The first name that comes to me is Winston Churchill. Churchill was probably the geatest wartime leader in what we call the "free world". After the war the British threw him out on his ear.
And then he was re-elected in the 1950s. He was Prime Minister twice.
When he lost the election, someone asked him if the British public are being ungrateful. Churchill replied that they weren't being ungrateful but that he was voted out of office because the British people wanted to forget about the horrors of the War.
In 2002, Churchill was voted the greatest Briton ever on BBC's "100 Greatest Britons."
He was British Prime Minister from
10 May 1940 –
27 July 1945 and from
26 October 1951 –
7 April 1955. His first Deputy Prime Minister was Clement Atlee and his second was Anthony Eden. Atlee and Eden also became Prime Minister - Atlee twice. Churchill died in 1965 and was given a huge state funeral.
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Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (Can) (
30 November 1874 –
24 January 1965) was an
English statesman and author, best known as
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the
Second World War. Well-known as an orator, strategist, and politician, Churchill was one of the most important leaders in modern
British and
world history. He won the 1953
Nobel Prize in Literature for his many books on English and world history. Sir Winston Churchill was voted the greatest-ever Briton in the 2002 BBC poll the
100 Greatest Britons.
Churchill's legal surname was Spencer-Churchill (he was related to the
Spencer family), but starting with his father,
Lord Randolph Churchill, his branch of the family used the name
Churchill in their public life.
Winston Churchill was a descendant of the first famous member of the Churchill family,
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Winston's politician father,
Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the
7th Duke of Marlborough; Winston's mother was Lady Randolph Churchill (née
Jennie Jerome), daughter of American millionaire
Leonard Jerome.
Winston Churchill was born in
Blenheim Palace in
Woodstock, Oxfordshire on 30th November 1874.
As was typical for upper-class boys at that time, he spent much of his childhood at
boarding schools. At
Harrow School, he had an independent and rebellious nature and generally did poorly, for which he was punished. However, he did well in English and history. He was also the school's
fencing champion. He was rarely visited by his mother (then known as
Lady Randolph), whom he loved very dearly, and wrote letters begging her to either come or let his father permit him to come home. As an adult, Winston developed a closer, sibling-like relationship with his mother.
He followed his father's career keenly but had a distant relationship with him. His desolate, lonely childhood stayed with him throughout his life. On the other hand, as a child he was very close to his nanny, Elizabeth Anne Everest.
Second term as Prime Minister
Churchill was restless and bored as leader of the Conservative opposition in the immediate post-war years. After Labour's defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His third government — after the wartime national government and the brief caretaker government of 1945 — would last until his resignation in 1955. During this period, he renewed what he called the "
special relationship" between Britain and the United States, and engaged himself in the formation of the post-war order.
Churchill with Canadian Prime Minister
Louis St. Laurent in 1954
His domestic priorities were, however, overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crises, which were partly the result of the continued decline of British military and imperial prestige and power. Being a strong proponent of Britain as an international power, Churchill would often meet such moments with direct action.
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/
The Mau Mau Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising
In 1951, grievances against the colonial distribution of land came to a head with the Kenya Africa Union demanding greater representation and land reform. When these demands were rejected, more radical elements came forward, launching the Mau Mau rebellion in 1952. On
17 August 1952, a state of emergency was declared, and British troops were flown to
Kenya to deal with the rebellion. As both sides increased the ferocity of their attacks, the country moved to full-scale civil war.
In 1953, the Lari massacre, perpetrated by Mau-Mau insurgents against
Kikuyu loyal to the British, changed the political complexion of the rebellion and gave the public-relations advantage to the British. Churchill's strategy was to use a military stick combined with implementing many of the concessions that Attlee's government had blocked in 1951. He ordered an increased military presence and appointed General Sir George Erskine, who would implement Operation Anvil in 1954 that broke the back of the rebellion in the city of
Nairobi. Operation Hammer, in turn, was designed to root out rebels in the countryside. Churchill ordered peace talks opened, but these collapsed shortly after his leaving office.
wikipedia.org
