Winston Churchill was the offspring of a lady born and raised in Virginia and an up-and-coming young man in British politics. The overwhelming tragedy he was raised with was that his young father resigned from Government in protest and was never allowed back in. That preyed on his mind the rest of his life.

He was hero in the Boer War. As a young man before World War I he entered Parliament and was so famous he was regularly cartooned in Punch. Churchill first gained a high position in Government during World War I. In that position his only accomplishment was in conceiving and pushing through one of history’s greatest military blunders, the attack on Gallipoli.

This, too, preyed on his mind. But Churchill could never really blame himself for that pointless slaughter.

In the 1930s Churchill was right where his father had been. He retired from politics, painted, wrote and was quietly going nuts.

Chamberlain’s Conservative Party, to which Churchill switched when his own and his father’s Liberal Party died, was in power. The only way for Churchill to get power again was to join the anti-Chamberlain forces inside the ruling party. He took over the leadership of the War Party against Chamberlain’s Appeasement. There was no other way for him to get out of the back benches.

The strategy worked. Churchill avoided his father’s fate by becoming leader of the fanatical War Party.