Winston Churchill was a true child of the ‘Victorian crisis of faith.’ As a boy Winston took his Anglican faith quite seriously. In his autobiography My Early Life, he tells the story of how at age eleven, influenced by his nanny Mrs. Everest’s low church position, he protested what at the time he deemed a “popish” chapel service at school by refusing to turn eastward during the Lord’s prayer. After this protest failed to illicit any reaction at all he admits that he yielded “complacently to a broad minded tolerance and orthodoxy.” This child’s faith found no fostering in the likes of his parents. Winston’s confirmation into the Anglican Church was greeted by his parents as an excuse to get out of other work.
Described as an unusually self-centered child. growing into adulthood Churchill became obsessed by his belief in his own uniqueness and destiny. In response to his mother, Lady Randolph’s, fears of him going to war he declared that he was willing to risk his life while serving in the Army because “I am so conceited that I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.”
He was also beginning to show signs of relentless ambition in keeping with his view of himself. On one occasion, in 1899, on the eve of his entrance into politics he again lamented to his mother that “What and awful thing it will be if I don’t come off. It will break my heart for I have nothing else but ambition to cling to.”
