Hailing from an aristocratic family of Lords, Sir Winston Churchill

D. Although he hailed from an aristocratic family of Lords, Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, and who was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggled to meet both ends meet and mostly depended upon the royalties from his writings.

Could anybody explain why we need this comma "... the man who sealed ... in 1944, and who was unseated ..."?
As far as I know, if two items (no more) are connected by 'and', we don't need separate them by a comma.

I totally agree with you. Also there is another subtle error. "mostly dependent" in the final clause also slightly changes the intended meaning. Any clarifications, experts?

One question:

I thought the meaning of the original sentence shall not be changed.

Here, it makes sense to highlight the contrast. But the contrast is not given in the original sentence.
How can I tell whether something shall be changed from the original sentence and something shall not be changed??

can somebody please all the options? the modifiers are too far away from the subject in the correct answer choice 'D'.

IMO, even if the modifiers are far away from the modified noun , you can not use just this as the basis to eliminate answers. The other options have grammatical errors that make them incorrect while in SC questions, you need to choose an option that is the best among the 5 provided to you and not the absolute best! I agree that the modification seems to be 'very distant' but it still does modify the subject better than the other options and is grammatically correct.

Hi,
I totally agree that D is the only correct choice available...
However doesnt D change the meaning..
If we read A, the main emphasis has been shown to have been unseated..there is no contrast meant by the wordings used to show his background and final state...
Hailing from an aristocratic family of Lords, Sir Winston Churchill,the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944,was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggling to meet both ends meet depending upon the royalties from his writings.

whereas the choice D puts that point just as an extra info and puts the emphasis in his struggle to meet his both ends meet and creates contrast by using 'although'..
Although he hailed from an aristocratic family of Lords, Winston Churchill,the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, and who was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggled to meet both ends meet and mostly depended upon the royalties from his writings.

A. Hailing from an aristocratic family of Lords, Sir Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggling to meet both ends meet depending upon the royalties from his writings.

This choice does not carry the grain of the passage; it fails to hold the point that Churchill hailed from an aristocratic family, but still struggled to meet both ends meet. As pointed out, more importance has been given to his being unseated by allowing the use of a verb, while relegating the struggle part to that of a modifier. This is a phenomenal error; one might also stretch the argument that a weird cause and effect can be ascribed here, meaning that, because he hailed from an aristocratic family, he was unseated, leading to his struggle to make both ends meet. Now if a text is as absurd as that, do we still carry along with it for maintaining the original intent? Why are the other choices given then? It is precisely for this reason that we need to change the structure

D. Although he hailed from an aristocratic family of Lords, Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, and who was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggled to meet both ends meet and mostly depended upon the royalties from his writings.

In D, it is clear that in spite of his noble beginnings, he struggled to meet make both ends meet in his later years. One may also note that, his ‘being unseated’ has been relegated to a modifier status in a relative clause that describes Churchill.
The takeaway is that if the original contains an unacceptable feature either in structure or in logic, then we should dump it for the one that amends them. HTH

wow, that's a tough one..took some time to crack it...

let's understand the meaning:
Sir Winston Churchill - was from an aristocratic family of Lords
Sir W. C. - sealed the fate of Adolf Hitler in the WWII
Sir W. C. was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections in 1945
Although he was from a "rich" family, he struggled to meet both ends meet. He depended mostly upon the royalties from his writings.


A. Hailing from an aristocratic family of Lords, Sir Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggling to meet both ends meet depending upon the royalties from his writings.
if we remove the modifiers, we get - W.C. was unseated, and as a result - struggled..
1. the meaning is incorrect
2. the usage of ing modifier is not really desirable...as it has an awkward meaning..

B. Hailing from an aristocratic family of Lords, Sir Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggled to meet both ends meet, dependent upon the royalties from his writings.
same meaning error as in A.
struggled - seems to be a noun modifier rather than a verb
if it were a verb - then a conjunction should have been used.
regardless of the lack of conjunction - the meaning is distorted.
dependent - no idea what it refers to.

C. Although hailing from an aristocratic and rich family of Lords, Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, struggled to meet both ends meet depending upon the royalties from his writings, unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945.
depending - looks like an ING modifier..but it needs to be placed near a noun. so it is incorrect.
unseated - looks like an ed noun modifier - again - not correct
the meaning though is clear here.

D. Although he hailed from an aristocratic family of Lords, Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, and who was unseated from Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, struggled to meet both ends meet and mostly depended upon the royalties from his writings.
the meaning is clear.
the noun modifier from A is now a dependent clause introduced by although, preceded by the main subject. then we have 2 long noun modifiers correctly joined together by "and who", so the 2 modifiers are parallel to each other.
the main subject has 2 verbs - struggled and depended - ok
no pronoun errors, no SV errors, no tense errors, no modifiers errors, no comparison errors, no meaning errors, no idiom errors - so this one looks without any flaws.

E. Hailing from an aristocratic and rich family of Lords, Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944, was unseated form Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, and struggled to meet both ends meet and had to depend upon the royalties from his writings
comma before and is not needed, as it introduces a new clause without a subject.
FORM i believe a spelling error here.

D for me is the best.

This took 2 minutes. Too much going on.
Answer is D.

"Although.... Lords" + "the man.... 1944", + "and who...1945" correctly modify Winston Churchill. His struggle is also aptly highlighted in the sentence with no grammatical errors.

A - the adverbial modifier "struggling... writings" is not a consequence of him being unseated from the PM elections, nor is it explaining the action of being unseated. OUT.
B - This sentence just makes no sense. WC was unseated.... struggled.... dependent on royalties. He was dependent upon his royalties, and that's why he was struggling or was it something else? OUT.
C - Although hailing is awkward, not a reason to reject the sentence IMO. It does have other issues i.e. "unseated.... 1945". If unseated is a verb, then we need a conjunction to make it parallel with "struggled" but that will distort the meaning. OUT.
E - This makes the 2 items parallel and part of a list distorting the meaning. This sentence is trying to say that he was unseated from the PM elections, and he struggled. The intended meaning is to say that he was from an aristocratic family, yet struggled. OUT.

Good Q. So this should give it a bump for further review.

Hello daagh,

Could you please explain what is grammatically wrong in option "E"?
"Hailing from an aristocratic and rich family of Lords" is modifying Churchill correctly.
Isn't this structure like "X was unseated ..., and struggled ...." - Is it wrong because the part after and doesn't have any subject?

Regards

daagh
Dear Sir

Is there any difference between Sir WC and WC ? Can we eliminate an option if there is no Sir in the options as opposed to in the original sentence?

Regards
Sambhav

greatexam

E is wrong neither because of modification nor because of missing the subject. The error is of parallelism.

E. Hailing from an aristocratic and rich family of Lords, Winston Churchill, the man who sealed the fate of the indomitable Adolf Hitler in the Second World War in 1944,(1) was unseated form Prime Ministership in the elections to the nation in 1945, and(2) struggled to make both ends meet and(3) had to depend upon the royalties from his writings.

We shouldn't put an "and" before the second item, 'struggled' as per the requirement of list parallelism.

SAm
Sir is a title. These things don't matter in SC.