Winston Churchill’s War

S01E01 In the first episode we establish the long career that to many seemed already to have run its course: born into the aristocracy, Churchill was a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, he had charged with the British cavalry at Omdurman, been captured as a newspaper correspondent in the Anglo-Boer War, been Home Secretary before the First World War, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and served on the Western Front. His first attempts to return to parliament met with failure. After World War One, his attitude to Indian self-rule, and other British colonial interests, was to modern ears, blatantly racist and out of step with the mood. His most notable action as chancellor, returning Britain to the Gold Standard, was disastrous. But by the late 1920s, a new type of political figure was transforming the European landscape, and our focus on Churchill as a contradictory and unique leader sharpens, as we follow his warnings through the years in which the dictators rose in Europe - The years in which he seemed to sense that he and the new German führer, Adolf Hitler, were on a collision course. War – the invasion of Poland – brought Churchill back to the Admiralty and to the cabinet. The fall of Norway finally brought an end to Neville Chamberlain’s premiership, and with the refusal of Lord Halifax to enter 10 Downing Street, brought Winston Churchill to the place he had been born for: the leadership of his country in time of war.