This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

And you can go to IHeart Radio's app or wherever you get your podcast to listen to the show.

Speaking of a slightly American people, there are two British prime ministers with interesting connections to our country.

Boris Johnson was born in New York City.

So too was Winston Churchill's mother, who was born more accurately, more

precisely in Brooklyn. Here to tell the story of Churchill is English historian Andrew Roberts,

the author of Churchill Walking with Destiny. Take it away, Andrew.

On the 10th of May, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister at about 6 o'clock in the evening, but on the morning of that day, at dawn, Adolf Hitler invaded in the West, attacking Belgium

and Luxembourg and Holland, shortly afterwards also to invade France.

And Churchill said of that day,

I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been a preparation for this hour and for this trial. One of the things that gave him this tremendous sense of destiny was the very many brushes with death that he had had in his life.

He had nearly died of pneumonia at the age of 10. He had nearly died in a drowning accident on

Lake Geneva, nearly died also in a house fire. He'd been involved in two car crashes and two plane

crashes. He was very nearly run over by a taxi in New York as well.

And of course those were all in peacetime.

And in wartime, of course, he had endless brushes with death as well.

He once said that there's nothing more exhilarating in life than to be shot at without result.

And he was shot at without result from his 21st birthday in Cuba all the way through to when

he was an ex-cabinet minister in the First World War in the trenches. Churchill was involved

in the last great cavalry charge. He took part in this cavalry charge at the Battle of Ombuds,

in September 1898.

He killed four dervishes on that day.

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