Who is Winston Churchill

Winston was born in 1874 at the height of the British Empire. His childhood would be filled with stories of "derring do", adventure, great achievements, great campaigns and great explorers. One third of the globe was painted red to reflect British military and industrial might. His country ruled supreme and was the absolute maritime power of its age.

When he died in 1965 the sun had set on this empire. It, like all empires gone before, had collapsed.
All leave legacies for good or ill, and most, especially the British Empire, still influence us around the world to this day.

We can look back and analyse this period in history with more scrutiny than any other.
The British Empire existed in the advent of photography, steam, cinematography and the moving image. From heavy industry, railways and the four stroke combustion engine to iron-clad ships and aircraft; from the telegraph to telephony, and from gunpowder to the Atom bomb. It has left libraries intact, protected national archives - and people still alive and old enough to remember the twilight years.

Churchill saw it all. He is fresh in our memory. He lives still as a beacon of strength, hope, resilience and determination.

He is an example to all who aspire to greatness, and to all who live under the yolk of despair and hopelessness.

Winston had seen action in the Indian North-West Frontier, in Sudan, in the Boer War, and in the First World War. From 1900 to 1929, with the exception of military service, he was never out of political office, including Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

For most of the 1930's Winston was in the political wilderness, but he never faltered in monitoring Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and for the next five years he would be a thorn in the side of the British Government, imploring them to listen to his concerns.

He was to be proved right in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and Britain subsequently declared war. Instantly he was appointed to the Admiralty, and soon after he became Prime Minister of a coalition government, due to a lack of confidence in Neville Chamberlain.

The British people knew he was the right man for the job, and his appointment brought new hope. He stood fast against some members of his cabinet who advocated a peace deal with Hitler, and saw them off with his policy of "no surrender".

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"

-House of Commons, 4 June 1940. Following the evacuation of British and French armies from Dunkirk as the German tide swept through France.

The evacuation of Dunkirk, codenamed Operation Dynamo, took place between 26 May and 4 June 1940.

A flotilla of 900 naval and civilian craft was sent across the Channel under RAF protection and managed to rescue 338,226 people.

During the evacuation, the Luftwaffe attacked whenever the weather allowed, reducing the town of Dunkirk to rubble and destroying 235 vessels and 106 aircraft. At least 5,000 soldiers lost their lives.

A further 220,000 Allied troops were rescued by British ships from other French ports - Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Brest, and Saint-Nazaire - bringing the total of Allied troops evacuated to 558,000.

"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.

Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

June 18, 1940
House of Commons

This speech followed the collapse of France. Many thought Britain would follow.

"The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

August 20th, 1940 - House of Commons. Tribute to the Royal Air Force. The Battle of Britain peaked a month later.
It was the defining moment of the war. Hitler knew that in order to invade Britain he would have to destroy the RAF. He failed and subsequently turned his attention to the Eastern Front.

"The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

November 10th, 1942 - Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House. following Montgomery's victory over Rommel at El Alamein in North Africa. It would eventually lead to the defeat of the Africa Korps, and the German surrender in North Africa in May 1943

Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965, aged 90.

News of his death was announced on the BBC shortly after 0800 GMT. Within half-an-hour, crowds began to gather near his home to pay homage to Britain's greatest wartime leader.

He was buried six days later after a full state funeral - the only commoner of the 20th century to be accorded such an honour.

Thousands of people came to pay their respects at his funeral In St. Paul's Cathedral, and the ceremony was watched by millions more worldwide.

The wartime leader, who inspired a nation in its darkest hour, was laid to rest on January 30, 1965, in the Oxfordshire village of Bladon.