Born in 1874 to wealthy and aristocratic parents Churchill's childhood and early education were distinguished only by poor behavior and worse grades. It was with great difficulty that he succeeded in entering the Royal Military College at Sandhurst when he was 19. Once at Sandhurst, however, things changed. Churchill graduated eighth in a class of 150.
Churchill served in the army for only five years after graduation, seeing action in a number of theaters. In 1899 he resigned his commission and ran for Parliament. He was defeated and returned to military life as a war correspondent covering the Boer War in South Africa.
While there Churchill, though a civilian, was made prisoner of war and effected a daring escape, thus acquiring war hero status. A hero was needed at the time, for the war was going badly for Britain and when Churchill returned to England his new status may have been a factor in his second, successful bid for a Conservative seat in Parliament.
Churchill's political career was marred by a number of electoral defeats in various ridings. It was not until he was elected in Epping in 1924 that he attained a permanent seat in the House of Commons. In the interim he switched party allegiances several times, starting as a Conservative, then a Liberal and finally settling as Conservative again before he became Prime Minister in 1940.
It was not that Churchill was an opportunist, changing Party affiliations for political gain. Rather, his firmly held convictions led him to switch parties when party doctrine changed.
It was the Liberal party that afforded Churchill his first Cabinet posting, President of the Board of Trade, in 1908. This posting also afforded him his first major political disaster, Tonypandy, which haunted him long past the close of World War II.
In 1910, striking coal miners in Tonypandy, Wales, began to riot. Churchill sent 300 London police officers to put down the riots and two miners were killed. His political opponents accused him of being an enemy of labor and the common people in the ensuing row. It was an event that would be instrumental in his wartime government's ousting in the election of 1945.
Despite his unpopularity with labor, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. Here he proved to be both effective and popular until his second great disaster, the Dardanelles campaign of 1915.
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