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Across the Aisle. In February 1901, Winston Churchill rose to make his maiden speech in the House of Commons, which was to be his stage for more than half a century. At 26, he was a slim, elegant figure, with his family's high forehead and prominent eyes, and his parliamentary style inevitably evoked memories of his father, a famed Tory leader. He had the same rolling eloquence, the lightning shafts of wit by which a Churchill could start a storm or turn a tempest back into a teapot. But he had more. In Winston's oratory, the English language and the English spirit came together as fuel and flame.
One day in 1904, Churchill entered the House, bowed to the Speaker, and turning his back on the Conservative benches, sat down in the front row of the Liberal Opposition next to David Lloyd George, the fiery, humbly born Welshman who was to influence Churchill more profoundly than any other political figure in Britain. Free Trader Churchill broke with the Tories over their policy of high tariffs and protectionism, but he also was attracted by the Liberals' program of social reform; in 1908, as a minister in Herbert Asquith's gifted administration, he worked tirelessly to improve the working-class Briton's harsh existence.
While fighting a by-election in Dundee, Churchill met Clementine Hozier, the granddaughter of a Scottish earl. Sorbonne-educated and a passionate Liberal herself, she was beautiful, intelligent, and ten years younger than Winston. Their wedding in 1908 was a highlight of the social season, and as Winston reported later, they "lived happily ever afterwards."
Absorbed in Politics. Life could not have been altogether happy for the Churchills, for Winston in those days was probably the most hated man in the House of Commons. The "Blenheim Rat," as his foes called him, was ostracized by most of his friends, who considered the crusading social reformer a traitor to his class. Churchill immersed himself in politics, also embarked on a shrewd, solid series of biographies, notably of his father and Marlborough. Then, in the summer of 1911, when imperial Germany gave the first unmistakable signs of belligerency, Old Soldier Churchill turned all his energies to the study of military affairs and foreign policy. From his desk in the Home Office he bombarded the Cabinet with brash, penetrating menns on European strategy. Prime Minister Asquith was impressed. That October, Asquilh asked him if he would like to take over the Admiralty. "Indeed I would," said the 36-year-old minister.
The years that followed tested to the full those Churchillian qualities—daring, prescience, determination—that were to prove his nation's deliverance in two world wars. Churchill built a massive new fleet, converted the navy from coal to oil, pressed development of Britain's first naval aircraft. He also promoted a cumbersome, comic-looking vehicle that was labeled "Winston's Folly"; it later became known as the tank.