Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize, but not for peace. In 1953 the Swedish Academy gave him the prize for Literature, citing his historical writing and "brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values." It is an apt reminder that before and after he was a war leader, Churchill was a writer and a talker, a man who made his living, his reputation and much of his history with words.

He was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on November 30, 1874, at about 1:30 a.m., the time his father gave in a letter. His Sun is in Sagittarius in the third house, alongside Venus, also in Sagittarius. The third house governs speech, writing and communication; Sagittarius is expansive, opinionated and fond of the grand statement. A Sagittarius Sun in the third describes someone whose identity runs through language on a large scale, and Churchill produced dozens of books, thousands of articles and some of the most quoted speeches ever given in English.

The start was unpromising. He did poorly at Harrow and got into Sandhurst only on his third attempt. As a young cavalry officer and war correspondent he made his name in South Africa, where he was captured by the Boers in 1899 and escaped, becoming a national celebrity. He entered Parliament in 1900. During the First World War, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he championed the Gallipoli campaign, and when it failed disastrously he resigned and went to serve as an officer on the Western Front.

Mars and Jupiter share Libra in his first house, with Virgo rising. Mars in the first gives a combative, forceful presence, and Jupiter magnifies it. Astrologers would expect someone who meets the world head on and does nothing by half, and his opponents and allies alike found him pugnacious, impulsive and impossible to ignore.

His Moon sits at 29 degrees of Leo, the sign's final degree, in the eleventh house of groups, allies and causes. A Leo Moon needs recognition and a role on a large stage, and in the eleventh it ties emotional fulfillment to a collective cause. In the 1930s, out of office, he spent years warning about Hitler while much of his own party dismissed him. When he became prime minister in May 1940, at 65, the cause and the moment finally met. "We shall fight on the beaches" and "their finest hour" were written for a nation that needed to hear them.

He lost the general election of 1945, weeks after victory in Europe, and returned as prime minister from 1951 to 1955. He painted throughout his life, producing hundreds of canvases, and he spoke of periods of depression as his "black dog."

He died in 1965 and was given a state funeral. The Nobel citation had it right: the oratory was the thing, and the Sagittarius Sun in the house of words was where it came from.