Finest Hour 187, First Quarter 2020 Page 42 By Michael McMenamin 125 Years Ago Winter 1895 • Age 20 “He Was My Model” As 1895 opened, three events occurred in the first seven weeks—a wedding and...

Finest Hour 186, Fourth Quarter 2019 Page 14 By Edwina Sandys Edwina Sandys is an award-winning artist based in New York City Her books include Winston Churchill: A Passion for...

Finest Hour 186, Fourth Quarter 2019 Page 42 By Michael McMenamin 125 Years Ago Autumn 1894 • Age 20 “Wild With Excitement” Winston was still smitten with Molly Hackett On 8 October he wrote his mother,...

Churchill was appointed Home Secretary following the January 1910 election, when the Liberal party was again returned to power. It was during this time that he most clearly demonstrated that strange mix of his nature - of the radical reformer and the reactionary. While he helped introduce reforms to the prison system, reducing sentencing for younger people and improving conditions, he also opposed strikers and refused to support votes for women.

In 1922, Churchill found himself out of Parliament for the first time in twenty-two years, after losing his seat in the General Election. He retired to the South of France to take up writing but couldn't stay away from politics for long.

Churchill rapidly established himself as a prominent New Liberal, combining a commitment to free trade with support for a programme of social reform and was one of the main architects of Britain’s incipient welfare state. To those Tories he’d ‘betrayed’ by ‘crossing the floor’, he was now betraying their class, too. By April 1908, however, his ‘star’ seemed to be shining clearer and clearer (see prophecy), as he achieved cabinet rank, as President of the Board of Trade in Herbert Asquith’s new government, at the age of only thirty three. In this role he introduced a number of initiatives (not all of which were adopted during his tenure but were later).

A postcard, titled ‘Offensive against Antwerp’ depicting the scene on 8 October 1914 Private collection of Wolfgang Sauber copyright: By Anonymous (private collection of Wolfgang Sauber (Xenophon)) [Public domain or...

Churchill ‘during one of his darkest hours’, 1916, by Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, oil on canvas copyright: Lent by the Churchill Chattels Trust; Image National Portrait Gallery, London...

copyright: Reproduced with kind permission of His Grace, The Duke of Marlborough...