Winston Churchill

The Prime Minister and the President

John F. Kennedy idolised Winston Churchill, but his efforts to host his hero proved abortive.

Winston Churchill with a Tommy Gun, Hartlepool, 1940.

Turning Point: the End of the French Empire

Eighty years ago, the Atlantic Charter set out the terms for the decolonisation of French North Africa.

The World According to Churchill

Churchill’s vision of Britain’s role in the world may provide the key to Brexit.

Guilty before God? Churchill and President Truman, Washington DC, January 10th, 1952

Churchill, God and the Bomb

Did the idea of nuclear war make Britain’s wartime leader more God-fearing?

Winston Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall, May 8th, 1945.

Boris Johnson's Abuse of Churchill

In using Churchill to justify his Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson 'paints a barbarically simplified and ill-informed picture of what Churchill stood for'.

Churchill and the Taxman

The great statesman had a cavalier approach to his tax affairs.

Winston Churchill: Online Resources

Apps and websites for learning more about the politician and wartime prime minister.

Aneurin Bevan (right) with the future prime minister Harold Wilson at the Labour party conference, September 1953.

Churchill and the Reality of Politics in Wartime Britain

Mihir Bose challenges the perception of Winston Churchill as a demi-god who was essential to Britain's war effort.

Churchill arrives with his family in the Queen Elizabeth, March 23rd, 1949.

Churchill and the Cunarders

From luxury liners to troopships: Roland Quinault examines the close relationship between the Cunard line and Winston Churchill.

In office May 1940 - July 1945, October 1951 – April 1955

In an initially turbulent career, Churchill, while home secretary (1910-11), used troops against striking miners, and he resigned as first lord of the admiralty after the failed Gallipoli landings. As chancellor of the exchequer (1924-29) he returned Britain to the gold standard. Becoming a staunch opponent of appeasement in the 1930s, Churchill entered the war cabinet in September 1939 and became prime minister in May 1940. He was an energetic, inspiring and imaginative leader, and both his oratory and cultivation of Anglo-American relations were vital to the war effort. Defeated in the general election of 1945 Churchill became prime minister again from 1951 to 1955, when he retired because of ill health. He was knighted in 1953.