How would I build python myself from source code on Ubuntu?

Ubuntu comes with Python 2.7.2+ pre-installed. (I also downloaded the python dev packages.) Because of another issue I’m having (Explained in extreme depth in How do I replace/update the version of the expat library used by Apache? ), Graham Dumpleton told me my distro had explicitly built Python in a way to use an external pyexpat implementation, so causing my issue. He also said I could build Python myself from source code to resolve the issue. How would I do this on Ubuntu? (Keep in mind I’m new to Linux.)