectively estranged and his nanny had largely raised him and his brother.

Which military college did Churchill attend as a cavalry cadet before joining the army?

He got in only on his third attempt, in September 1893.

What did Churchill call the recurring depression that dogged him through life?

He treated it, Roy Jenkins says, largely by writing.

At which 1898 battle in Sudan did Churchill take part in one of the British Army's last cavalry charges?

He rode with the 21st Lancers and wrote a book about the campaign, The River War.

During the Second Boer War, Churchill was captured after Boer shelling derailed what?

He was interned in Pretoria; his dramatic escape weeks later made him famous.

How did Churchill escape his Boer captors in December 1899?

He made it to Portuguese East Africa, and the escape brought him great publicity.

In 1904 Churchill 'crossed the floor' from the Conservatives to which party?

He crossed back to the Conservatives twenty years later, in 1924.

Whom did Churchill marry in September 1908 at St Margaret's, Westminster?

Her unbroken affection, biographers say, gave his turbulent career a secure background.

As President of the Board of Trade, Churchill's 1909 Labour Exchanges Bill aimed to help whom?

He also introduced trade boards establishing the principle of a minimum wage.

During which 1911 East End incident did Churchill controversially stand with police as a house burned?

He told the fire brigade not to enter, saying he would rather the house burn than risk British lives on ferocious rascals.

Which new word did Churchill coin as First Lord of the Admiralty?

He ordered 100 of them built and pushed the fledgling Royal Naval Air Service.

Churchill was blamed for which failed 1915 campaign, which cost him the Admiralty?

The Conservatives made his removal a condition of joining Asquith's coalition.

After resigning in 1915, Churchill commanded which battalion on the Western Front?

He served about six months near Ploegsteert before returning to Parliament.

Churchill bought which Kent country house in 1922, doing much of its brickwork himself?

He built garden walls there himself as an amateur bricklayer.

After 1922, Churchill wrote that he was without an office, without a party, and without what else?

He rejoined the Conservatives and was Chancellor of the Exchequer within two years.

As Chancellor in 1925, Churchill controversially restored Britain to what, against Keynes's advice?

The return, at the 1914 parity, is held to have caused deflation and hurt the coal industry.

During the 1926 General Strike, which government propaganda paper did Churchill edit?

After the strike he acted as an intermediary between the miners and their employers.

Churchill called which Indian leader 'a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir'?

He resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in 1931 over Dominion status for India.

What did Churchill call his time out of office in the 1930s, when he warned about Nazi Germany?

Civil servants secretly fed him data on German rearmament.

How did Churchill describe the 1938 Munich Agreement in the Commons?

He had urged Chamberlain to threaten war if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

Which German ship did HMS Cossack board in Norwegian waters in 1940, freeing 299 seamen?

The action enhanced his reputation during the Phoney War.

Whom did Churchill succeed as prime minister in May 1940?

His only rival, Lord Halifax, admitted he could not govern effectively from the House of Lords.

Which new post did Churchill create and assume, making him the most powerful wartime PM in history?

He brought outside experts like Beaverbrook and Lindemann into government.

What did Churchill offer 'but blood, toil, tears and sweat' in his first speech as prime minister?

He turned a childhood lisp into an asset, mocking Hitler as a Nar-zee.

How many Allied servicemen were evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo?

Churchill called it a miracle of deliverance but warned wars are not won by evacuations.

In which speech did Churchill vow to fight on the beaches and never surrender?

It was a clear appeal to the still-neutral United States.

Churchill's 18 June 1940 speech, saying men would call this the noblest of times, is known as what?

He expected the Battle of Britain to begin.

What did Churchill tell Hugh Dalton to do with the newly formed Special Operations Executive?

The SOE was to promote subversion in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Of whom did Churchill say 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'?

He said it on 20 August 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain.

In 1941 Churchill said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would do what?

He had known from Bletchley decrypts that the attack was imminent.

Churchill and Roosevelt issued which joint statement of war aims at Placentia Bay in August 1941?

It is seen as an inspiration for the later United Nations.

What did Churchill suffer on 26 December 1941, the night after addressing the US Congress?

His doctor diagnosed a coronary deficiency, but Churchill pressed on to Ottawa.

Churchill called the 1942 fall of which city 'the worst disaster' in British military history?

It surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, sinking his morale to its lowest point.

After El Alamein Churchill said this was not the end, nor even its start, but perhaps what?

He ordered church bells rung across Britain for the first time since 1940.

At which 1943 conference did Churchill and Roosevelt commit the Allies to 'unconditional surrender'?

Stalin declined to attend because of the battle of Stalingrad.

Churchill's 1944 'Percentages agreement' with Stalin divided post-war influence over what region?

He proposed 90% Soviet control of Romania and 90% British control of Greece; Stalin ticked it.

Which German city's February 1945 bombing did Churchill come to regret, later restricting area bombing?

An independent commission in 2010 confirmed a death toll of about 24,000.

What did Churchill call the secret plan he commissioned in May 1945 for a possible war on the USSR?

It imagined a surprise attack on Soviet troops in Germany.

What gaffe in a 1945 radio broadcast is thought to have hurt Churchill's election campaign?

Attlee replied that the voice was Churchill's but the mind was Beaverbrook's.

Who defeated Churchill's Conservatives in the 1945 general election?

Churchill said any blessing in his defeat was very effectively disguised.

In which US town did Churchill make his 1946 'Iron Curtain' speech?

He warned of an iron curtain descending across Europe and called for a special relationship with America.

What did Churchill win in 1953 for his historical writing?

His major works included the six-volume The Second World War and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

How many houses a year did Churchill's 1951 government pledge to build, his main domestic aim?

Harold Macmillan, as Minister of Housing, hit the target.

What honour did Elizabeth II give Churchill in 1953, at which he was also knighted?

He later declined her offer to make him Duke of London, because of his son's objections.

What did Churchill suffer in June 1953 that was kept secret from the public and press?

He had recovered by November and stayed in office until 1955.

Under which pseudonym did Churchill usually exhibit his paintings?

He took up painting after resigning from the Admiralty in 1915.

Besides painting, which craft did Churchill practise at home, even joining a builders' union?

He was expelled from the union after he rejoined the Conservative Party.

Which honour did President Kennedy confer on Churchill in 1963?

He was the first of only eight people ever granted it, and could not attend the White House ceremony.

How was Churchill honoured after his death on 24 January 1965?

His coffin lay in state for three days and the ceremony was at St Paul's Cathedral.

Where was Churchill buried after his funeral at St Paul's Cathedral?

Bladon is close to his birthplace, Blenheim.

In a 2002 BBC poll of nearly 450,000 votes, Churchill was voted what?

Churchill College, Cambridge, was founded as a national memorial to him.

Why did Churchill sign his books 'Winston S. Churchill'?

The two shared a friendly correspondence.

What happened to the Graham Sutherland portrait presented to Churchill on his 80th birthday?

Churchill and his wife reportedly hated it.

Which 2017 film won Gary Oldman an Oscar for playing Churchill?

John Lithgow, Albert Finney and Brendan Gleeson also won awards for playing him.

Which ball sport was Churchill said to be the only one ever to interest him?

He played it during his army years in India.

For how many of the years between 1900 and 1964 was Churchill a Member of Parliament?

He represented five different constituencies over that time.

During the 1940 debate over whether to seek peace terms, who proposed using Mussolini as an intermediary?

Churchill's resolve to fight on won out after he rallied the outer cabinet.

Roughly how many people died in the 1943 Bengal famine?

His government was faulted for refusing more grain imports, citing a shortage of shipping.

Which future US general did Roosevelt make commander of the European Theater, later Supreme Allied Commander?

Churchill worked closely with him on the planning of the Normandy invasion.

What was the title of Churchill's only novel, a Ruritanian romance?

He wrote it around the same time as his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, while based in Bangalore.

As a young war correspondent in Cuba in 1895, Churchill sent his reports to which London paper?

He later covered the Sudan and South Africa for The Morning Post, whose dispatches became London to Ladysmith via Pretoria.

How many of the 43 death sentences passed while Churchill was Home Secretary did he commute?

He also implemented a prison reform programme and handled the Tonypandy riots during his 1910-11 tenure.

Which of Churchill's children died of sepsis in August 1921, a loss that haunted him for life?

His mother had died just three months earlier; his fifth and last child, Mary, was born the following year.

To whom did Churchill lose his Dundee seat in the 1922 general election?

Edwin Scrymgeour's win left Churchill, as he put it, without an office, a party or an appendix.

How many volumes made up Churchill's Marlborough: His Life and Times, published 1933-38?

He toured his ancestor's battlefields in 1932 while writing the biography of the 1st Duke of Marlborough.

Churchill worked to overcome which speech difficulty by repeating phrases heavy with the letter 's'?

Despite it, he became one of the most celebrated orators of the twentieth century.

In a 1930 article Churchill called for the creation of what, making him an early pan-European?

He backed the Council of Europe in 1949 and the Coal and Steel Community in 1951, provided Britain joined no federation.

Which constituency did Churchill represent from 1945, where his family watched the count on election night?

Daughter Mary described the lunch that followed, as defeat loomed, as 'an occasion of Stygian gloom'.