'Naughty' Churchill was not too hot on geography

[Batgirl]

As a boy Winston Churchill was "very naughty", according to a report from St George's School, Ascot.

He was "weak" in geography, "good" in history and his drawing skills - employed with enthusiasm as an artist in later life - were dismissed as "very elementary".


A report on the young Churchill

The 1883 report is one of hundreds of rarely or previously unseen objects from Churchill's life which will be shown to the public from Feb 11, when a £6 million museum dedicated to the life of the wartime leader opens next to the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall.

Despite being voted the greatest Briton in a BBC poll, Churchill has never had a full-scale museum of his own in this country.

Some memorabilia is on show at Chartwell, Kent, his home from 1924, Blenheim Palace, the family's ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, and at Bletchley Park, Bucks.

But the biggest museum has been in Fulton, Missouri where, in March 1946, he warned of an "iron curtain" descending across Europe.

"Britain is not famous for putting up museums for famous political personalities," said Phil Reed, the director of the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum.

"We are breaking the mould a bit and we are on slightly dangerous ground, because there is no real tradition of this kind of thing here.

"Churchill was an icon. There is a careful balance between avoiding insulting a hero and not looking at him though rose-tinted glasses."

On entry - via the wartime front door of No 10 - visitors will see more than 150 objects that have never been shown before. They include Churchill's baby rattle, a pistol he used in his daring escape during the Boer War and painting materials.

There is even a punishment book from his days at Harrow where he was chastised and put on report for neglecting his studies, and many of his schoolboy letters.

Some of the wartime memorabilia is fascinating. There are a couple of bottles of his favourite Pol Roger champagne, his bow tie, a hairbrush and one of his casual "siren suits" - in this case in red velvet.

His days as a young soldier are recalled in another case which includes a rifle that once belonged to a Dervish chief, which was handed to Churchill as the spoils of a successful battle.

Telegraph