#225 Winston Churchill

**David Senra** (0:00)
In his 90 years, Churchill spent 55 as a member of parliament, 31 years as a minister, and nearly 9 years as prime minister. He had been present at or fought in 15 battles, and he's been awarded 14 campaign medals. He had been a prominent figure in the First World War, and a dominant one in the second. He had published nearly 10 million words, more than professional writers in their lifetime, and painted over 500 canvases, more than most professional painters.
He was a fellow of the Royal Society, a university chancellor, and won a Nobel Prize.
Scores of towns made him an honorary citizen, dozens of universities awarded him honorary degrees, and 13 countries gave him a medal.
How many bottles of champagne he consumed is not recorded, but it may be close to 20,000.
He had a large and much loved family, and countless friends.
So, Winston Churchill led a full life, and few people are ever likely to equal it. Its amplitude, variety, and success on so many fronts. But all can learn from it, especially in five ways.
The first lesson is, always aim high. As a child, Churchill received no positive encouragement from his father, and little from his mother.
He was aware of his failure at school, but he still aimed high.
Conscious of his ignorance, he set himself to master English history, and to familiarize himself with great chunks of literature.
Once his own master, he played to win the top award in the world.
Lesson number two is, there's no substitute for hard work. The balance he maintained between flat out work and creative and restorative leisure is worth study by anyone that's holding a top position. He never evaded hard work itself, taking important and dangerous decisions in the course of a 16 hour day.
No one ever worked harder than Churchill to make himself a master orator. He worked hard at everything to the best of his ability. He put tremendous energy into everything.
Third, Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster, accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down.
His powers of recuperation, both in physical illness and in psychological responses to abject failure were astounding. He had courage, the most important of all virtues, and its companion, fortitude.
These strengths are inborn, but they can also be cultivated, and Churchill worked on them all of his life.
In a sense, his whole career was an exercise in how courage can be displayed, reinforced, guarded, and goaled out carefully, heightened, and concentrated, and then conveyed to others. Fourth, Churchill wasted an extraordinary small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meanness of life, recrimination, shifting the blame to others, malice, revenge seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas. Having fought hard, he washed his hands and went on to the next contest. It is one reason for his success. There is nothing more draining and exhausting than hatred.
And last, the absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill's life. His face could light up in the most extraordinary attractive ways as he became suffused with pleasure at an unexpected and welcome event. Joy was a frequent visitor to Churchill's psyche, banishing boredom, despair, discomfort, and pain. He liked to share his joy and give joy. He showed his people a love of jokes and was the source of them to many. No great leader was ever laughed at or with more than Churchill.
He drew his strength from people and imparted it to them in full measure. Everyone can find comfort and reassurance in his life story. That is an excerpt from the epilogue of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Churchill by Paul Johnson. So I did, I read The Splendid and the Vile, one of the best books I've ever read. I think it's Founders No. 187 After I read that book, or I think on that podcast, I said that I had heard that there's over a thousand, I think Churchill is one of the, maybe the person that's written, that's had the most biographies written about him. I heard that there's over a thousand that have been published. And so I got a bunch of book recommendations, biography recommendations on Winston Churchill from listeners. This is one of them. I was shocked that when the book arrived, it's only 166 pages. And so that was immediately intriguing to me. How do you tell the story of one of history's famous, most famous and formidable individuals in just 166 pages? And then I start doing research on the author. And now I've found, I love when this happens, because when you find a new author, you just start ordering all of his books. And I found out that he wrote bestselling biographies on Napoleon, Churchill, Eisenhower, Socrates and Mozart. And so there's a blurb in the very beginning of the book that I want to read to you real quick.