Once war broke out, Churchill shed tears of happiness when he told his wife, Clementine , that he had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, the same job that he had had on the outbreak of the Great War.
Over the coming months he cried when bidding farewell to Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, the day before the fall of Paris, and when he was applauded in the Commons three weeks later for sinking the French fleet at Oran. In total contrast to Adolf Hitler, Churchill visited bombed out streets and communities throughout the war, where the bravery of the people he met often reduced him to tears. Churchill was not a depressive in the normally accepted sense of the term; it was a mis-diagnosis.
He got depressed about things that would have depressed anyone, but his tears were almost never in response to defeats, when the most he ever showed was a defiant growl. He was so visibly moved by the suffering that he saw.
An account of the sufferings of occupied France moved Churchill to tears the following month, but they were used to good effect in redoubling his determination to make Hitler and the Nazis pay for what they were doing. Yet even something as mundane as a lunch with lobby journalists in March could set Churchill off. That October, he was also moved to tears during a cabinet meeting by a speech from Jan Christian Smuts, the prime minister of South Africa.
March-pasts, visiting submarines and dying friends, the cheers of the Commons, receiving the freedom of the City of Paris at the Hotel de Ville after its liberation in all had him in tears. Sometimes the intransigent manner with which General Sir Alan Brooke, the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, would block his ideas would reduce him to tears of sheer frustration, but he never once overruled the committee when they were unanimous about an issue, which was most of the time.
The older Churchill got, the more he wept, and nor did it take such powerful stimuli as during the war. Prime minister once more in , he disembarked from a train in Ottawa and started crying as soon as the Royal Canadian Air Force band struck up Rule, Britannia.
The death of George VI in February had the expected effect. The prime minister went to Heathrow to meet the new Queen, and took his secretary, Jane Portal — now Lady Williams of Elvel — to whom he was dictating in the car, who today recalls how he was in a flood of tears for much of the journey. He later broke down crying when rehearsing his speech about the king that he was going to deliver to the Commons. Churchill also exhibited a strong hatred for Mahatma Ghandi and his campaign of peaceful resistance, which he saw as threat to the British Empire.
Veteran British journalist Peregrine Worsthorne has accused Churchill of warmongering. Skip to header Skip to main content Skip to footer. Home News UK News. In Depth. Churchill as hero: Churchill is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders Europe has ever seen, leading the Allies to victory in the Second World War. Winston Churchill quotes: memorable words of a master orator. The Bank of England official warning women against home working. Behind the scenes.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size. More often than not, he was fighting wars or reporting on them or leading his nation in them. More than any other leader, Churchill stared down fascism on behalf of the free world. But those protesters defacing his statue "racist" have history on their side, too. License this article.
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