Dominic Sandbrook

And a couple of years ago, we did a series on the young Churchill, looking at his life, particularly in the 1890s.

He has had an extraordinary life up to this point, an extraordinary four decades.

He's fought in India, in Sudan, in South Africa.

He was famously captured by the Boers and escaped from a prisoner of war camp.

He became a Tory MP.

Then he defected to the Liberals.

He became Home Secretary for the Liberals for the Asquith government, then First Lord of the Admiralty, his dream job really, running the Royal Navy, and he's been there since 1911.

And when war approached in the late summer of 1914, Churchill was terribly excited.

He loved the idea of a war.

He's a martial sort of person.

He's always put himself in harm's way, and he can't wait to get stuck in.

And a few months later, even after it's obvious that the war is going to be a terrible classicism for Europe, he's still thrilled and excited by it.

So he sits next to Margot Asquith, the prime minister's wife, at a dinner on the 10th of January.

And he says to her, my God, this is living history.

It will be read by a thousand generations.

Think of that.

why I would not be out of this glorious, delicious war for anything the world could give me.

And then he stops and he says, I say, don't repeat that I said the word delicious.

You know what I mean.

And this is another one coming up in this week.