Winston Churchill Trivia Quiz

Answer: Woodstock, Oxfordshire: 1874

He was born in Blenheim Palace, the family seat of the Duke of Marlborough, on 30 November 1874. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, who was active in politics, was a younger son of the duke; his mother, Jeanette (Jennie) Churchill, née Jerome, was originally American.

Answer: Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst

Churchill was one of the minority of British prime ministers who didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, he trained as an army officer, fought in the the North-West Frontier Province (in what is now Pakistan) and in the Sudan, and he wrote about these campaigns.

In the Boer War he was a war correspondent for the "Morning Post", was captured and imprisoned by the Boers but succeeded in escaping. On his return to Britain he found that he had become something of a national hero.

Answer: 1900

In 1900 he was elected as the Conservative MP for Oldham, but he switched to the Liberal Party in 1904. He was a Member of Parliament continuously from 1900-22 and 1924-64.

Answer: The Dardanelles

At the time he was First Lord of the Admiralty (Navy Minister) and had to accept responsibility for the very poor preparations for the landings.

Answer: January 1940

He made this comment during a radio broadcast on 20 January 1940 in which he praised the resistance of the Finns to the Soviet forces in the Winter War of 1939-40. Other choice remarks by Churchill on Bolshevism include: "An infected Russia, a plague-bearing Russia ..." (28 July 1920); "cosmopolitan conspirators from the underworld" (28 November 1925) and he referred in 1926 to "diabolical [Bolshevist] machinery all over the world."

It was ironic that events in WWII pushed Britain into an alliance with the Soviet Union. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union he wished Stalin every success - and was teased in Parliament for this, to which he replied, "If Hitler were to invade hell, I would try to find some words of encouragement for the Devil". (All the quotations except the last are taken from Gracchus, "Your M.P.", London 1944, pp. 16-17).

Answer: All of these

The return to the pre-WWI gold standard - a measure that Churchill had doubts about - had the effect of increasing the price of British exports by about 10% and may, indirectly, have intensified the antagonism of the trade unions to the Conservative government.

Churchill set about breaking the General Strike with great vigour because he saw it as a political strike designed to force the government from office. His actions earned him widespread hostility among trade unionists.

In 1927 he had the Soviet trade mission in London closed on the grounds that it was not only concerned with trade but was spreading subversion in Britain.

Answer: 1934

Like others who warned early against Nazism (such as Duff Cooper and Brendan Bracken), he was labelled a "warmonger" at the time.

Answer: May 1940

In his first speech as Prime Minister in the House of Commons he spoke in terms that had been conspicuously lacking in his predecessor. "You ask, what is our policy. I will say: 'It is to wage war, by land, sea and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us, - and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our goal; I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terrors, victory however long and hard the road may be ..." (13 May 1940).

Answer: True

He first raised the matter in 1943 when discussing postwar reconstruction. It even appears that he saw a role (not clearly defined, however) for Britain in an integrated Europe. In 1956 he was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for his pro-European endeavours.

Answer: Bladon, Oxfordshire

He was given a state funeral in Britain, then his coffin was taken from St. Paul's to the Thames, where to the strains of "Rule, Britannia", it was transferred to a launch for the short journey to Waterloo Station and then was put on a special train that took it to Oxfordshire.