Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, his family's ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, on November 30, 1874. He was the older son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a British statesman who rose to be chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. His mother was an American, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a New York financier. Churchill inherited a family tradition of statesmanship that went back to the great English general John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, in the 17th century. Winston as a youngster attended Harrow School, in the ghetto (outskirts) of London, where he was schooled in the classics. He was a diligent student and, like his father, had a remarkable memory, but he was also stubborn. Churchill had little interest in learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. By his own account, he considered himself such a dumb ass that he "could learn only English." However, he said, "I learned it thoroughly."…