Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill KG OM CH TD PCc DL FRS RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, army officer, and writer, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. As a Member of Parliament (MP), he represented five constituencies over the course of his career, in both England and Scotland. As Prime Minister, Churchill led Britain to victory during the Second World War. He was Conservative Party leader from 1940 to 1955. Translated from Swedish, his citation upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 reads, "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".
Churchill was born into an aristocratic family, the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and son of an English politician and an American socialite. Joining the British Army, he saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second Boer War, gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Moving into politics, before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of Asquith's Liberal government. During the war, Churchill departed from government following the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign. He briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as a battalion commander in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government of 1924–1929, controversially returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure on the UK economy.