Churchill: 11 Things You Should Know

David Cameron described Winston Churchill as "a great leader and a great Briton," but did he know the former Conservative Prime Minister had a stutter and once spent three days hiding in a mineshaft.

:: He spent three days down a mine.
In 1899, Winston Churchill escaped from a Boer prisoner of war camp and hid in a mine. He had been captured after his train had been ambushed by Boer commandos.
He managed the 300-mile journey to freedom with only four bars of chocolate to live on, and when he got back to British lines sent a telegram saying: "I have lost many pounds of weight, but I am lighter in heart".

:: He had a stutter.
Journalist Harold Begbie once wrote that Churchill was "more often fighting himself than his enemies" when he gave a speech.

:: He supported the use of chemical weapons.
In War Office minutes from 1919, he said: "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas.
"It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected."

:: The Gallipoli invasion, which resulted in 250,000 casualties, was Churchill’s idea.
Then head of the Royal Navy, Churchill planned to create a clear sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
The first stage was to invade Gallipoli, but after nine months Allied troops were evacuated in January 1916, with at least 46,000 troops having been killed.

:: His mother had a snake tattoo around her wrist.
She was also an American who became engaged to his father three days after their first meeting.
A biography of the Churchill family claims she had a two-year affair with King Edward VII (the Queen’s great-grandfather) who she called “Tum Tum” because of his build.

:: His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a maverick Tory MP.
He died exactly seventy years before his son Winston.
Many people, reportedly including Churchill, suggested that Lord Randolph died of syphilis, though the Churchill Centre now argues it may have down to a brain tumour.
He was a leading proponent of "Tory Democracy", which suggested Conservatives could be the party of the masses, not the Liberals.

:: He presented Joseph Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad.
The gift was "a token of homage of the British people".
At the end of the 1944 ceremony Stalin gave the sword to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov who promptly dropped it.

:: He opposed self-rule for India.
When Mahatma Gandhi visited the Indian Viceroy, the man responsible for India for colonial rulers Britain, in 1931, Churchill described it as "alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi ... striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-Regal Palace".

:: He was a Liberal.
Churchill controversially crossed the floor in 1904. He was then elected as a Liberal MP for Manchester North West in 1906.

:: He lost his rag with the Polish government during World War Two.
Churchill told exiled Prime Minister Stanislaw Mikolajczyk: "You are callous people who want to wreck Europe ... You have no sense of responsibility ... You do not care about Europe’s future ... You only have your own miserable selfish interests in mind."

:: He won a Nobel prize in 1953.
It was for literature.
The Nobel committee said of Britain’s Prime Minister: "Churchill’s mature oratory is swift, unerring in its aim, and moving in its grandeur.
"There is the power which forges the links of history. Napoleon’s proclamations were often effective in their lapidary style. But Churchill’s eloquence in the fateful hours of freedom and human dignity was heart-stirring in quite another way.
"With his great speeches he has, perhaps, himself erected his most enduring monument."
In his acceptance speech, delivered by his wife, Churchill said: "I do hope you are right.