#320 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 2

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/2034212506e83c14

Churchill lost something in nineteen fifteen that he never regained.
At forty years old, youth begins to slip away from most people.
But what Winston lost was not merely a matter of looks or energy.
It was a spirit.
That had once seemed so vital.
And inexhaustible.
A lively spark that had served him well from crisis to crisis.
But it flickered and went out in nineteen fifteen.
And Churchill was never the same.
He persevered in politics until his moment in the sun came twenty five years later.
in nineteen forty.
But by that time he was a harder
Much less exuberant character.
He had learned the tough lessons of a long life lived at a high level.
That even the best plans go awry.
That even the best friends prove unreliable.
And that even the best intentions may be misunderstood.
It was better for the world that he had known failure than
and suffered moments of self doubt.
What took the place of this glamorous charm
Was the cumulative force of a character.
That had been tested and strengthened over time.
These experiences had taught young Churchill invaluable lessons.
Often a politician who fights on equal terms with other giants is already in his prime.
and will be too old to apply the lessons of his experience in a second career like that which Churchill enjoyed
as Prime Minister in nineteen forty.
He brought to that position of leadership a level of skill and understanding that few politicians could rival.
For twenty five years.
After the end of his first rise to power,
Churchill was frustrated.
to sit and watch as others reach the top
While he seemed to languish in lesser positions.
He was forced to learn patience.
And to ponder the meaning
of his early experiences.
Most importantly, he refused to accept that the promise of his early career was dead and gone.
He continued to guard that legacy
Even when few believed it was worth guarding.
His old enemy, Edward Carson, seemed to understand that there was something in Churchill's character
That simply wouldn't allow him to give up.
At a dinner.
Not long after Winston was dismissed,
as the first lord of the Admiralty.
A journalist asked Carson.
What is the trouble with Churchill?
Carson thought for a second.
And shot back a perceptive reply.
That would have made Winston smile.
Winston.
Is a dangerous optimist.
That is an excerpt from the very end of the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today.
Which is Young Titan, The Making of Winston Churchill, and is written by Michael Sheldon.
So I stumbled into a rather lucky
uh set of circumstances. Last week, if you listen to last week's episode, covers the first twenty six years
Of
Winston Churchill's life. I had bought the book that I'm holding my hand.
Months before I bought the other book.
I didn't even know. This book picks up exactly where
Last week's book.
Ended.
So this book is focused. This is a very unique biography of Winston Churchill. There's over eleven hundred
biographies and and print in the English language on Winston Churchill by the way.
Uh but this book picks up it covers
Only the year.
Uh twenty six. He's twenty six to forty years old when this book ends.
So you don't have to listen to last week's episode before you listen to this one, but I think listening to them
uh both will give you a better understanding'cause what we're trying to figure out is like okay
Everybody knows the Winston Churchill.
uh you know, he who's in his sixties, the one that's fighting Hitler.
The one that inspires his entire country to fight, the one that refuses.
To give up.
What this book is about is the personality and the force of will.
Upon which is future success, it's gonna come twenty five years after the book ends.
rest upon. So let's jump right into what this book is about. History likes winners.
And the image of the older Victorious Churchill has long overshadowed the story of the eager young man who soared to prominence only to find that he had overreached.
And who left office with his reputation in tatter. So book starts he's twenty six old.
It's gonna end when he's forty and fired.
And wait till we get there because even his choice of what to do.
after he was fired and left in disgrace and rather in shock and depressed.
But really his choice of what to do next.
is one of the most admirable things about Winston and
Well uh something I talked about last week is everything that he did in his life he did not have to do.
He sought out difficulty, he sought out
greatness he really thought from a very early age. This is I think I said last week he's uh
maybe the most confident young man I've ever covered on the podcast. He believed from a very young age that he had a role to play in history.
Back to the book. So he leaves the office, reputation in tatters. Yet in many ways, this is really the crux of the entire book, yet in many ways this early period.
Is the most colorful of his career.
And it's a key
To his character.
Churchill thought his chance for greatness on a grand scale was
Would come early in life, and for such a restless, ambitious man, the long wait was difficult to bear. By the time he became prime minister at sixty five,
He was more than ready for the job now.
What's amazing, there's examples in this book, there's even examples in the book last week. He was expected
by himself and the people around him to be prime minister twenty twenty five years
before he actually reached that goal.
And yet the entire point
Is that he would not have been ready to take that position.
If he had gotten it when he wanted.
If he had gotten it earlier in life. There's a lot of parallels. I think I have a lot of um
Notes. Steve Jobs is on my mind. The st the the the wilderness period.
You know, when Steve was fired from Apple and then when he comes back and and goes on it sets the greatest record in my argument.
uh greatest record in entrepreneurship history.
And Steve would tell you this himself.
Without that thirteen years of struggle.
he wouldn't have nearly been the leader and the entrepreneur that he was later in his career. Same exact
case here for Churchill, which we'll talk to a lot about today.
He had spent a lifetime preparing
For his part.
This sentence is one of the most important in the book and important understanding, Churchill. The adventures and ordeals
of those early years were essential to the making of the man who triumphed in the second world war.
Young Winston's career began with dreams of success that fueled a spectacular political rise.
But which ended in dramatic failures just like jobs, creating an equally spectacular fall, just like jobs.
At forty, he was largely written off as a man whose best days were behind him, just like jobs, except jobs that happen to jobs when he was thirty. As Shurchill confessed in old age, he had felt so misunderstood that
in those younger days that he thought that he had become
In the eyes of many, quote, a freak.
Always that.
But much hated and ruled out.
Redeeming this is his next mission if you think about how incredible
This guy persevered through this.
Redeeming the promise of his youth became the great challenge of his later life.
One thing that you get out of reading a bunch of biographies is you realize that people don't stumble into greatness. And it was the case for Winston Churchill as well.
In a conscious and methodical way, he set out as a young man to become the hero that he believed his era demanded.
He fashioned his career as a grand experiment to prove
That he could work his will on his times.
Persevering in that approach despite repeated setbacks.
And often harsh ridicule.
Of those who didn't share.
His high opinion of himself.
The reason, if you go back and listen to last week's podcast, the reason you go read that book. The book is excellent, but the reading of the book is gonna be very different from the podcast that you hear me that you heard uh that I made.
I wanted to focus, and I did this intentionally on the fact of this relentless self belief. And this is why.
I think we're gonna come to this a a lot today as well.
This idea.
uh my career's a grand experiment, I feel have a role to play.
I can c contribute, I can change the world.
You have to persevere in his case, he did it for decades.
In the face of other people telling them.
Stop believing your special, Winston. Why are you talking about yourself like this? Why do you think you're you're destined to do great things? Why do you have all this self-confidence? Fuck these people.
In this book and last book, there's a bunch of other people around Winston telling him to not be who he was.
In the last book and in this book too, there's a bunch of examples of people constantly trying to get Winston to not believe in himself.
And every time you have Winston refusing to cooperate, refusing to be in their eyes reasonable.
Why does that matter?
Because it is highly likely that if he gave in to the opinions of other people about himself.
Britain would be speaking German today.
The choices we make and the actions we pursue make a difference. They matter and they can change the course of history.
And this idea that Winston is constantly surrounded by people
That don't share his high opinion of him.
It's an important thing to point out and to repeat. No one knows you as well as you know you.
Therefore, your opinion about yourself is greater than all the other opinions of everybody else around you.
Winston Churchill's life is a decade after decade after decade example of that extremely important point.
Many of his contemporaries accepted that history is quote the biography of great men, but whether Churchill belonged among the great was always subject to hot debate. It is no longer a debate.
This is my favorite part of reading books about Winston Churchill.
And why I highly recommend you do as well. He had few doubts about his destiny, however.
At the heart of this story is an irrepressible spirit.
I believe in personality, he declared, endorsing the notion that the heroics of great leaders
Not vast movements or impersonal systems shape history. We live in an age of great events and little men, he said.
And if we are not to become the slaves of our own system.
It will only be by the bold efforts.
Of originality.
By repeated experiment and by the dispassionate consideration of the results of sustained and unflinching thought.
Little men.
Let events take their course.
I like things to happen.
And if they don't happen, I like to make them happen.
Churchill's words will fire you up. This guy was gifted.
at his mastery of the English language, you see it in his speeches, you see it in his writings.
Another thing I pointed out last week I want to repeat today.
So people around him they realized that there's this great line about him and they said that his ear
was sensitively attuned to the bugle note of history.
And the fact that he had a legendary ancestor, which I talked about last week, which is John Churchill. John Churchill, they said you know, was one of the greatest generals up there with Napoleon. Churchill writes a biography. Winston writes a biography about John Churchill says he never fought a battle, that he did not win, nor prestiged prestige a fortress that he did not take.
And if you really sit here and think, I'm only on page six.
But already.
You're you're sitting here and you're it you're
Completely enveloped.
In Churchill's
perspective, his personality, his world view and what what what I feel like he's
Speaking to the reader he's like
In every age, right? He's using the example, you know, he knew a ton of history. We're gonna talk about Napoleon. Uh you know I should buy the Kindle version of this book. I bet you if you buy the Kindle version, you search Napoleon, it's in there a dozen times, maybe ten times.
Over and over again.
Uh but the fact that he was he was since his ear was sensitively attuned to the bugle note of history
He greatly admired people that
achieve great things in the past. And really what the message that he's saying to you and I is in every age, there are great men.
Why not us, and why not now?
And so as he's reading about these great people, he realizes oh they're like me too. I like
I always talk about this example. I wasn't expecting to say this.
It's one of my favorite things I've ever heard.
And it's the fact that
Kobe Bryant obviously idolized Michael Jordan growing up, patterned a lot of his uh
His game after him.
Would watch video tapes of him. I remember this was hilarious. I read this like six hundred page biography of Kobe Bryant and his high school girlfriend was like
being interviewed like what's it like
dating Kobe Bryant.
Consists of me going over to his house and us watching videos of Michael Jordan.

And so early in his career, I think maybe the first time he ever played against Michael Jordan, his teammate
says, Hey, I got some advice. Whatever you do, don't look at Michael Jordan in the eye. And Kobe's like
What? Why wouldn't I do that?
And what he Kobe had realized, he's like, Oh, well, my teammate didn't realize is I'm that too.
And so there's all these examples of Churchill
being inspired by
these great people of the past, but not in like an set put'em up on a pedestal.
Not an idolization kind of way. It's like, Oh, I'm that too.
And so one of these people is Lord Byron.
And so it says that Churchill found encouragement
For his passionate nature in the writings of the romantic poet. So that's Lord Byron from early youth.
He was drawn to Byron as a stirring example.
of the man of action who is also a man of ideas.
Both men, so now he's starting to compare himself to Byron, right? Both men were dazzled by the story of Napoleon's rise and fall.
And both kept cherished busts.
Of the great French leader on their desks.
Churchill was fascinated.
By Byron's poetic meditation on Napoleon's unbounded ambition.
And so what I love is these people that master the English language or any language for that fact
And they're able to
Convey a deep insight or idea in just a handful of words.
And so Byron's
version of describing Napoleon's ambition only took
Five words.
He just he called it a fever at the core.
more similarities between Byron and Churchill. Like Byron Churchill was a chronicler
Of his own history.
In a series of books written at a rapid pace
In his early twenties he created vivid descriptions.
Of his early adventures as a soldier and war correspondent.
When I was twenty five years old, Churchill said in old age.
I had written as many books as Moses, something I discovered.
I think I discovered it this week when I was reading this book.
Churchill had written forty three books.
Did you know that? That that was very surprising to me.
And in these books it says he lived the adventure of a storybook character fighting
On the Indian frontier, scouting for rebels in Cuba, traveling along the Nile, and most dramatic of all, surviving capture by the Boers in South Africa.
And just like he predicted early in life.
His goal, I'm gonna get glory at war. I'm gonna use that war to get famous. I'm gonna use that famous to get elected to political office. That is exactly what happens.
when he has that daring escape.
uh after being in the P in the prisoner camp.
uh in South Africa, and then the the news of his escape spreads all over the world, becomes world famous, and he gets swept into office. So that is
The starting point of this book.
Also going to talk about what happens to him over the next 14 years. This is a journey that will take him from the beginning of his twenty sixth year to the end of his 40th year.
the failure part being very important. What he learned from failure was crucial to his later success.
But it was a devastating setback.
whose sting he would feel for years. That's the first time or maybe the second time.
I wrote the word Steve Jobs because there's so many times
That's it.
Winston.
Uh story parallel Steve. Between his rise and fall, he built a modern Navy, experimenting with radical social reforms.
survived various threats on his life, made powerful enemies and a few good friends.
Fell in love several times.
became a husband and a father, annoyed and delighted two British monarchs, took the measure of the German military machine.
risked his life in the air as a pilot in training.
authorized executions of notorious murders, and face deadly artillery barrages on the Western Front in World War One.
By the end of his first forty years he had a good understanding of how far his talents could take him and how far he could fall.
What remained constant.
Was his obedience to that bold
early declaration I believe in personality.
Exploring the heart of that personality.
Is the aim.
of this biography.
So in addition to spending the last few weeks reading two books about Churchill, I also rewatched this
m this movie called In the Darkest Hour. And there's a scene in the movie that I want to tell you about that comes at the very, very end.
The movie is just about him be becoming elected.
to prime minister when he's sixty five years old.
And what I found most interesting about the movie is all the pressure for the people around him in the government
You know we need a suit for peace for Hitler, we need to sue for peace. We need like let's give up. We can't fight this war. We're we're not gonna win.
Let's, you know, try to bring him to the bargaining table.
And the movie ends.
with the speech that happened in real life.
where you know half the people are trying to convince him to give up, the other half
are are with him saying we should fight.
He gives he's just a masterful
orator and very persuasive speaker.
And so what happens is by the end of the speech
Everybody's on his side.
And there's one guy that did not want this to happen. He's sitting in the audience with another guy, and uh one guy turns to the other guy and goes, What the hell just happened?
And his response is perfect. Churchill mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
Steve Jobs said the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world.
The most important point here is not that Churchill was born with this gift, is he got he developed it through practice.
In fact
Churchill had such a good memory and spoke so eloquently.
That if his wife was in the next room and she was hearing him speak
She would ask. She could not tell.
If he was speaking or reading aloud.
Even when he was speaking extemporaneously.
the sentence would come out fulfill only s if if they were written.
And so that's gonna be a present fact in any book that you pick up on Churchill.
He spent the days leading up to his speech polishing his remarks and committing them to memory.
He stood before a mirror pretending he was addressing the house. This became a common method for preparation for him, to the annoyance of others nearby. All day, recalled a friend, he might be heard booming away in his bedroom, rehearsing his facts.
And flourishes.
And the resounding knocks on the furniture. So hitting his hand to emphasize the point.
On the wooden furniture.
He would write out a short list of his major points and keep them handy while he spoke.
His greatest speeches would use common words in pleasing rhythms to cast complex ideas.
In memorable images.
From early adulthood to old age, Churchill's eye and ear were attuned to
To the discovery of arresting analogies.
Something else that Churchill has in common. Read everything. He read everything.
This is just like an early you go to Thomas Edison when he's like a twelve year old boy.
Working on the uh the rail line.
He would stop over I think in Detroit. He'd read
Every single book in the Detroit library.
Uh, I always tell the story'cause it's one of my favorite things ever.
uh Edwin Land gets to Harvard, right? Where he goes to the Harvard Library, reads every single book.
On light.
Once he finished that, he's like, Well, there's nothing else I can learn here. He drops out of Harvard, goes to New York City, then goes to New York City public library, reads every single book on light, then goes back to Harvard. Does it again.
Jeff Bezos is
Grandfather.
We talk about this when Jeff Bezos was a kid, he'd spend his summers on his grandfather's ranch in Texas. They'd go they'd bring him
to like the local library, let him sit on the floor and he would just read every single science fixtion book
In
The library.
You don't read one book, you don't read two, you read them all, and you see this over and over again.
While other politicians were content to get their information from a scattering of newspapers.
Churchill devoured whole shells.
Whole shelves of books.
Churchill began living with books and sleeping with encyclopedias.
Even from an early age, his work ethic surprised everyone around him. His power of work is prodigious.
It's almost commensurant with his passion for it.
The great thing about Churchill's life is so much of it's documented.
in writing and in speeches, even when he was young.
He'd go around, so he's in the House of Commons.
And he he doesn't feel like he has a peer group that is looking at life the same way in which he looks at life. And I think
understanding his view of life, knowing why he believed what he believed is key to understanding his actions. And so what he's noticing, he's like, Well my peers don't
Think the way I do.
Uh his peers weren't looking to cultivate a sense of destiny. They did not share his particular passion for great men and great monuments.
Churchill had a romantic view of life as a heroic endeavor full of grand sentiments.
Remember, he grew up in a physical environment that celebrated greatness.
Winston was in no danger of remaining quiet about his own achievements. The house could still speak volumes on his behalf.
As a testament to the fighting spirit.
And boundless ambition of his breed. Talking about John Churchill again.
Uh Winston Churchill wanted to be the dominant political figure of the time.
So we're gonna talk more about
His relationship with his father. Remember, his father dies
I think Ch Churchill's about
maybe twenty years old when his father dies, his father dies relatively young.
And so you'll see in the way that a young
Churchill acts. Like he treats older, more powerful figures.
is really a s father figure. So if you've ever read Robert Carrell's books on LBJ, there's this thing that uh Lynn Johnson
They s Linon did this the same thing. Like he it's not that he didn't particularly admire his father or look up to him.
And yet he would early in his political career, he'd meet all these really successful usually speakers of the House, whatever the case is.
And I think they even use the designation in the book. They call him uh L B J's
They called him a professional son.
And in many ways Churchill's behavior reminded me of this.
The first example of this is this guy named Joseph Chamberlain.
Joseph Chamberlain is going to be this very powerful, like self made entrepreneur and then
uh very powerful political figure in Britain and and uh Neville Chainbert and a twist of fate.
This is uh Neville Chamberlain's father. Neville Chamberlain is obviously
the Prime Minister that was c basically kicked out.
uh during World War Two.
And Churchill takes his place.
Well way before that happens, thirty years before that happens.
Winston actually develops
A relationship
friendship with Joseph Chamberlain, they wind up becoming kind of enemies.
Just Chamberlain's older. I want to give you a little background on to
who he's seeking out and who he's trying to be influenced by. Joseph Chamberlain was a self made man.
He made his own fortune as an industrialist.
By mass producing screws so cheaply that he dominated the market.
He became one of Birmingham's largest employers and then moved into politics.
and transform the city.
This is definitely a world builder kind of personality.
In his city he decides to clear out the slums, he fixes the water supply.
And then he starts building all these uh erecting all these civic buildings.
Literally changing the physical environment in which
He inhabited, he gives Churchill a tour, turns to Churchill and says, The first time I came here, I came here to sell them screws.
And so Churchill seeks him out.
says Churchill was very friendly towards him in the same way
Uh he would treat him like a father figure and engage him in late night talks.
Often
That would last until two in the morning.
I had a great many more real talks with him than I ever had with my own father.
Churchill said.
And so in turn Joseph treats him almost like one of his own sons because at the time his two other sons
didn't seem they said they didn't seem headed for distinction.
And
Even at this young age.
Churchill only had one goal. This is gonna very similar to to Lyndon Johnson again.
The goal's the very top. I may start out as a congressman, right in L B G's case.
I'll go to Congress.
then I will be a senator, but his goal from day one is like I'm going to be the president
Churchill's goal from day one is I'm going to be the prime minister.
For Churchill, there was only one goal in politics, the top, and everything else, no matter how pleasant, was just a stepping stone.
And one thing that was particularly fascinating to me in this book
is they talk about like now, you know, he's kind of a Joe is kind of like a distinguished gentleman or trying to play like the role of aristocrat.
But there's a line that jumps out at me.
And it says on occasion Churchill caught a glimpse in him of the old cutthroat.
That word is literally in the book, right?
On occasion, Churchill caught a glimpse in him of the old cutthroat
King of the screw trade.
That's what people would call him. They would reference him as King of the Screw Trade.
And doing business against him was difficult because he was a cutthroat. Why is that important?
I've talked in the past about my obsession with Game of Thrones, watching
the series multiple times. I just went through it, I don't know, a year ago, six months ago, something like that, and took notes on literally any line. I have a
Have a an apple note.
of Game of Thrones lines I want to remember.
'Cause I think they're like maxims in instructive for life.
A couple of days ago I was just interviewed on Invest Like the Best. It's episode three forty three, in case you wanna
Listen to it.
But Patrick at the very end of that uh conversation.
He asked me like what is your favorite Game of Thrones line?
And I realized after the fact that my favorite Game of Thrones line is
those on the margin often come to control the center.
But my answer on the interview was actually my favorite Game of Thrones story.
Quick little story in like three or four sentences.
And so it comes from this character named Bron. Bron came from absolutely nothing, born in unbelievable poverty.
But he's one of these cutthroats and he's trying to negotiate a way to get the most valuable land or the most valuable castle.
in this actual like in this world that they're operating in. And when he states his goal that hey, I want High Garden.
And he states it to the sons of this illustrious family called the Lannisters.
One of them says High Garden will never belong to a cutthroat.
That is the word that they use. High garden will never belong to a cutthroat.
And Braun's response is excellent and it's a summary of what I've learned.
by reading hundreds of these biographies. And he says no.
Who were your ancestors, the one who made your family rich?
Fancy lads in silk?
They were fucking cutthroats.
That's how all the great houses started, isn't it?
By a hard bastard. And the way to think about this
is Joe Chamberlain.
was the cutthroat. He was the hard bastard. He's the one that built the family fortune.
And with age and time that aggressiveness
may diminish, but it never disappears. And we're seeing that even when he's a much older man.
In his interactions with Churchill, and чи says on occasion, Churchill caught a glimpse in him.
Of the old
Cutthroat.
And other people saw this too. There is a woman who compares, she meets both
Joe Chamberlain and Church on She compares both of them on separate pages. This is excellent.
Let me go to what she said about
Joe Chamberlain first.
She had looked closely into his personality and didn't like what she found.
By temperament, she concluded, he is an enthusiast and a despot.
Running alongside this genuine enthusiasm is a passionate desire to crush opposition to his will.
A longing to feel his foot.
On the neck of others.
Then she has dinner with Churchill. First impression she wrote of him in her diary. Restless.
Almost intolerably so.
Without capacity for sustained and unexcited labor.
Egotistical.
shallow minded and reactionary, but with a certain personal magnetism. He had
What the kids call Riz. What you and I would call
Charisma.
superhuman levels of charisma, but with a certain personal magnetism. That's the word she's using.
Great pluck and some originality, not of intellect, but of character.
He talked exclusively about himself.
He has no notion of scientific research, but his pluck, courage, resourcefulness.
And great tradition.
may carry him far.
So I'm gonna go back to this idea that other people constantly get you try to limit your ambition, try to dim your light for their sake. And I'm gonna compare and contrast it to the advice that he actually gets.
From Joseph Chamberlain.
So this guy says,
Uh when he was told one day that Winston was caught up in reading yet another book on Napoleon.
He shook his head in disappointment and said
That Winston would do better to study the drab heroes of life.
Framing oneself upon Napoleon has proved a dang to many a man before him.
That's just another way of saying Napoleon was special, you're not special, you're not Napoleon.
What are you doing? You're wasting your time.
That's not advice that other cutthroats or other people that have have achieved great things or or have the desire to achieve great things would give you.
So this is Joseph Chamberlain.
Somebody achieved great things.
Counseling a younger Winston Churchill he says if a man is sure of himself
It only sharpens him.
And makes him more effective.
Remember, Winston said he had more conversations with
uh Joseph Chamberlain that he had with his own father. That leads me into his relationship with his father and the fact that he's gonna write a thousand page
biography on his father.
A main influence in Winston Churchill's life, just like a lot of the people that you and I study, is the fact that you can always understand the son by the story of his father, that the story of the father is embedded in the son.
So before we get into this, I need to put down
This book and pick up
Hero of the Empire from last week. There is a photo insert.
And more importantly, a caption in the photo insert of that book.
That describes, gives you an overview.
Of the complicated
father son relationship.
Born into the highest ranks of British aristocracy, Churchill had an air of haughty self confidence even at the tender age of seven.
What he longed for most, however,
was the love and attention of his father.
His father's Lord Randolph Churchill.
Lord Randolph had little time for his oldest son, one of the greatest regrets of Churchill's life was
was that Randolph died
An early and tragic death depriving Winston of the chance to know his father.
And so now we have Churchill in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, I'm pretty sure it's late twenties, writing this gigantic
biography on his father. The biography was meant to honor Randolph's memory.
But writing it was also a way for Winston to understand his own life.
He had never established a close connection with Randolph, though he had yearned for one.
His father was a tragic figure.
An ambitious and outspoken politician, sounds familiar.
But a failure as a statesman at forty, P would argue.
That
Winston was just like Randolph, a failure as a statesman.
Randolph was a restless man always searching for attention.
But never getting enough to please him. Sounds just like his son.
The proud son of a great family, but a difficult husband and father. Living in Randolph's shadow was far
For much of his life.
Winston couldn't help wondering if his father's legacy was a blessing or a curse.
And so the fascinating part is in this biography
He's not just trying to tell the story of his father, he's trying to tell the story of himself.
The Randolph who emerges from Winston's book is a misunderstood hero who tries to inspire his party and his country to treat
Achieve great things.
But who is defeated by the forces of reaction and selfish interests.
Too soon his wings are clipped and he slowly falls to earth.
At the time that
Churchill's writing this, he has no idea that he's going to find
uh find a similar fate for himself.
About ten years from now.
He lives large and dies young.
A thousand pages long, the biography is a towering, gleaming monument
The sun gathering up.
The disordered pieces of his father's life to construct a romantic vision that might guide his own career.
What is also fascinating about this book is the fact that because his dad I think his dad dies when he's like forty six, something like that.
There's a lot of people that were friends with his dad, that worked with his dad, that were colleagues of his dad, that are still alive as Winston matures and becomes older, Winston becomes to know some of them.
And they usually hold an opinion like this.
Winston is astonishingly like his father in manners and ways.
And the whole attitude of his mind.
But Mr. Churchill is superior
To his father.
He adds a knowledge and industry that his father did not possess everywhere you go.
When you meet when people meet Winston Churchill, they're shocked.
at his energy, his intensity, and his work ethic. What is happening there?
Did Churchill know his father didn't possess these talents? Did ch is that part of what drove him to outdo his father?
You see a lot of lines like this. It was this deep well of strength that often left his contemporaries in wonder, and that sent him apart from so many other sons.
of the aristocracy.
Who thought it vulgar to appear too energetic.
It also distinguished him
From his father.
Why would he want to be distinguished from his father? What killed his father?
Randolph suffered for years from the dehabilitating effects.
Of the syphilis.
That killed him.
the whole experience, as Winston says in the biography.
Was an embarrassment.
It was also heart rending to a son who wanted to idolise his father. He never forgot.
The morning
That Lord Randolph died.
More than a half a century later.
I'm gonna interrupt this sentence. If you have kids
Do not underestimate the impact.
Long after you're dead.
Your impact on your children lives on. Listen to this.
More than half a century later, when he was prime minister for the second time, he surprised his doctor by suddenly remarking
My poor, poor papa died on january twenty fourth, eight.
eighteen ninety five.
It was a long time ago.
The date was seared into his memory.
Strangely, listen to this.
strangely, his own death
Would fall on the same
Day.
Churchill took his last breath.
At the age of ninety, on the morning of january twenty fourth,
Nineteen sixty five.
The seventieth anniversary
Of his father's death.
Churchill was special and was obvious to a lot of people around him.
There's this quote.
That has been on my mind a lot since I uh
Since I read it for the first time. It's actually in the other book too, and it's in this book.
And the more I think about the subscription, the more I like it. So
He has this lifelong friendship with
Actually a woman that he wanted to marry.
And she turned them down. Her name is Pamela. And so they wanted becoming friends for sixty years, but she gave one of the best subscriptions
Of Churchill, and the more I think about it.
It's one of the highest compliments that you can actually give a person. If you sit here and think about what she's saying, the first time you meet Winston.
You see all of his faults.
And the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.
There's two successful attributes that Churchill has.
They think we should try to emulate one.
is it says he they always talk about his energy levels. They say that he never seemed to run out of energy.
I'm just gonna leave a link down below. There's this excellent video, I think it's 11 minutes long. It's about this guy who sold his company to Steve Jobs a few years before Steve Jobs died, and even when he was sick.
knew he had cancer, knew he was dying.
And even though Steve was older than him, this is the guy that
wind up selling his company to Steve and then going to work at Apple.
Even though Steve was older than him and sick, he said that Steve
was way higher energy.
Than he was.
And so I'll leave that link down below in the show notes. I highly recommend. I've watched the video, I don't know, probably f five, maybe ten times. The story's fascinating.
And so the second trait is the fact that Churchill throughout his life sees things earlier than other people.
What I'm about to describe to you.
This is eight years.
before World War One.
He's observing the German military. He knows that they're a threat. He tries to tell people around them. People don't believe him. They don't agree. There's another great uh I covered this book on Churchill. I think it was the first book I've ever read on Churchill. It's called The Splendid in the Vile, and it's all about
his time as prime minister. And there's a great line in the book that goes something like
You may not like Churchill, but he was right on Hitler. He saw Hitler for who he was way before most of the people around him. This idea that he just sees things earlier than other people. It happens over and over and over again. Remember, this is eight years.
before World War One.
Churchill spent a week observing maneuvers of the German army. It was a chance to take a close look at the military machine that posed the biggest threat to peace in Europe.

Though Kaiser Wilhelm
insisted, that's the leader of Germany at the time, insisted insisted he didn't want to war with anyone. Yeah, okay, well what's coming out of your mouth and then what are your actions? Always go with people's actions. The Kaiser himself issued the official invitation asking Winston to be his personal guest for the week. Oh okay what are you gonna do? Churchill followed a mock battle of fifty thousand men in the German
Infantry, artillery, and cavalry.
The regiment was a proud one and took itself seriously as a fighting force. This is Churchill's observation.
the Kaiser gave him a special pass to inspect the latest German artillery weapons and invited him to a field conference with his generals. Well for a guy that says he doesn't want war, he's certain certainly practicing a lot for it. Kaiser Wilhelm began showing off his knowledge of all the great battles fought over time, his history lesson,
Had a serious point.
He was clearly suggesting that blood would be spilled again if any army was unwise enough to attack the Germans.
His words reinforce the message. Germany was ready and willing to make war if pushed.
So Churchill goes back and he says he gave the chairmans credit for superiority in numbers, quality, discipline, and organization. This is Churchill's writing, right?
They have
Superiority and numbers, quality, discipline, and organization, these alone, he emphasized, were four good roads to victory. You should pay attention to what they're doing.
We should prepare now eight years before war.
Breaks out.
Third trait is Churchill's force of personality. And it's really interesting because this is described by uh one of his lovers.
It's remarkably consistent. This is Churchill as a young man, it's gonna sound a lot like
The Churchill
uh the the one that the world came to know and love. Winston discourse on the brevity of human life and his determination to accomplish great things in the short time available.
He told her we are all worms.
But I do believe that I am a glow worm.
More important, she perfectly understood the nature of his talk, that it was essentially Winston thinking aloud.
He was highly opinionated, strong willed, idealistic, romantic, intense.
Overwhelming and demanding.
He possessed a boundless
Boundless
Drive.
Churchill had big ideas.
And he wanted to act on them without delay.
He says stuff like this to everyone all the time.
Sometimes I feel as if I could lift the whole world on my shoulders.
And the the reason this is important to repeat is because his internal world, right?
His inter internal
Monologue is telling him I'm special, I'm special, I'm special.
And then the external world starts to agree with his internal world, telling him that you are special.
And you see that at his rapid rise at thirty three years old, he was finally taking his place in cab net.
And was the youngest to do so in almost half a century.
This is so important to understand because then you realize the shock.
Imagine if you had this relentless self belief since time time you were seven, they said.
From the time you were seven.
then everything around you, you rise faster and at a younger age than anybody else, you get to forty, you think, Okay, this is the next stop is prime minister, and then the exact opposite happens. You get kicked out of government.
And you think your entire life is over. We're gonna get there in a minute.
More
personality traits that he shares with Steve Jobs. He generated his own light.
It was intense.
Direct
and concentrated as a beam.
Another trait that Churchill shares with Steve Jobs is the fact that he raises the bar and pushes the pace.
For everyone around him. This is going to be Church's frenemy, I guess is the way you would describe it. They're serving together, they're fellow politicians.
And even his own biographer notices a distinct difference between
Lloyd George's life before Churchill and after Churchill. This is what an ambitious somebody that that's raising the bar for you, that's pushing the pace, what that looks like.
the effect it have in your own life.
The answer was that his greatest cabinet colleague and rival, Winston Churchill, came afterwards, stirring Lord George to do more than simply sound radical.
Once Churchill joined the cabinet, everything changed.
As a pair of powerful personalities with high ambitions, Winston and Lloyd George came to dominate the liberal government both as partners and as rivals, with each trying to reinforce or undermine the other depending on their shifting self interest.
Winston was the spark.
That ignited the change.
Winston made it clear that he was not there to do business as usual. I intend to make myself damn disagreeable, he said.
This phenomenon was noticed.
By Paul Graham when he was building Why Combinator. He talks about in his essays why ambitious people need
They must be around other ambitious people.
Let me read you an excerpt from one of Paul Graham's essays.
Ambitious people are rare. So if everyone is mixed together randomly as they tend to be early in people's lives.
then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people.
They bloom like dying plants given water.
Probably the most ambitious people are starved.
For the sort of encouragement that they'd get
From ambitious peers, whatever their age.
And so Churchill's doing this not only for the people around him, but he's actually trying to change the institution in which he's operating. He tries to do it for the government.
And really you could think about this as not as what he's doing as a politician, but this is his blueprint for life.
In effect, Churchill was proposing to do for the nation.
What he had been doing for himself.
To achieve quick success by thinking big
Taking risks and making the most of opportunities while they lasted.
And then just a few observations that I enjoyed from his the the human aspect of his life, not just his career.
And it's the fact that he did want a family, he wanted love, you see him in this book.
Struggle. Try to find the right woman.
He attempts us many times.
Finally gets it right.
Gets married.
Luck's out finds a supportive lifelong spouse.
And then becomes a father for the very first time.
at age thirty four, and he's writing
There's a bunch of letters that he writes to his wife.
They're fascinating.
But I love this. Like he's happy that he's not single anymore, being a father.
And having a family was very important to him.
Bachelor life had been lonelier than Winston had wanted to admit, and now he finally had a companion with whom he could share everything.
And so he writes to his wife. I feel a vivid realization
Of all you are to me.
And of the good and comforting influence you've brought into my life.
It is a much better life now.
And so Churchill's aggressive nature obviously is going to be loved by some people and hated by others. He winds up uh doing a good job of offending.
Uh two kings.
One king that he was able to offend is Edward the Seventh. And if you really think about the description of Edward the Seventh.
in how he lived chose to live his life.
Churchill was really offended.
By the behaviour.
It's just this this the worst kind of monarch that you could ever imagine, and I don't know much about how like what he did.
you know, to the country as whole. I'm talking about how he lived his life.
Churchill just viewed him as just just fat, lazy king.
And you'll see why with its description, Edward the Seventh would indulge his gargantuan appetite.
With gusto.
It was the good life that had ruined h his health, adding so much bulk to his modest frame that he could barely move at the end. He was so stout.
That he completely loses his breath.
When he has to climb upstairs, life had become one long feast.
Much of it served to him.
By a parade of society beauties.
Who added their fond caresses, whoever knows what that means.
Who added their fond caresses to his many other comforts. So he just sought comfort.
So
A life of idleness.
sought a life of the easiest path.
Path through life.
that you could possibly imagine leads to an early death.
This is the exact opposite. What again, I I now I'm repeating myself.
But Churchill like Teddy Roosevelt before him and a bunch of other people
I just like people that do things when they don't they're taking the harder path when they don't need to.
And you see this later on in life in that book The Splendid and the Vile I mentioned earlier.
There's notes that Churchill sends to his son.
Where he hates idleness, he hates laziness.
He hates it on other people and he hates it within his family members. And so he writes this to what w his like young adult son at the time.
And he says your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me.
You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.
And so if his son
And the king were searching for the easiest path possible.
Churchill did the opposite. We see this with a a letter
That his wife
Rights to him.
Dearest, you work so hard, she wrote him, and have so little fun in your life.
She was only partly right.
Hard work in exciting times.
Was.
Winston's idea of fun.
And the constant desire to push the pace, the constant intensity that he conducted his all of his fairs with.
It could be
Exhausting to people around him. He was demanding in all things that matter to him, which was often exhausting for others who lacked his intensity.
And even the way he plays, this is the surprising thing that he liked best. I don't remember reading this uh before.
But it comes up a bunch of the times in the book, so I have to imagine that the other it was in the other biographies I read.
But it says one of Winston's favorite ways to relax was to dig in the sand. So he'd go down to these beaches, and sometimes he get caught doing this.
And this is what he's doing on the beaches. He would create battes and pretend campaigns as a way to indulge his ever active imagination. Idle onlookers were not welcome.
This was serious work in its own way, giving the builder a refreshing chance to create worlds of his own without having to ask anyone else's opinion or permission.
It was one of the things that he liked best in the world.
And out of everything else that you and I are talking about, right? If we're really like, Okay, let me what we're trying to do here is like trying to figure out what was a young Winston like, what was he doing.
That is gonna prepare him.

possibly predicted was going to come.
And this idea is like, what was he doing when he was playing? Going down to the beach and actually engaging in these campaigns, almost preparing himself for real life events that are gonna happen twenty-five.
Thirty years into the future. And this kind of intensity and practice and dedication leads to again another sign from the external world that.
He is as special as he thinks he is. At thirty seven years old, he becomes the civilian head.
Of the strongest naval force in the world.
He becomes the first lord of the Admiralty, I think that's how you pronounce it. And as soon as he takes over the organization, we see his personality.
imbibed in the organization.
He said that the only results that really mattered was the fleets so his ships ability to confront an enemy
With a few minutes of shattering, blasting.
Overpowering force. The only punch worth throwing was a knockout punch. This is Churchill personified.
Uh said Churchill, the best way to make war impossible is to make victory certain. He did nothing by halves.
And so he immediately goes and tries to fix all the problems that he sees.
With Britain's Navy.
The first thing is the fact that hey, our ships have to be fast.
And ships go faster if you if they burn oil instead of coal. At the time all of his ships
Burn coal.
So he's like, Okay, let's burn oil. But they're like, Winston, here's the problem.
Britain doesn't have a reliable supply of oil.
Now this is crazy. This blew my mind. You know British petroleum, B P
Winston played a role in creating it.
So he solves the problem the fact, hey, I I can't
I wanna burn
oil, my shifter burnt oil, not coal.
Wait a minute, how many
Oil. Okay. So let's go buy a majority interest in an oil company.

By taking Britain into the petroleum business, arranging for the government to acquire a majority interest.
In the Anglo Persian oil company, which is now British Petroleum, or as we know it, BP.
That is insane, that blew my mind.
Second problem.
The most advanced gun of the day is these thirteen point five inch guns that are on these these like the nable destroyers, right? He's like
That's not big enough. I want a fifteen inch gun.
And everybody tells him like, Well here's the problem. No one knew if the fifteen inch gun would work because as Churchill put it, no such thing
as a modern fifteen inch gun existed.
None had ever been made.
But that did not deter him. So I get to this part, right?
He's essentially saying, Hey, team
I want you to build something.
That
We don't know like w one
No one else has.
And the reason no one else has it is because no one knows if it can be done. But if we can figure out how to do it, then that means we'll be the only ones with it.
A long time ago, like two or three years ago, probably three years ago.
I read this biography of
Larry Elson's that that's insane.
I should actually reread it. It's called The Billionaire and the Mechanic. It is about
I think the subtitles uh How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic teamed up to win
Sailing's greatest race.
The America's Cup.
Twice.
And so I'm reading the section of this church open book and it made me think because
Larry was you know, he's an extreme winner. I think I said in that book that if uh Michael Jordan sold enterprise software, he'd be Larry Ellison, like they have the same kind of competitive like psychopathic competitive drive.
And so Larry pushes his team
They're losing at the race. He's like, Hey, we're gonna build the largest hard wing.
It's like
thing that goes on top of the sailboat and everybody's around them's like you can't do that, no one's ever done it And Larry's
way he thinks about it's actually kinda genius. He goes
This is what Larry said.
I know that most people think that trying to build a hard wing of this size is crazy.
But that's the beauty of the idea.
The other side isn't trying to build one.
So we'll have a wing and they won't. And what he's really saying is like if we can do something really hard
We won't have any competition.
It's exactly what Winston is saying here.
Winston was willing to make plans on a grand scale and to be imaginative and daring.
When others were content to think small and go slow.
I think the fact that Churchill was a relentless student of history
I think he stumbled upon and discovered something that
I think you and I also know if you read a lot
of biographies. If you're studying and you're learning from history.
This stretches your own story.
It makes you reach farther.
It makes you believe that you're capable of more than maybe you you're doing right now.
And we see this as a lifelong student of the country's history.
Churchill
was allowed to play a role in the epic story of the British naval power. He was following in the steps of giants.
Who had defeated the Spanish Armada in the sixteenth century.
And Napoleon's navy in the nineteenth.
He did not want to be the man who
who let the Royal Navy be overwhelmed by the Germans.
And so as I mentioned earlier, Churchill has this talent.
to be able to see things usually years in advance that other people
He wants to prepare the navy, wants to be the world's best navy, wants more ships.
And the cabinet keeps telling him, No, you didn't need four battleships. What's wrong with you? You only need two. Be reasonable. I hate that word.
The worst advice I've ever heard is like be realistic. That's terrible advice.
So the c it says, you know, you don't need four more battleships, you know
I think two is gonna be enough.
Two, you know, we feel in the cabinet that is more reasonable.
And I love this the this few sentences.
That word reasonable was the key. Winston's opponents never tired of saying that he was unreasonable.
He wouldn't listen to reason, they said. He wouldn't compromise, they said.
And part of the reason they thought he was so unreasonable is because they didn't believe war was actually going to happen. There's a lot of statements in the book that are like

uh Germany and and England.
to actually engage in in warfare together. Or against each other rather.
And yet just a year or two later in August Nineteen Fourteen.
The war with
Germany actually begins, still only thirty nine. This is just great great writing.
Still only thirty nine, Winston was now at the center of a world war. It had taken him only thirteen years to rise from a parliamentary backbencher to one of the top posts.
In an empire at war, he now had the chance to change the course.
of world history and to prove the worth of his heroic view of life.
Winston enjoyed an enormous advantage, for this was his hour.
The arrival of the war that he had seen coming and had prepared himself to fight.
Whether by land, sea, or air.
And what is shocking is how everybody around him does not have the same approach. They weren't taking it seriously.
There's a bunch of people in high positions to the government.
Says for the British
What would help to turn the war into such a long and bitter slog was the half hearted way in which their leaders
threw the nation into the fight and then failed so long to pursue it vigorously.
Churchill's rival, this guy named Reggie, who actually wanted to read to be the head of the Navy and not Churchill.
starts saying stuff like this. Churchill talks well.
Uh, he says, but he's never done anything big. He continued in this vein for some time, completely blind to the irony that he was golfing while Churchill was hard at work.
Churchill gave a forthright explanation of his position if we have to fight.
We must fight with single hearted conviction. And so I just have three notes on this page. Number one, pursue your goal vigorously. Number two.
non self aware idiots surround you like the guy saying
Churchill's not doing anything while this guy is golfing. Churchill literally puts himself
in harm's way repeatedly he risks
his physical safety, which he does not need to do, which is also what he did earlier in life, as we talked about last week.
over and over again why this guy's on a fucking golf course.
non self aware idiots surround you. That is number two. Number three, fight with single hearted conviction.
And so we see the fact that Churchill was willing to put skin in the game. He shocked the military.
and most of the nation when he abruptly decided to throw himself into combat as a field commander in all but name.
As first Lord Lord of the Admiralty
He wasn't supposed to be on the bridge of a battleship under fire, much less commanding troops on the front lines, but on October third, when he went to the Belgian port of Antwerp,
To observe the fierce fighting there.
He ended up staying three days and leading the beleaguered forces as if he had suddenly been transformed into a general. This is leadership.
He was under continuous and heavy fire.
And the sheer violence of it.
As well as the drama of the last stand.
Against an overwhelming German force awakened every fighting instinct in his body.
And even with that, the shocking thing is how fast his fall comes. Remember, he gets a job at thirty nine, at forty, he is disgraced.
It comes down to the Gallipoli.
campaign. He definitely played a role in formulating this idea for this campaign.
I've heard it's always his blame. That's that's what I've understand. This book makes the case that, you know, definitely he was definitely to blame, but you know, the the he took the line share of the blame and there's a lot of people to blame.
But it says he was wrong. It was a disaster from start to finish.
As the situation went from bad to worse in the next few months, mistakes after mistakes was made by both the Navy and especially the Army, which tried to clear Gallipoli.
of Turkish troops who proved to be far more disciplined and determined than the British had been willing to believe.
Talked about that last week.
There is this
Tendency for large
powerful co countries, just like large powerful companies.
they get fat and lazy and arrogant because they've ha they've just had success after success after success. This event inevitably leads them to
underestimate their opponent. That is never smart to and underestimate anybody. It is all downside, no upside. They did this in the Boer War.
They called it like we can't lose so a bunch of these farmers, right?
They do this.
Two decades later.
In Singapore, like I talked about on the Alistar Arquite.
I think it's episode three eighteen.
A few episodes back, same exact thing here. They're like, Dr these these Turkish troops, we're gonna smoke them.
And the result was something around twenty to forty thousand dead British soldiers. Tens of thousands died as the fighting dragged through the rest of the year.
It was one long misadventure that did nothing to change the course of the war. The blame for this tragic campaign was put at the feet of Churchill, who was made to pay the price for the failure. This setback was so big that a suitably big scapegoat was needed.
And Winston was it.
With astounding suddenness, his meteoric rise flamed out. He's going to keep get kicked out of government. The people he thought were his friends did not.
See any reason to help him.
supposed friends and allies say stuff like Churchill will have to go. He will be a rumined
Man, he has kicked
out
He is no longer allowed to be the first lord of the Admiralty.
says I am finished, he lamented, I'm finished in all that I care for. This is what he cares about, the waging of war and the defeat of the Germans.
The reversal of fortunes could not have been more shocking.
And because he was so self confident and s and so boastful
This is obviously going to be predictable as well. Winston's enemies were jubilant.
They were finally having their revenge for all the mo for all his moments of defiance and imprudence.
For a long time.
Winston was in a state of shock. Really was ta describing what happens when you lose a sense of purpose.
For a long time Winston was in a state of shock. He wandered around like a man half alive.
He looked years older, his face pale, and
He was very depressed. It was not simply his misfortune that weighed on him, it was the abrupt loss of purpose.
He spent five months idle, waiting for opportunities that never came. He made up his mind to start his career all over at the age of forty.
He was suddenly confronted with the possibility that he had reached the last chapter.
And now he must fight or die. Remember the war is not over.
He couldn't take any comfort from the story of his father's life.
For Lord Randolph had never managed to revive his own career.
after falling from power in his late thirties, just like he is, right?
Winston must have been haunted by that fact that
And have wondered whether he was simply repeating a family tragedy.
His father lingered too long and suffered a slow death.
Winston would take his chances in the trenches.
His star had grown so dim that he didn't think his reputation could suffer much more from this point.
It seemed that he could only rise if he survived.
Ever the gambler, he was willing to throw the dice once more.
And risk everything for another chance to restore his fortunes.
He arranged for a letter
To be given to Clemmy, his wife, in the event of my death. He is going off into the trenches of World War One.
Death is a very real possibility. This letter was supposed to be the voice of a ghost.
Speaking to Clemmy.
In case his story had reached its end without the chance to add one more chapter.
He wrote.

I am spirit.
confident of my rights.
Death is only an incident.
And not the most important which happens to us in this state of being.
On the whole.
Especially since I met you, my darling one.
I have been happy.
And you have taught me how noble a woman's heart can be.
If there's anywhere else, meaning an afterlife.
If there's anywhere else, I shall be on the lookout for you there.
Meanwhile, look forward.
Feel free.
Rejoice in life.
Cherish the children.
Guard my memory.
God bless you.
Goodbye.
Winston.
And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Highly recommend reading this book. And I would also read Hero of the Empire. I think they're both fantastic.
If you find yourself wanting to learn more on Churchill, I made two other podcasts about him. It's episode one ninety six.
In episode two.
twenty five. If you buy this book
Or any of the books.
using the link below, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is three hundred and twenty books down.
One thousand ago.
And I'll talk to you again soon.