50 years after Churchill's death, how Oxfordshire remembers the great man

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Today is the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death. The great man died on 24 January 1965 aged 90. He was given what was the largest state funeral in history anywhere in the world at that time, which even saw the dockers of London Docks lower their crane jibs in respect as Churchill's body passed by on the Thames on the MV Havengore.

Throughout one of the most colourful and distinguished careers in British politics Churchill retained an affinity with Oxfordshire, the county of his birth.

Winston Churchill's Oxfordshire connections

24 January 2015
BBC News

National hero: Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Blenheim was built as a gift from a grateful nation for Churchill's ancestor Sir John Churchill after he led an English Army to victory over the French in the 1704 Battle of Blenheim


Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 while his aristocratic parents were on a visit to the family ancestral home, Blenheim Palace, in Woodstock.

His cousin Shane Lesley wrote that it was a St Andrew's Day ball that brought on labour pains. However Churchill's father, Lord Randolph Churchill, wrote the birth had been brought on by a "rough and imprudent" horse ride and subsequent fall.

The bedroom in which Lady Randolph Churchill gave birth is open to visitors to Blenheim Palace

As a boy Churchill rode his pony Rob Roy in the grounds, and the house still has the toy lead soldiers he played with.

A landmark moment in his life was when he proposed to Clementine Hozier at Blenheim in 1908.

Blenheim's head of education, Karen Wiseman, said the story went that they had arranged to meet in the Great Hall. However, he slept in and an angry Clementine was taken for a carriage ride by his father.

"A servant was dispatched to wake Winston and the pair duly went on their walk in the rose garden but it started to rain, forcing them into the Temple of Diana where a nervous Winston finally proposed."

The couple wed later the same year, beginning 56 years of marriage.

Churchill remained a frequent visitor to Blenheim, fishing, riding and painting scenes around the spectacular grounds.

"This was the home of his family. He famously said he made two very important decisions at Blenheim - to be born and to marry there - and he was content with both," said Ms Wiseman.

The house is marking the 50th anniversary of his death with a relaunched Churchill Exhibition and series of memorial walks.

Churchill was guarded by soldiers from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry while he stayed at Ditchley

When Churchill left the regular army to go into politics in 1900, he joined a local territorial regiment, The Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, as commander of the Henley Division.

He actively served with them and briefly saw action on the Western Front in World War One. He remained their honorary colonel until his death.

During World War Two, there were fears for Churchill's security at his home in Chartwell in Kent and the prime minister's official country retreat of Chequers. Blenheim would also have been an easy target for German bombers.

Instead he was offered the use of Ditchley, the home of Conservative MP Ronald Tree where heavier tree coverage made it a more secure weekend retreat for the wartime leader.

As well as members of the war cabinet, US dignitaries and the president of Czechoslovakia were entertained at the 290-acre estate near Charlbury.

Churchill, pictured at Ditchley, with a machine gun tripod behind him

Sir Winston Churchill was given the largest state funeral ever held in the world at that time. He is buried in his family plot at St Martin's Church in Bladon, Oxfordshire

A sign of Churchill's affinity with the county of his birth was his decision to be buried in his family plot at St Martin's Church at Bladon, a short distance from Blenheim Palace.

Frank Hall, now 91, was the verger in 1965. On hearing news of the former prime minister's death on 24 January it was his task to toll the church bell.

"All the villagers knew that Winston was going to be buried in Bladon. When he came down and stood by his mother and father's graves he always said: 'This is where I'm coming to be buried'."

Mr Hall said he remembered the cold, frosty day on 30 January when Churchill's coffin arrived after his state funeral in London for the private family burial service.

"Bladon was completely blocked, there were just thousands upon thousands of people there. The great man had gone."

Aside from the gravestone, up to now there has been no permanent tribute to Churchill at the church.

Earlier this year a stained glass window design was unveiled. Funds are currently being raised for the window which it is hoped will be installed in May.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965

Born 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Attended Harrow and Sandhurst before embarking on Army career, seeing action in India and Sudan

Became a Conservative MP in 1900, but in 1904 joined the Liberal Party. He was a cabinet member from 1908 and First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 until the disastrous Dardanelles expedition in early years of WW1. He served on the Western Front for a time, before rejoining government from 1917-1929

Opposition to Indian self-rule, warnings about the rise of the Nazis and support for Edward VIII left Churchill politically isolated during 1930s. After WW2 broke out, he replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, when his reputation as an inspirational wartime leader was cemented

He lost the 1945 General Election but was returned to power in 1951 and continued as prime minister until 1955. He died on 24 January 1965 and was given a state funeral, the largest ever held in the world at that time

BBC News - Winston Churchill's Oxfordshire's connections

 

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Oxfordshire remembers what wasn't.

 

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Oxfordshire remembers what wasn't.

Oxfordshire remembers her great son, the man who saved the Western world from Nazi domination.

A hero unsurpassed: MAX HASTINGS says we still live in the shadow of this flawed colossus... as the Mail prints historic tribute editions marking the 50th anniversary of Churchill's death


He says we should be grateful problems of modern era don't call for one

Believes former PM would be too large of a presence in today's politics

By historian Max Hastings for the Daily Mail
Published: 23 January 2015 | Updated: 24 January 2015
Daily Mail

Big Ben was silenced on January 30, 1965, in keeping with the hush of the British people. At St Paul’s Cathedral on that grey, chilly day, gathered the Queen and Britain’s great men and women, together with representatives of a hundred nations, 20 of which were once ruled from London.

They came to attend the funeral rites of the most dazzling Englishman of the 20th century, one of the greatest of all time.

As an 18-year-old student, I remember standing amid the vast throng outside the Cathedral as Guardsmen bore the coffin up the steps from the gun carriage.

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Five Field-Marshals, four Prime Ministers, an Admiral of the Fleet and a Marshal of the RAF were among the pall-bearers. But none of us needed their presence to know that we were witnessing a symbolic moment for our country, which caused us in tens of millions to journey to London or huddle around black and white televisions.

The death of Winston Churchill signified a severance with the past, with centuries of imperial grandeur. It took place at a moment when Britain’s fortunes had fallen to almost their lowest ebb.

In the early Sixties, the last years of Macmillan’s premiership, the Profumo scandal and its attendant nonsenses, made the nation an object of mockery, not least by its own wits in Private Eye and TV’s That Was The Week That Was.

Though Alec Issigonis had created the Mini, among the most brilliantly innovative car designs in history, British manufacturing had fallen so low that we thought ourselves lucky to own any vehicle whose wheels did not fall off.

Starting free inside Saturday’s Daily Mail, historic Winston Churchill tribute editions to collect. Recreating the awesome story of Britain’s greatest hero, on the 50th anniversary of his death. Swashbuckling adventures. Dazzling courage. And the love that sustained him in his darkest hours. Free Churchill tribute editions. Starting only in Saturday’s Daily Mail.

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Strikes and the failures of great companies were daily events. Forget The Beatles and Swinging London — almost all of us who were there realised that Britain was broke and heading for the buffers.

One of the bleaker ironies of Churchill’s funeral was that as his coffin was borne by launch up the Thames, a moving gesture of respect was paid by dockers who dipped their cranes as he passed. Yet those same dockers had behaved with brutal recalcitrance and selfishness in the darkest days of World War II — their contribution to the war effort had been characterised by greed, bloody-mindedness and reckless cargo handling.

We mourned Churchill because he had been a giant, and we doubted that Britain would breed giants again.

He led the country through a brief period of history, 1940-45, when it held aloft a beacon of light, at a time when civilisation seemed close to succumbing to forces of darkness.

He walked the stage through a lifetime in which the greatest empire the world had ever seen was ruled from Westminster.

Winston Churchill tribute edition free with the Daily Mail

By the time he was laid beneath the sod at Bladon, a mile over the meadow from Blenheim where he was born, our destinies were directed by Harold Wilson, among the greyest of Prime Ministers. Most of the men who had governed tracts of Africa and Asia beneath the union flag and pith helmets now occupied retirement homes in Cheltenham or Bournemouth.

Today, half a century onward, how much has our perception changed, both of Britain and of Winston Churchill? For all its problems and shortcomings, we should acknowledge that this country’s material condition is vastly better than any of us dared to hope or expect back in 1965.

We are richer, more comfortable, more successful in great things and small. Phones and cars work, food is vastly improved, homes are warmer, our arts culture is experiencing a golden era. We enjoy much better health.

Spiritually, some would say that we are poorer: Christian faith has declined, as have educational standards.

Mass immigration, the European conundrum and the assertiveness of Celtic minorities have bred uncertainties about our national identity that did not exist in the era of Dixon Of Dock Green and Watney’s Red Barrel.

Winston Churchill tribute edition free with the Daily Mail

But we should count our blessings. Whereas our parents were deeply troubled by the loss of the British Empire, we suffer no such trauma.

In 1965 they remained haunted by the military and political humiliation of Suez, Eden’s failed invasion of Egypt less than a decade earlier. By contrast, our own 21st-century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are marginal to our lives.

We have become a less class-ridden, deferential society. Whatever silly claims Nick Clegg makes about social inequality, there have never been more opportunities open to all, notably including women.

Think of the contrast with Churchill, the Victorian aristocrat. In 1941, when his young private secretary Jock Colville announced that he was travelling to South Africa for pilot training as an Aircraftsman Second Class, the Prime Minister exclaimed in horror that ‘unless I was an officer, I would not be able to take my “man” with me’.

Winston Churchill tribute edition free with the Daily Mail

It never occurred to Churchill that a private secretary earning less than £8 a week would be unable to afford a Jeeves, because every Victorian gentleman took such staff for granted. By 1965, however, never mind 2015, valets were a dead letter for everyone save dukes and tycoons — and a good thing, too.

And what of our view of Churchill himself? He is today more widely recognised, even more widely esteemed, in America than in Britain.

I recently delivered the Churchill memorial lecture at Fulton, Missouri, which is given each year to honour the memory of his speech there on March 5, 1946, when he spoke of an Iron Curtain descending over Europe. In the 21st century, several hundred Americans travelled miles across Missouri and Kansas to attend, not because they cared sixpence for listening to me, but because Churchill’s name is hallowed even in the remote corners of the U.S.

Mary Soames, Churchill’s last surviving daughter who died last year, was constantly invited to visit America, to launch ships and open museums. Across the Atlantic, she was everywhere feted as a near-goddess, which indeed she was.

In Britain, by contrast, polls show that many young people believe Churchill to have been a fictional character rather than a real one. A BBC executive told me recently that documentaries about the Greatest Englishman attract modest audiences.

Winston Churchill tribute edition free with the Daily Mail

During 2015, we may expect to hear plenty of derision heaped upon his role, as First Lord of the Admiralty, in the doomed 1915 campaign against the Turks. Gallipoli was indeed Churchill’s brainchild and one of his biggest mistakes, though he never avowed it as such.

Australians, especially, have never forgiven him for the failure and slaughter, the deaths of almost 9,000 Anzac soldiers.

Churchill-bashers, of whom there are plenty, especially among younger academics, have plenty of material to work with. Until 1940, he was much more notorious for his failures than celebrated for his successes.

Beyond Gallipoli, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925 he briefly returned Britain to the Gold Standard, linking the pound to the price of gold at such a high rate it had dire consequences for unemployment.

In the Thirties he passionately opposed self-government for India, supported King Edward VIII in the Abdication crisis, and disgusted many of his contemporaries by twice ‘ratting’ — changing sides in the Commons from Tory to Liberal and then back again.

Sir Winston Churchill is seen acknowledging the crowds from his car

Had he died in 1939, aged 65, while he might have been remembered as a magnificent human being, he would inevitably have been branded a political failure.

Even as late as 1940, most Conservative MPs loved Neville Chamberlain and hated Churchill, who supplanted him on May 9. The first time the new Prime Minister entered the Commons following Chamberlain’s resignation, he was greeted with sullen silence, while the former leader received cheers. For many months, Churchill was nervous about his own party’s loyalty, even as he led the country through the supreme crises of the Fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

His wife Clementine begged him to reject the Conservative leadership when Chamberlain died in November 1940, to remain a cross-party Prime Minister, above partisan differences. In the end Churchill took up the baton of leadership, and has ever since remained a Conservative icon, in death as in life.

But he never much liked the Tories: at heart he remained a supreme loner, a party of one. Even in his own lifetime, it was possible for such a man to attain the premiership only in the fantastic circumstances of 1940.

In modern British politics, such an ascent is unthinkable.

Winston Churchill at his seat in the Cabinet Room at No 10 Downing Street in 1940

The new Sir Winston Churchill £5 bank note, which will be issued in 2016, will be the first to be printed on polymer

Thus far, I have addressed Churchill’s failures before 1940, which were many and various. But now consider the triumph that followed, which was so great that his past follies came to seem mere hillocks on the mountain of his achievement.

In 1940, Britain’s unchallengeable global power was already half a century in the past. Economically and politically, the nation was in eclipse. But because Churchill himself deemed Britain great, by sheer force of will during the war years, he managed to make her so again.

Modern historians often reject the ‘great man’ view of the past, saying that events and not individuals determine outcomes. But some of us have not the slightest doubt that if Winston Churchill had not been Prime Minister in 1940, any of the possible alternative leaders — men of straw — would have waved a white flag to Hitler. Churchill alone averted the triumph of Nazism.

No other British leader could have wooed the United States with such skill, nor so readily accepted the need for Britain to embrace the bloody Soviets, when Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. Though he wielded the powers of a dictator, he sustained a profound respect for Parliament.

Once in 1942, he was preparing a speech for the House of Commons at a time of constant British defeats: his war leadership was being criticised as never before or since. He grumbled to General ‘Pug’ Ismay, his chief of staff, about the burden of facing the fire of the Commons, of such spiteful, goading mosquitoes as Labour’s Aneurin Bevan.

Churchill seen emerging from the sea at Deauville, France (L) and walking in the street in 1940

The soldier said to him emolliently: ‘Why don’t you tell them to go to hell?’ Churchill turned in a flash: ‘You should not say those things. I am the servant of the House.’ It should be a source of wonder and pride to us today that such a man ran Britain’s war, more than half believing this.

The diarist and Labour MP Harold Nicolson penned a description of Churchill in 1940 which, for me, shines brighter than any other down the ages, revealing the Prime Minister in his finest years.

His eyes, said Nicolson, were ‘glaucous, vigilant, angry, combative, visionary and tragic . . . the eyes of a man who is much preoccupied and is unable to rivet his attention on minor things . . . In another sense they are the eyes of a man faced by an ordeal or tragedy, and combining vision, truculence, resolution and great unhappiness’.

Jeremy Paxman, who is presenting a BBC film on Churchill’s funeral, rightly said this week that ‘Winnie’ would have been ‘stifled’ by modern politics. Then he added that a rounded assessment of Churchill’s life must recognise he was an egotist, a chancer, and at times a charlatan.

There is a morsel of truth in those words. His private secretary Jock Colville once spent lunch with the King’s private secretary discussing whether, in every great man, there is an element of charlatanism.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pictured en route from Downing Street to make a statement in the House of Commons, during the second World War

But Paxman overstates the case, and should give more weight to one of Churchill’s greatest qualities, his generosity of spirit. His personal staff adored him, even when he behaved most selfishly and kept them up half the night.

He once apologised to a private secretary, John Martin, for having been rude: ‘You know, I may seem to be very fierce, but I am fierce only with one man — Hitler.’ Intensely sentimental, he witnessed many scenes which caused him to succumb. While driving to Chequers one day during the Blitz, he glimpsed a line of people outside a shop and asked his private detective to find out what they were queuing for.

The officer returned to report that they hoped to buy seed for their pet birds. Martin noted: ‘Winston wept.’

He has often been accused of being a lover of war — which indeed he was. Nothing so roused his excitement, happiness, fulfilment as the thrill of directing the destinies of armies and navies.

Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill with Charlie Chaplin at a house party at Chartwell in 1931

But what immeasurably distinguished him from Hitler, who loved war for its own sake, heedless of the cost for mankind, was that Churchill never forgot his duty and his purpose — to achieve victory to restore to the British people, and to the world, the lives of peace and tranquillity for which they yearned.

Some of Churchill’s modern critics seem incapable of understanding the monumental loneliness of this man who, for a time, bore the sole burden of saving European civilisation.

What modern Prime Minister, even Margaret Thatcher, has carried more than a minute fraction of Churchill’s load?

Today, people sometimes ask me, as a historian: ‘What has happened to the giants who led us in the past? Where is the Winston Churchill for our own times?’

I answer that we should be profoundly grateful, that the problems of our own era — yes, even including jihadis, Europe, immigration and global warming — are much less grave than those of 1940.

We should be profoundly grateful that we live in a time when we may somehow scrape by, led by a David Cameron. Winston Churchill would be far too large for 21st-century Britain.

In 1965, there was a popular joke. Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, died and knocked at the gates of Heaven.

St Peter demanded grumpily what he had done, to qualify for admission. Attlee mumbled plaintively about having been Prime Minister, creator of the Welfare State. St Peter grudgingly held ajar the gate.

In January 1965 when the greatest Englishman died, he merely banged impatiently on the gate and addressed St Peter: ‘I’m Churchill. Fetch God.’

He would have relished that joke himself.

Read more: MAX HASTINGS says we still live in the shadow of Winston Churchill | Daily Mail Online
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[Walter]

Churchill was one of the top statesmen of the 20th century. That's why BHO got rid of Churchill's bust, BHO hates being compared to greatness.