1965 Winston Churchill

1965 Winston Churchill, former PM of Britain (C) (1940-1945, 1951-1955) Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British prime minister who helped guide Great Britain and the world through the crisis of World War II, dies in London. He had once said: “I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” Born at Blenheim Palace on 30 November 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father's death in 1895. Over the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career, and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving in a number of important posts before being appointed Britain's first lord of the admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British Navy to a readiness for the war that he foresaw. In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns and he was excluded from the war coalition government. However, in 1917, he returned to the politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921 he was secretary of state for war, and in 1924 returned to the Conservative party, where two years later played he a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill returned to his post as first lord of the admiralty, and eight months later replaced Neville as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, and Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would "never surrender." During World War II, Churchill became the great leader of the Allies, inspiring the Royal Air Force to victory in Battle of Britain, securing US support for the British war effort, devising the successful strategy at El Alamein in North Africa, and forging the grand alliance between Britain, the US, and the USS.R. that crushed the Axis powers. In July of 1945, ten weeks after Germany's defeat, Churchill's Conservative government suffered a defeat against Clement Attlee's Labour party. However, Churchill became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume historical study of World War II and for his oratory, and in the same year was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1955, he retired from the post of prime minister, but remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death. Had Churchill known that he was going to live that long, he might have taken better care of his health: he drank alcoholic beverages in abundance (once remarking: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."), continuously smoked cigars, and never exercised. Churchill was famous, among other things, for his witticisms such as the one he applied to the Puritan figure of Sir Stafford Cripps: "There, but for the grace of God, goes God." Lady Nancy Astor (1879-1964, first woman member of the British Parliment): "Winston, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee." Winston: "Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it." On another occasion: Lady Astor: “Why, Sir Churchill you are drunk!” Churchill: “And you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning!” After receiving a Minute issued by a civil servant, objecting to the ending of a sentence with a preposition and the use of a dangling participle in official documents, Churchill red penciled in the margin: "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."