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War Correspondent
As a reporter for the London Morning Post during the Boer War, Churchill crafted a lively mix of second-hand accounts, personal impressions, and commentary. His writings from the battlefield exhibited the literary, journalistic, and historical skills that would characterize his future career and generated sufficient income to allow him to enter politics. Throughout his career, Churchill would write popular articles to supplement his political and literary income and maintain his lifestyle. |
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Painter
During the summer of 1915, following his fall from political power, Churchill, discovered the world of painting. He wrote later that having been forced "cruelly" into inactivity, "the Muse of Painting came to my rescue." About 500 Winston Churchill paintings exist. Although confident and self-assured in fields of politics, oratory, and writing, he was modest about his achievements as a painter. He sought and accepted constructive criticism and enjoyed experimenting with new media and techniques. Churchill once vowed, "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so to get to the bottom of the subject." |
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Writer
Churchill was a prolific author throughout his career, writing histories of both World Wars, biographies, an autobiography of his early life, and even a novel. In the 1930s, while out of power and increasingly dependent on his writing and public speaking to sustain his lifestyle, Churchill began his multi-volume study of the English-speaking peoples as a way to trace the emergence of concepts of freedom and law. In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values." |
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Orator
Even from the start of his political career, Churchill was known for his rhetorical eloquence across Britain. But during the tense early months of World War II, when Britain stood alone with her Empire and Commonwealth, surviving the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, his speeches and broadcasts carried a message of determination and defiance around the globe. Churchill's inspirational wartime speeches rank among the greatest delivered by any leader in history. He carefully crafted the rhetorical flourishes in addresses that he broadcast to the nation over the radio, to members of Parliament, and to a wide variety of groups. Ten years after World War II ended, Churchill said of his wartime role that it was Britain that "had the lion's heart," he merely "had the luck to be called upon to give the roar." |
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