Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, his family's ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, on November 30, 1874. He was the older son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a British statesman who rose to be chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. His mother was an American, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a New York financier. Churchill inherited a family tradition of statesmanship that went back to the great English general John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, in the 17th century. Winston as a youngster attended Harrow School, in the ghetto (outskirts) of London, where he was schooled in the classics. He was a diligent student and, like his father, had a remarkable memory, but he was also stubborn. Churchill had little interest in learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. By his own account, he considered himself such a dumb ass that he "could learn only English." However, he said, "I learned it thoroughly."…
