Biography
His father was William Algernon Churchill (1865–1947), a British Consul who served in Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Milan. His father was also an art connoisseur, and author of what is still the standard reference work on early European paper and papermaking, Watermarks in Paper, and his mother Violet (née Myers).
Peter was born in Amsterdam on 14 January 1909. He was educated at Malvern School and read Modern Languages at Caius College, Cambridge. In addition to his native English, he was bilingual in French and fluent in Spanish, Italian and German. He also excelled in sports - he was Captain of the Cambridge University Ice Hockey Club in 1932 and won 15 international caps, was proficient at exhibition diving, was a first-class skier, and played golf off a six handicap.
Read more about this topic: Peter Churchill
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, memoirs to serve for a history, which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (18921983)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)