It has been something of a Churchillian month for me. I seem to keep stumbling across the guy’s tracks:

• Two weeks ago, we visited Chartwell again. We arrived late in the day (courtesy of the M25 traffic) which was a blessing in disguise, as we were the last people through the house and could linger in each room undisturbed, just soaking up the atmosphere.
• Last week, we happened across the spot (it’s a kind of temple … the guy had style!) in Blenheim Park where Churchill proposed to Clementine in 1908. They were to remain married for 57 years, until his death in 1965.
• Today, my morning run took me past the village church at Bladon, where all the Spencer-Churchills are buried, so I called in to pay my respects.

The thing that keeps striking me about Churchill’s life is how much of a struggle it was. It would be easy to think that he came from a privileged background and that he somehow lived a more charmed life than the rest of us. Easy, but wrong.

Despite being remembered as one of the most successful leaders of the 20^th century, Churchill’s career was punctuated by failures. These days, it seems a politician’s life is over with their first mistake; a single black mark ends their career. [Which is presumably why so many of our current leaders are faceless bureaucrats who continue to climb the ladder because they never take a stand on anything. But that’s a story for another day …]

It’s true that the world of politics is more transparent than it used to be, thanks to the internet and television. But Churchill’s failures were hardly the kind of small stuff that might be swept under the carpet by well-connected friends. I’m thinking of the Gallipoli campaign in particular, where he failed on an epic scale. Yet each time he picked himself up, drew what lessons he could from his failure, and then strode forward once more.

So it seems to me that Churchill’s distinguishing mark was his spine, his grit and his driving sense of destiny.

There’s learning here for us all. The best learning opportunity of our lives is when we encounter failure and have to make a choice:

• We can treat that failure as evidence of an inherent character flaw within us; something of which we should feel ashamed, or evidence that a whole area of life needs to be feared and avoided;
• Or we can treat each failure as a growth opportunity, from which we can emerge stronger, better-equipped to take on the next challenge that comes our way.

Churchill wrote frequently about the need to struggle, to persist in the face of opposition and to pick oneself up and march on after a failure:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

 “This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.”

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”

 “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

And now a quote from me (channelling Winston):

“Anything worth doing carries the risk of failure. And every failure is a learning opportunity. The only true failure in life is not to have tried.”