The Churchill Series - Dec. 12, 2005

(One of a series of daily posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

By age fifteen, Churchill had already impressed his Masters and schoolmates at Harrow with his knowledge of history. He'd won a prize for Roman History and twice won prizes for English History.

Then Churchill began to excelling in another subject. He later said he had Robert Somervell to thank for that.

Somervell was Churchill's English Master. Churchill remembered him as 'a most delightful man to whom my debt is great."

Martin Gilbert records:

Somervell's method, Churchill recalled, was to divide up a long sentence into its component clauses 'by means of black, red, blue and green inks', and teaching it almost daily as 'a kind of drill'; by this method 'I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing.'

____________________________________________________
Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life. (pgs. 22-24)