Winston Churchill was born into a noble English family in 1874 but did poorly at school and was thought of as a difficult, restless boy. He joined the army, traveled to wars in India and Africa as a young soldier and reporter, was captured by enemy forces, and escaped - all before he was 26.
He spent most of his life in politics, but his most famous moment came in May 1940, when he became Britain’s prime minister days before Nazi Germany swept across France. Bombs were already falling on London. Churchill gave a series of stubborn, inspiring speeches - “we shall fight on the beaches,” “their finest hour” - that helped keep the country going through the war.
Away from politics, Churchill loved hobbies. He laid brick walls at his country house, painted around 550 oil paintings, and wrote so many history books and articles that in 1953 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
