MICHAEL McMENAMIN’S

125 YEARS AGO SPRING 1897 • AGE 22 “I AM A LIBERAL IN ALL BUT NAME”

While bored with his military life in India, Churchill was far from being the “mere social wastrel” his father had predicted. In fact, young Winston was acutely conscious of the limits of the military education he received at Sandhurst, compared to the liberal education offered at Oxford and Cambridge, and was determined to make up the deficiencies.

A 31 March 1897 letter to his mother records Churchill’s breadth of study: “Many thanks for your letter of the 11th and for the two vols [of the] & two of which have been safely received…. Since I have been in this country I have read or nearly finished reading (for I read three or four different books at a time to avoid tedium) all Macaulay (12 vols) (Laing), the of Plato (Jowett’s Translation), Rochefort’s Memoirs, Gibbon’s Life & Memoirs & 1 Complete on English Politics. I have hardly looked at a novel. Will you try and get me the of the Duc de Saint Simon & also Pascal’s am very anxious to read both these as Macaulay recommends the one & Gibbon the other.”