About the Author

Randolph S. Churchill, the only son of Winston Churchill, was born on May 28, 1911. Educated at Eton and Christ Church Oxford, he became a widely read journalist in the 1930s, reporting at first hand on the German elections of 1932 and warning of Hitler's military ambitions. In the 1930s he fought three vigorous but unsuccessful campaigns to enter Parliament. In the Second World War he served as an intelligence officer at General Headquarters, Middle East, and in the Special Forces in the Western Desert. In 1944 he volunteered to the parachute behind enemy lines to serve as a liaison officer with the Yugoslav partisans. For his war services, he was awarded the MBE (Military). For the five war years he was a Member of Parliament for Preston. He was three more times an unsuccessful candidate - in 1945, 1950, and 1951. Between 1938 and 1961 he edited six volumes of his father's speeches. His own books include The Rise and Fall of Sir Anthony Eden; Lord Derby, King of Lancashire; The Six Day War, a history of the six-day Arab-Israeli war of 1967, written with his son, Winston; and the first two main and five document volumes of the biography of his father: Youth, 1874-1900 and Young Statesman, 1901-1914. A trustee of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, Randolph Churchill died at his home Stour, East Bergholt, Suffolk, on June 6, 1968.