Gee, an alcoholic hack writer killing himself? Why are people still surprised?
Actually, this is a common mistake in many history classes. History teachers like to see Churchill as a politician when in fact Churchill saw himself as a writer.
The scholarship is pretty clear: Churchill's failure to be ever become more than a hack writer was more instrumental for his depression and suicide than his political failures. With Labour's leadership and economic policies saving the UK alone from the worst of the Great Britain, Churchill's faith in the Conservative's platform were destroyed. He spent his last three years failing at writing--even being unable to find a publisher for his last three months.
Churchill again and again stated all he wanted to be was a good writer and be respected as a good writer. But he was so drunk so continuously in his last decade of life what talent he had possessed evaporated even faster than the prodigious amounts of brandy he spilled all over London and himself.
What may have been the final straw for Churchill was the event at the Ritz Bar in Paris in the spring of 1932. That night his alcoholic fueled self-immolation led to his being snubbed by Scott Fitzgerald and his party. Even more than the snubbing or Churchill's (barely) public disintegration in the near empty, the story Fitzgerald wrote about the events of that evening is what to led to Churchill's final fate.
Seated at a table in the nearly Ritz bar, Fitzgerald witnessed first hand the depths of Churchill's decline. Churchill wandered into the bar already three sheets to the wind. The rotund writer immediately ordered a double brandy, downed it, and then ordered another, downed it, too. He immediately began wretching--puking on the bar and on himself.
Two barmen started to "escort" the vomit crusted and nearly incoherent Churchill from the bar. As the three passed the table where Fitzgerald, along with Sara and Gerald Murphy and Ring Lardner were seated, Churchill began screaming. The nearly incoherent Churchill apparently was trying to berate Fitzgerald and Lardner for wasting their considerable talents by drinking. Horrified, Fitzgerald and his friends tried tried to ignore Churchill.
At this point collapsed, falling to the floor, and vomiting more--with blood now accompanying the bile and alcohol in the regurgitation. Rolling this puddle, Churchill proceeded to void his bladder and lose control of his bowels. Laying in this pool of his own vomit, piss and shit, Churchill finally had the good grace to pass out. He, of course, almost immediately spent the next six month at a Swiss sanitarium due to a "nervous condition" brought on by "overwork."
By the time Churchill was discharged, Churchill found himself unable to write and Fitzgerald's story "The Crack Up" had been published in Esquire. "The Crack Up" was one of the first great trans-Atlantic literary sensations and deservedly so. Fitzgerald created a masterful portrayal of Churchill' public self destructive evening as emblematic of a failed artist's decline due to a failed moral vision. More importantly, Fitzgerald subtly presented an allegory, holding up Churchill's failure, decline, and decay with the decline and failure, decline, and decay of conservatism as a political and moral philosophy.
Of course, all too many of the literati claimed to have the real dope about what had happened that night at the Ritz. Churchill always had been arrogant and over-bearing. This was an occasion where scores were settled. The irony was that these stories were not nearly as bad as the truth. Fitzgerald (and more importantly, editors Gingrich at Esquire and Perkins at Scribner's, fearing censorship) reigned in the more graphic and humiliating aspects of the evening.
Still, the scandal of Churchill's visit to the Ritz Bar was so great in literary circles that no respectable publisher would consider touching any of Churchill's newest work. That alcoholism (and, if rumor be true, cocaine and morphine) had ruined his talent also accounted for the publishers' refusals. Churchill soon collapsed again into a state of self-pity that made his display at the Ritz seem understated.
That Churchill, in drunken haze, three months after his discharge from the he chucked himself under a train, a train run by the newly nationalized rail system was the logical end for such a man with such artistic ambitions and such great moral uncertainty.
Truly, Churchill was wasted talent. His debauchery and sad end did, though, serve to save the careers of future Nobel Prize winners Fitzgerald and Lardner. Both credit the events of that evening for convincing them to forsake alcohol to avoid Churchill's fate and instead concentrate on their writing.