Winston Churchills The Dream

In 1947 Winston Churchill wrote a short story. The Dream reveals the
spirit of the great man behind the public image of heroic soldier,
journalist, statesman, wit, and prolific orator and writer.

The idea of The Dream was the result of a casual

question from his daughter, Sarah, as the family sat around the dinner table one
evening. She pointed to a vacant chair and asked her father who he would most
wish to see sitting there. Without hesitation he said it would be his father, Lord
Randolph Churchill, which surprised everyone because Winston and his father had
endured a fractious relationship. Everyone had expected a great hero; Napoleon
or the first Duke of Marlborough.
Man is Spirit
Although Winston was unsure of an afterlife, he did believe there was some
spiritual connection with his ancestors and always insisted that Man is Spirit.
Indeed Winston was certainly a man of spirit in his own way, in that he had a
knack of looking for the positive and making things appear far better than they
actually were. For example, before and during World War Two when all around
him saw defeat looming, Winston could see a tiny chink of light and eventual
victory. He projected that idea and made others (eventually) believe there was a
victory to be taken.
As a child of the latter Victorian era, Winston grew up in an atmosphere of
changing attitudes towards children. Industrialisation had thrust lower class
children into the limelight when they became cheap labour for the burgeoning
businesses, particularly the factories and mines. But, Winston knew nothing of
these things because he had been born into a well-known and respected upper
class family. Indeed, he was the eldest son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
Churchill, who was the second son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough. As the
second son Lord Randolph did not inherit the familys Blenheim estate. Instead,
he made a career for himself by becoming the Conservative Member of
Parliament for Woodstock in 1874, the year Winston was born.
The child Winston

As the first son however, Winston was expected to follow in the footsteps of his
illustrious forebears, but he was a sensitive child who, like his father, was prone
to erratic mood swings and deep depressions. Winston could count on the fingers
of one hand the meaningful conversations he had had with his father but that was
often the way in the nineteenth century. Indeed, most Victorian upper class
children rarely saw their parents; like Winston they had a nanny to tend to them.
Mrs Elizabeth Anne Everest was a typically plump, cheery, kind but strict nanny
and the one person who really understood Winston. He called her woomany.
Yet, he worshipped his father even though he could never overcome the obvious
disaffection he saw in his fathers eyes, which haunted him throughout his life.
The Dream
In The Dream Lord Randolph appears in Winstons studio as he is attempting to
copy a damaged portrait of his father. During their stilted conversation Winston
recounts his fathers parliamentary speech in 1884. Lord Randolph comments on
Winstons photographic memory, You recited the twelve hundred lines of
Macaulay without a single mistake. His voice and facial features were utterly
expressionless, but it was probably the nearest to a complement Winston could
ever have hoped for from his father. Winston knew only too well that his fathers
disappointment, anger and loathing towards him was deeply embedded; his
father had actually thought him to be retarded and incapable of achieving
anything substantial in his life. Had Lord Randolph lived a little longer he would
have undoubtedly seen how wrong he had been.