Sir Winston Churchill - Creative Genius
The Political Leader Who Excelled in Literature and Painting
Jul 7, 2009
Few world leaders with the sort of political career and war-time leadership demands that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill faced had time nor inclination to be creative. Creativity and political power seem at opposite ends of the spectrum. Nevertheless, Churchill, even in the busiest and most stressful circumstances, found time for creative pursuits and creative thinking.
Churchill was a Prolific Writer
Given his appalling school record, it is clear that Churchill was largely self-educated. In the army, he began to read widely from great literature, and historical texts, including Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Such works became the model for his own writing and speech-making style. He commenced his writing career in 1898 by writing war campaign reports, followed by a novel, Savrola, in 1900. He wrote the biographies of both his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and his famous ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.
He is best-known for his histories: The First World War (4 Volumes), his memoirs of the Second World War (6 Volumes) for which he won the Nobel Prize for literature, and, in retirement, his History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 Volumes). While out of office from 1929, he devoted himself to writing for newspapers and magazines, was paid the highest rates, and, according to Davenport and Murphy , The Lives of Winston Churchill, was second only to George Bernard Shaw in his earnings from writing at that time.
Perhaps his most demanding writing effort was the 4000 word letter he wrote to President Roosevelt to plead for US intervention in the Second World War. According to Lewis Broad in Winston Churchill: the Years of Preparation, Churchill stated: “If we go down, Hitler has a very good chance of conquering the world.” While the US chose to preserve its neutrality until attacked by the Japanese themselves, Broad writes that the letter did persuade President Roosevelt to dodge the requirement that a neutral power must not sell arms to a combatant by using a loophole which allowed the leasing of equipment. Thus Lend-Lease was instituted.
Churchill Was a Renowned Artist
John Spencer Churchill, the Prime Minister’s nephew, recalls in Crowded Canvas how the depressed Winston withdrew to Hoe Farm in Surrey in 1915, found his nephew’s water colour box and immediately sat down to paint a picture. The task occupied him for the entire day, and launched him into painting in oils, his favoured medium. According to Alan Moorehead in Winston Churchill in Trial and Triumph, Churchill exhibited at the Royal Academy every year, first under the name of Mr. Winter so that his work would be accepted on its merits. There were hundreds of unsigned paintings piled up in back rooms of his home. He even wrote an essay called Painting as a Pastime in 1948. He largely painted outdoors, but also did portraits, and even painted the devastated landscapes of Europe while in the trenches.
Churchill Had a Lively and Inquiring Creative Mind
Churchill biographer Alan Moorehead points out that Churchill involved himself in every aspect of the war effort. He quotes President Roosevelt as saying of Churchill: “He has at least a hundred ideas a day, of which four are good.” He pushed for the development of “Pluto”, a pipeline under the channel to carry petrol to France, a system for dispersing fog from landing fields, code-named “Fido”, and an artificial harbour for the Normandy invasion.
Churchill's Role in Developing the Royal Naval Air ServiceWhen planes were in their infancy, Churchill learnt to fly, albeit badly, according to Richard Armstrong in Finest Hour -1962. While others could not see what business the Royal Navy could have with planes, Churchill had the visonary notion of launching planes from the decks of battle ships and took part in experiments. Professor A. M Low adds that Britain was the first country to have a plane-mounted machine gun or to launch a torpedo from the air.
His most long-lived and dramatic contribution to modern warfare was his 1915 introduction of the army tank. Churchill by no means invented the tank, but, before his intervention, prototypes had been suggested and dismissed by British leaders such as Lord Kitchener as ‘toys’.
Development of the Army Tank
Churchill, however, watched a demonstration of a track-based car tear down fences and immediately saw the potential. As he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, the new development became a surprising adjunct to the navy effort, rather than the army. The new war machines were referred to as landships. The secret development was code-named “tank”, to fool the enemy into thinking it was the development of water-carriers, and the name stuck. Churchill persevered with the concept even after initial deployment ended in the fiasco of bogged and abandoned vehicles. Once the tank had proved its worth, Britain made decisive use of the weapon. By the end of the war, according to Roll-of-Honour.com, the British had produced 2636 tanks, and the Germans, who failed to see their worth, built just 20. Churchill's role in the introduction was acknowledged in World War II when a model was named in his honour [see photo below].
In his 90 years of life, Winston Churchill proved to be a remarkably prolific man in several areas of creativity. Nonetheless, he found time also for more mundane pursuits such as horse racing, gardening, the theatre, pets, including goldfish and, of course, cigar-smoking.
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