Can you guess the key to their success?
All these notable men have one thing in common ... by Andrew Roberts
Fathers’ Day on sunday will rightly celebrate the vital role fathers play as the bedrocks of society. and for people whose parents are no longer with them it can be a doleful time of reflection and a reminder of loss.
Yet history shows, for all its sadness, the loss of a father in early life need not be an obstacle to outstanding success for the child, indeed in very many cases it has even proved a spur to greatness.
Looking at the list of 53 British prime ministers — individuals who, by definition, we consider high achievers — the statistics are astonishing. almost half lost their fathers before reaching the age of 21.
‘solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong,’ wrote Winston Churchill, whose father died at 47, when Winston was 20.
he continued: ‘and a boy deprived of his father’s care often develops, if he escapes the perils of youth, an independence and vigour of thought which may restore in after life the heavy loss of early days.’
although it might have been a rare brain disease that had killed Lord randolph Churchill, the family believed the doctors’ initial diagnosis of syphilis. and in Winston’s case, the lack of a father meant that he needed to earn an income early, which propelled him into journalism, where he became the best-paid war correspondent in the world by the youthful age of 25.
this, in turn, forced him to hone his natural talents as a wordsmith, ultimately resulting in the sublime speeches with which he sustained the Free World in its struggle with Nazism during World War II.
Churchill’s father had actually been a stultifying influence on the young Winston, constantly belittling him as he thought him intellectually undistinguished.
however, Winston worshipped his father, but he recognised the shadow randolph — who had been a brilliant chancellor of the exchequer in the government of Lord salisbury in the 1880s — cast over him.
‘Famous men are usually the product of an unhappy childhood,’ Winston Churchill later wrote, at least partly autobiographically. ‘the stern compression of circumstances, the twinges of adversity, the spur of slights and taunts in early years, are needed to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit without which great actions are seldom accomplished.’
With his father gone, Churchill could bloom into the statesman he became without a disapproving and occasionally condemning paternal influence.
French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who was aged just 15 when his amiable wastrel father Charles died of cancer aged 38, was also thrust into the early maturity that was one of the keys to his success.
He had to provide for his four brothers and three sisters, and also for his impecunious mother. Napoleon initially achieved that on his salary as an artillery officer, the position from which he embarked on a military and political career without parallel in modern european history.
the paternal pressure that can hold people back from risk-taking was absent in the young Napoleon as a result, and he was powerfully conscious that unless he rose fast up the promotional ladder, his family could be left destitute.
he became a general by the age of 24 and the ruler of France at 30, by which time he was finally able to pay off the extensive debts his father had left behind.
In the case of British monarchs, of course, the child cannot by the very nature of the job come into their own until their father has died.
henry V, the future hero of the battle agincourt, was in his 20s when he came to the throne on his father henry IV’s death in 1413.
Meanwhile, elizabeth I ( who inherited the throne from her sister, Queen Mary) came from a family in which her father henry VIII — who died when she was in her teens — had killed her mother.
today, such an experience would entail a lifetime in therapy, but in the 16th century it didn’t preclude her from the throne, or hold her back from becoming our greatest monarch. another great sovereign, Queen Victoria, was not even a year old when her father the Duke of Kent died.
the common thread among all these great rulers is that their fathers died when they were still growing up, and yet they went on to achieve greatness.
In the modern day, U.s. President Barack Obama has spoken and written movingly about his father’s death when he was only 21. Indeed, he entitled his memoirs of early life Dreams From My Father.
John Major’s father’s death when the future prime minister was only 18 affected him profoundly. ‘I went for a walk, and to this day I don’t know where I went,’ he wrote of it.
‘Life would not be the same, but there was much to do. I found it hard to come to terms with the finality of death. It made a reality of what he had often said to me: “Make of life what you can, and take your chances, because they may never come again.”’ then unemployed, Major vowed to take his father’s advice. Perhaps the subconscious need to try to control an unfair, cruel destiny — one that has robbed one of a parent — is a motivating factor in these premiers’ drive for power.
Other leaders who lost a parent when they were young — Lloyd George was one year old, arthur Balfour and herbert asquith were seven, James Callaghan was nine and the Duke of Wellington, 12 — underline the fact that people can sometimes find it the spur to rising to the top of their profession.
and despite the fact that we are approaching Father’s Day, we cannot ignore the influence of mothers — and their absence.
For the fact is that no fewer than 15 of Britain’s 53 prime ministers lost their mothers before they were 22 — and one PM, Lord aberdeen, was orphaned before he was 12.
even allowing for the far higher mortality rates, especially during childbirth, of the 18th and 19th centuries, these figures are compelling. In the period 1809 to 1937, for example, no fewer than 15 of its 24 premiers had lost one or both parents when they were children.
that motherhood and the mental condition of the child are intimately related is one of the few undisputed givens of psychology, as well appreciated by the ancient Greeks as by sigmund Freud two millennia later.
the close interconnection between psychological well-being and the relationship with one’s mother is also almost a cliche of psychotherapy. ‘Nothing has a stronger influence on children,’ wrote Jung in his book Paracelsus in 1934, ‘than the unlived life of the parents.’
there are, of course, many psychological motivations far deeper than mere ideological commitment that lead people to stand for Parliament, and seeking the posthumous approval of a parent might well be one of them.
When harold Macmillan came round from an air crash in algiers during World War II, his first thought was for his powerfully assertive american mother Nellie Belles. ‘tell my mother I’m alive and well,’ he told his nurse. she had been for dead six years.
When he was prime minister, he later admitted to a friend: ‘I admired her, but never really liked her. she dominated me, as she dominates me still.’
The early loss of a father or mother is the last thing that you would wish on any child, of course. But the evidence does suggest that it can help people achieve greatness. Perhaps Nature herself in taking away something precious is having the decency to return something useful.
Whatever the explanation, the fact is that the loss of a parent in childhood or adolescence seems to be one of the very few connecting features of an otherwise highly disparate group of high achievers over the centuries. It is, hopefully, a consoling thought for those missing a parent on Fathers’ Day.