Winston Churchill

What failed

He lost his first parliamentary contest in 1899. In 1915 the Dardanelles campaign, his project, failed badly enough to cost him the Admiralty; excluded from the new War Committee that November, he resigned from government and went to the trenches. He lost Dundee in 1922, Leicester West in 1923, and the Westminster Abbey by-election in 1924 by forty-three votes. Then came the Wilderness Years: out of office, isolated over India, and beaten 386 to 122 when his five-year campaign against Indian self-government finally reached a vote. He was shouted down in the Commons in 1936, and on 6 October 1938, the day after he told the House that Britain had sustained 'a total and unmitigated defeat' at Munich, the Commons approved the settlement by 366 votes to 144. Churchill remained seated and abstained rather than vote against his own party.

What happened next

Nineteen months after the Commons approved the Munich settlement over his objections, he became Prime Minister.

The point

The famous poster says he failed sixth grade. He did not — he finished near the top of his class at Sandhurst, and the Churchill Society calls the dunce story a myth he encouraged himself. The real record is a man who was wrong in public, out of office, and out of favour for most of a decade, which is a far more useful thing to know.