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The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, FRS ( November 30, 1874 - January 24, 1965) was a British politician, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II. At various times an author, soldier, journalist, legislatorA legislator is a person who writes and passes laws, especially someone who is a member of a legislature. Legislators are usually politicians and are often elected by the people, as is in the United States. Legislators may be supra-national (for example, and painterA painter is a person who paints woodwork, walls, etc. for a trade. See: decorator. portrait in Montmartre In the fine arts, a painter is a person who creates paintings—two-dimensional artworks—tby applying a coloured emulsion called paint to a flat surfa, Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most important leaders in British and world history.
| Periods in Office: | May 10May 10 is the 130th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (131st in leap years). There are 235 days remaining. Events 1291 Scottish nobles recognize the authority of King Edward I of England. 1497 Amerigo Vespucci allegedly leaves Cadiz for his first, 1940Events January-February January 5 FM radio is demonstrated to the FCC for the first time. January 6 World War II: Mass execution of Poles, committed by Germans in the Poznan, Warthegau. January 12 World War II: Russia bombs cities in Finland. February 2 F to July 27July 27 is the 208th day (209th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 157 days remaining. Events 1214 Battle of Bouvines: In France, Philip II of France defeats John of England. 1663 The British Parliament passes the second Navigation 1945Events January January 5 The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland. January 7 British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge. January 12 World War II: October 26October 26 is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 66 days remaining. Events 740 An earthquake strikes Constantinople, causing much damage and death. 1640 The Treaty of Ripon is signed, restoring peace between Sc, 1951Events January events January 9 United Nations headquarters officially opens ( New York City). January 15 Ilse Koch, The "Witch of Buchenwald," wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in We to April 7, 1955 |
| PM Predecessors: | Neville Chamberlain Clement Attlee |
| PM Successors: | Clement Attlee Anthony Eden |
| Birth: | November 30, 1874 |
| Place of Birth: | Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England |
| Death: | January 24, 1965 |
| Place of Death: | London, England |
| Political Party: | Conservative |
Born at Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill was a descendant of the first famous member of the Churchill family: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (whose father was also a "Sir Winston Churchill"). Winston's politician father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough; Winston's mother was Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jeanette "Jennie" Jerome) of Brooklyn, New York, daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome.
As per tradition, Churchill spent much of his childhood at boarding schools, rarely visited by his mother, whom he worshipped, despite his letters begging her to either come or let his father let him come home. He had a distant relationship with his father, despite keenly following his father's career. Once in 1886 he is reported to have proclaimed "My daddy is Chancellor of the Exchequer and one day that's what I'm going to be." His desolate, lonely childhood stayed with him throughout his life. He was very close to his nursemaid, and deeply saddened when she died.
In 1893 he enrolled in the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He graduated two years later ranked eighth in his class. He was appointed Second Lieutenant in the 4th Hussars cavalry. In 1895, he went to Cuba as a military observer with the Spanish army in its fight against the independentists. He also reported for the Saturday Review. In 1898 he rode as a reporter with the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman.
As the son of a prominent politician it was unsurprising that Churchill was soon drawn into politics himself. He started speaking at a number of Conservative meetings in the 1890s. It was noticeable that in the first few years of his political career, and again in the mid- 1920s, he frequently used his father's slogan of " Tory Democracy ". Many were to regard Churchill in his early years as being obsessed with continuing his father's battles from fifteen years earlier.
In 1899 he was considered as a prospective candidate for Oldham. One of the town's two MPs had died, and with the other in ill health he was persuaded to resign so that both seats could be elected together. Churchill found himself thrust into a prominent by-election, alongside James Mawdsley , the Lancashire general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Cotton Spinners and one of the few prominent Conservative trade unionists. The Liberal candidates were Alfred Emmott and Walter Runciman, who later sat in the Cabinet alongside Churchill. The by-election was dominated by a number of issues, including a Clerical Tithes Bill in Parliament, the brunt of criticism for which fell upon Churchill as a candidate for the governing party and the only Anglican of the four (though he was non-practicising). Facing attacks on the Bill, Churchill repudiated it. He later commented "This was a frightful mistake. It is not the slightest use defending Governments or parties unless you defend the worst thing about which they are attacked." The Conservative leader in the Commons, Arthur Balfour commented "I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises." Despite this, Churchill and Mawdsley narrowly lost the marginal seat, though with no harm to themselves as the Conservative government was facing a period of unpopularity. Runciman is reported to have commented to Churchill: "Don't worry, I don't think this is the last the country has heard of either of us."
Churchill then became a war correspondent in the second Anglo-Boer war between Britain and self-proclaimed Afrikaaners in South Africa. He was captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train convoy, but managed a high profile escape and eventually crossed the South African border to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique).
Churchill returned to Oldham and used the status achieved to stand again for the seat in the 1900 general election when he was narrowly elected for the seat. It was the successful launch of a political career which would last a total of sixty-four years, serving as an MP in the House of Commons from 1900 to 1922 and from 1924 to 1964. At first a member of the Conservative Party, he 'crossed the floor' in 1904 to join the Liberals over the issue of protective tariffs.
In the 1906 general election, Churchill won a seat in Manchester. In the Liberal government of Henry Campbell-Bannerman he served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Churchill soon became the most prominent member of the Government outside the Cabinet, and when Campbell-Bannerman was succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908, it came as little surprise when Churchill was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Under the law at the time, a newly appointed Cabinet Minister was obliged to seek re-election at a by-election. Churchill lost his Manchester seat to the Conservative William Joynson-Hicks, but was soon elected in another by-election at Dundee. As President of the Board of Trade he pursued radical social reforms in conjunction with David Lloyd George, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1910 Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary, where he was to prove somewhat controversial. A famous photograph from the time shows the impetuous Churchill taking personal charge of the January 1911 Sidney Street Siege, peering around a corner to view a gun battle between cornered anarchists and Scots Guards. His role attracted much criticism. Arthur Balfour asked, "He [Churchill] and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the Right Honourable gentleman doing?"
In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he would hold into the First World War. He was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during World War I, which led to his description as "the butcher of Gallipoli". When Asquith formed an all-party coalition government, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the price for entry. For several months Churchill served in the non-portfolio job of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, before resigning from the government feeling his energies were not being used. He rejoined the army, though remained an MP, and served for several months on the Western Front. During this period his second in command was a young Archibald Sinclair who would later lead the Liberal Party.
In December 1916, Asquith fell and was replaced by Lloyd George, however the time was thought to not yet be right to risk the Conservatives' wrath by bringing Churchill back into government. However in July 1917 Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions. After the ending of the war Churchill served as both Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air ( 1919- 1921). Churchill suggested chemical weapons be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He said, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected."
During this time ( 1919- 1921), he undertook with surprising zeal the cutting of military expenditure. However, the major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". He secured from a divided and loosely organized Cabinet an intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation--and in the face of the bitter hostility of labour. In 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded the Ukraine. He became Secretary of State for the Colonies 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 which established the Irish Free State.
In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation to remove his appendix. Upon his return, he learnt that the government had fallen and a General Election was looming. The Liberal Party was now beset by internal division and Churchill's campaign was weak. He lost his seat at Dundee, quipping that he had lost his ministerial office, his seat and his appendix all at once. The victorious candidates for the two-member seat included the Prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour. Churchill stood for the Liberals again in the 1923 general election, but over the next twelve months he moved towards the Conservative Party, though initially using the labels "Anti-Socialist" and "Constitutionalist". Two years later in the General Election of 1924 he was elected to represent Epping (where there is now a statue of him) as a "Constitutionalist" with Conservative backing. The following year he formally rejoined the Conservative Party, commenting that, "Anyone can rat [change parties], but it takes a certain ingenuity to rerat." He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw the UK's disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the miners' strike that led to the General Strike of 1926. During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, and during the dispute he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country". Furthermore, he was to controversially claim that the Fascism of Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world", showing as it had "a way to combat subversive forces" — that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat of Communist revolution.
The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 General Election. In the next two years Churchill became estranged from the Conservative leadership over the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home Rule. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was now at the lowest point in his career in a period known as 'the wilderness years.' He spent much of the next few years concentrating on his writing, including A History of the English Speaking Peoples (which was not published until well after WWII). He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India. Soon though, his attention was drawn to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Germany's rearmament . For a time he was a lone voice calling on Britain to re-arm itself and counter the belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. He was also an outspoken supporter of Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis leading to some speculation that he might be appointed Prime Minister if the King refused to take Baldwin's advice and consequently the government resigned. However this did not happen and Churchill found himself isolated and in a bruised position for some time after this.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In this job he proved to be one of the highest profile ministers during the so called " Bore War " when the only noticeable action was at sea. On Chamberlain's resignation in May, 1940, Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed an all-party government. In response to previous criticisms that there had been no clear single minister in charge of the prosecution of the war, he created and took the additional position of Minister of Defence. He immediately put his friend and confidant, the industrialist and newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook in charge of aircraft production. It was Beaverbrook's astounding business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war.
His speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom. His famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech was his first as Prime Minister. He followed that closely, before the Battle of Britain, with "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."
left Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Churchill at the Cairo Conference in 1943 His good relationship with Franklin Roosevelt secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. It was for this reason that Churchill was relieved when Roosevelt was re-elected. Upon re-election, Roosevelt immediately set about implementing a new method of not only providing military hardware to Britain without the need for monetary payment, but also of providing, free of fiscal charge, much of the shipping that transported the supplies. Put simply, Roosevelt persuaded congress that repayment for this immensely costly service would take the form of defending the USA; and so Lend-lease was born. Churchill initiated the Special Operations Executive (SOE), under Hugh Dalton's Ministry of Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and fostered covert, subversive and partisan operations in occupied territories with notable success; and also the Commandos which established the pattern for most of the world's current Special Forces. The Russians referred to him as the "British Bulldog".
thumb Dwight D. Eisenhower with Winston Churchill during World War II However, some of the military actions during the war remain controversial. Churchill was at best indifferent and perhaps complicit in the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 which took the lives of at least 2.5 million Bengalis. Japanese troops were threatening British India after having successfully taken neighbouring British Burma. Some consider the British government's policy of denying effective famine relief a deliberate and callous scorched earth policy adopted in the event of a successful Japanese invasion. Churchill supported the bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of the war; Dresden was a mostly civilian target with many refugees from the East and of allegedly little military value. However, the bombing was helpful to the allied Soviets.
Churchill was party to treaties that would re-draw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. The boundary between North Korea and South Korea was proposed at the Yalta Conference, as well as the expulsion of Japanese forces from those countries. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were discussed as early as 1943 by Roosevelt and Churchill; the settlement was officially agreed to by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam (Article XIII of the Potsdam protocol). One of these settlements was about the borders of Poland, i.e. the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union, the so called Curzon line, and between Germany and Poland, the so called the Oder-Neisse line. Despite the fact that Poland was the first country that resisted Hitler, Polish borders and government were determined by the Great Powers without asking the voice of the Polish government in exile. Poles who had fought alongside Britain throughout the war felt betrayed. Churchill himself opposed the effective annexation of Poland by the Soviet Union and wrote bitterly about it in his books, but he was unable to prevent it at the conferences.
Churchill, Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference A part of the settlement was an agreement to transfer the remaining citizens of Germany from the area. (Transfer of Poles didn't need to be approved.) The exact numbers and movement of ethnic populations over the Polish-German and Polish-USSR borders in the period at the end of World War II is extremely difficult to determine. This is not least because, under the Nazi regime, many Poles were replaced in their homes by the conquering Germans in an attempt to consolidate Nazi power. In the case of the post-WWII settlement, Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the national borders. As Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions."
Although the importance of Churchill's role in World War II was undeniable, he produced many enemies in his own country. His expressed contempt for ideas such as public health care and for better education for the majority of the population in particular produced much dissatisfaction amongst the population, particularly those who had fought in the war. Immediately following the close of the war in Europe Churchill was heavily defeated at election by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party.
Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the pan-Europeanism that eventually lead to the formation of the European Common market and later the European Union (for which one of the three main buildings of the European Parliament is named in his honour). Churchill was also instrumental in giving France a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (which he supported in order to have another European power to counter-balance the Soviet Union's permanent seat).
At the beginning of the Cold War he coined the term the " Iron Curtain," a phrase originally created by Joseph Goebbels that entered the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri when Churchill famously declared "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere."
Following Labour's defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. In 1953 he was awarded two major honours. He was knighted and became Sir Winston Churchill and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". A stroke in June of that year led to him being paralysed down his left side. He retired because of his health on April 5, 1955 but retained his post as Chancellor of the University of Bristol.
In 1956 he received the Karlspreis (engl.: Charlemagne Award) an Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to the European idea and European peace.
During the next few years he revised and finally published A History of the English Speaking Peoples in four volumes. In 1959 Churchill inherited the title of Father of the House, becoming the MP with the longest continuous service — since 1924. He was to hold the position until his retirement from the Commons in 1964, the position of Father of the House passing to Rab Butler.
On September 2, 1908, at the socially desirable St. Margaret's, Westminster, Churchill married Clementine Hozier, a dazzling but largely penniless beauty whom he met at a dinner party that March (he had proposed to actress Ethel Barrymore, but was turned down). They had five children: Diana ; Randolph; Sarah, who co-starred with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding; Marigold ; and Mary , who has written a book on her parents.
Clementine's mother was Lady Blanche Henrietta Ogilvy , second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier and a daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie. Clementine's paternity, however, is open to healthy debate. Lady Blanche was well known for sharing her favours and was eventually divorced as a result. She maintained that Clementine's father was Capt. William George "Bay" Middleton, a noted horseman. But Clementine's biographer Joan Hardwick has surmised, due to Sir Henry Hozier's reputed sterility, that all Lady Blanche's "Hozier" children were actually fathered by her sister's husband, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford , better known as a grandfather of the infamous Mitford sisters of the 1920s.
Churchill's son, Randolph, and grandson, Winston, both followed him into Parliament.
On January 15, 1965 Churchill suffered another stroke — a severe cerebral thrombosis — that left him gravely ill. He died nine days later on January 24, 1965, 70 years to the day of his father's death. His body lay in State in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral. This was the first state funeral for a commoner since that of Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar in 1914. It was Churchill's wish that, were de Gaulle to outlive him, his (Churchill's) funeral procession should pass through Waterloo Station. As his coffin passed down the Thames on a boat, the cranes of London's docklands bowed in salute.
At Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at Saint Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, near Woodstock , Oxfordshire, England.
Statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, opposite the Palace of Westminster in central London
Churchill was also a notable historian, producing many works. Some of his twentieth century writings such as The World Crisis (detailing the First World War) and The Second World War are highly autobiographical, telling the story of the conflict. Initially Churchill used the name Winston Churchill for his books. However early on he discovered that there was also an American writer of the same name, who had been published first. So as to prevent the two being confused, they agreed that the American would publish as Winston Churchill, and the Englishman as Winston Spencer Churchill (sometimes abbreviated to Winston S. Churchill).
Churchill's works include:
Churchill was an ardent supporter of Zionism, following his meetings with Chaim Weizmann and the visits in Eretz Israel - Palestina. He kept supporting it (and later, Israel) even after WWII. [1]
Churchill College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, was founded in 1960 as the national and commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill.The Churchill tank, a heavy infantry tank of World War II, was named in his honour.
Many attribute some of Churchill’s extraordinary abilities to his being affected by bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression. You can see with whom he shares this identification by clicking on the People with Bipolar Disorder category link at the foot of this page. In his last years, Churchill is believed by several writers to have suffered from Alzheimer's disease, though the Churchill Centre disputes this. Certainly he suffered from fits of depression that he called his "black dog," Some researchers also believe that Churchill was dyslexic, based on the difficulties he described himself having at school. However, the Churchill Centre strongly refutes this (Source: http://www.winstonchurchill.org ).
The United States Navy destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81) is named in his honour. Churchill was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
Churchill's mother was American and some, including Churchill himself, have said that his maternal grandmother was an Iroquois, which would make Churchill the only British Prime Minister of Native American descent. Research has failed to validate this contention, and some doubt its accuracy.
Churchill was voted as "The Greatest Briton" in 2002 " 100 Greatest Britons" poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public. He was also named Time Magazine "Man of the Half-Century" in the early 1950s.
The American song writer Jerome Kern was christened Jerome because his parents lived near a park named Jerome Park. This park was in turn named after Churchill's grandfather (the father of Churchill's mother Jennie Jerome).
The Churchill cigar size actually was named after him.
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|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
David Lloyd George
|width="40%" align="center"|President of the Board of Trade
1908–1910
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Sydney Buxton
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Herbert Gladstone
|width="40%" align="center"|Home Secretary
1910–1911
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Reginald McKenna
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Reginald McKenna
|width="40%" align="center"|First Lord of the Admiralty
1911–1915
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Arthur Balfour
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Edwin Samuel Montagu
|width="40%" align="center"|Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
1915
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Herbert Samuel
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Christopher Addison
|width="40%" align="center"|Minister of Munitions
1917–1919
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
The Lord Inverforth
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
The Viscount Milner
|width="40%" align="center"|Secretary of State for War
1919–1921
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Sir Laming Worthington-Evans
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
The Lord Weir
|width="40%" align="center"|Secretary of State for Air
1919–1921
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Frederick Edward Guest
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
The Viscount Milner
|width="40%" align="center"|Secretary of State for the Colonies
1921–1922
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
The Duke of Devonshire
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Philip Snowden
|width="40%" align="center"|Chancellor of the Exchequer
1924–1929
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Philip Snowden
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
The Earl Stanhope
|width="40%" align="center"|First Lord of the Admiralty
1939–1940
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
A. V. Alexander
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Neville Chamberlain
|width="40%" align="center"|Leader of the House of Commons
1940–1942
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Sir Stafford Cripps
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Neville Chamberlain
|width="40%" align="center"|Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1940–1945
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Clement Attlee
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
—
|width="40%" align="center"|Minister of Defence
1940–1945
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Clement Attlee
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Neville Chamberlain
|width="40%" align="center"|Leader of the British Conservative Party
1940–1955
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Sir Anthony Eden
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
The Marquess of Willingdon
|width="40%" align="center"|Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
1941–1965
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Robert Menzies
|width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Clement Attlee
|width="40%" align="center"|Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1951–1955
|width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Sir Anthony Eden
Churchill, Winston Spencer Churchill, Winston Spencer
Churchill, Winston
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