The Churchill Series – Apr. 30, 2007

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

From Lynne Olson’s just released “Troublsome Young Men” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the first chapter of which the NY Times has online here :

When the Palace of Westminster, which contains the Houses of Parliament, was rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1834, its architect and interior designer viewed it more as a setting for royal ceremonial occasions than as the center of a democratic government.

While the scarlet and gold House of Lords chamber was outfitted with stained glass windows, a magnificent throne, opulent furnishings, and frescoes depicting medieval sovereigns, the Commons chamber was small and austere, with terrible acoustics and tiny galleries for visitors and the press.

Unlike the Lords' quarters, it was not intended as a theater of state. Yet the anger, passion, and drama displayed in the little oak-paneled hall over the past century had at times bordered on the operatic. In the view of David Lloyd George, one of the Commons' most accomplished showmen, nothing could compete with the excitement and electricity of the House.

When the young son of a parliamentary colleague told the former prime minister that he planned to go into the Royal Navy, Lloyd George frowned and shook his white-maned head. "There are much greater storms in politics," he declared. "If it's piracy you want, with broadsides, boarding parties, walking the plank, and blood on the deck, this is the place."

Churchill didn't need a Lloyd George to tell him where to seek “much greater storms.” At age twenty-five he resigned his Army commission and launched his first race for a Commons seat. That try was unsuccessful, but he won election in 1902. With the exception of a few brief periods, he remained in the Commons for the next sixty-two years.

Churchill, who certainly enjoyed the highlife and pomp, could have obtained a peerage and sat in “the scarlet and gold House of Lords chamber … outfitted with stained glass windows, a magnificent throne, opulent furnishings, and frescoes depicting medieval sovereigns.”

But, as you know, Churchill choose to remain in the “small and austere [Commons chamber], with [its] terrible acoustics and tiny galleries," from where he captained his nation through its greatest storm.