British aristocrat with ties to Churchill faces choking charge

The Duke of Marlborough, a British aristocrat with a troubled past, has been charged with choking someone, police said Wednesday. Charles James Spencer-Churchill, 70, was ordered to appear Thursday in Oxford Magistrates’ Court on three counts of nonfatal intentional strangulation between November 2022 and May 2024, Thames Valley Police said. The duke, who is a distant relative of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, has battled drug addiction in the past and was disinherited by his father.