In the 1959 General Election Churchill's majority fell by more than a thousand, since many young voters in his constituency did not support an 85-year-old who could only enter the House of Commons in a wheelchair. As his mental and physical faculties decayed, he began to lose the battle he had fought for so long against the "black dog" of depression.
There was speculation that Churchill may have had Alzheimer's disease in his last years, although others maintain that his reduced mental capacity was merely the result of a series of strokes. In 1963, US President John F. Kennedy, acting under authorisation granted by an Act of Congress, proclaimed him an Honorary Citizen of the United States, but he was unable to attend the White House ceremony.
Despite poor health, Churchill still tried to remain active in public life, and on St George's Day 1964, sent a message of congratulations to the surviving veterans of the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid who were attending a service of commemoration in Deal, Kent, where two casualties of the raid were buried in the Hamilton Road Cemetery. On 15 January 1965, Churchill suffered a severe stroke that left him gravely ill. He died at his London home nine days later, at age 90, on the morning of Sunday 24 January 1965, 70 years to the day after his father's death.
Funeral
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| Churchill's grave at St Martin's Church, Bladon. |
By decree of the Queen, his body lay in state for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral on 30 January 1965. Unusually, the Queen attended the funeral. As his lead-lined coffin passed up the River Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier on the MV Havengore, dockers lowered their crane jibs in a salute.
The Royal Artillery fired the 19-gun salute due a head of government, and the RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen English Electric Lightning fighters. The coffin was then taken the short distance to Waterloo station where it was loaded onto a specially prepared and painted carriage as part of the funeral train for its rail journey to Handborough, seven miles north-west of Oxford. The funeral also saw one of the largest assemblages of statesmen in the world.
The funeral train of Pullman coaches carrying his family mourners was hauled by Battle of Britain class steam locomotive No. 34051 Winston Churchill. In the fields along the route, and at the stations through which the train passed, thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects. At Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near Woodstock, not far from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace. Churchill's funeral van—Southern Railway van S2464S—is now part of a preservation project with the Swanage Railway, having been repatriated to the UK in 2007 from the US, to where it had been exported in 1965.
Later in 1965 a memorial to Churchill, cut by the engraver Reynolds Stone, was placed in Westminster Abbey.
Churchill as artist, historian, and writer
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| Statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill in New Bond Street, London |
Winston Churchill was an accomplished artist and took great pleasure in painting, especially after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. He found a haven in art to overcome the spells of depression, or as he termed it, the "Black Dog", which he suffered throughout his life. As William Rees-Mogg has stated, "In his own life, he had to suffer the 'black dog' of depression. In his landscapes and still lives there is no sign of depression." Churchill was persuaded and taught to paint by his artist friend, Paul Maze, whom he met during the First World War. Maze was a great influence on Churchill's painting and became a lifelong painting companion. He is best known for his impressionist scenes of landscape, many of which were painted while on holiday in the South of France, Egypt or Morocco. He continued his hobby throughout his life and painted hundreds of paintings, many of which are on show in the studio at Chartwell as well as private collections.Some of his paintings can today be seen in the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art. Emery Reves and Winston Churchill indeed were close friends and Churchill would often visit Emery and his wife in their villa in the South of France (villa La Pausa, originally built in 1927 for Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel). The villa was rebuilt within the museum in 1985 with a gallery of paintings and memorabilia from Sir Winston Churchill. Most of his paintings are oil-based and feature landscapes, but he also did a number of interior scenes and portraits.
Due to obvious time constraints, Churchill attempted only one painting during the Second World War. He completed the painting from the tower of the Villa Taylor in Marrakesh.
Despite his lifelong fame and upper-class origins, Churchill always struggled to keep his income at a level that would fund his extravagant lifestyle. MPs before 1946 received only a nominal salary (and in fact did not receive anything at all until the Parliament Act 1911) so many had secondary professions from which to earn a living. From his first book in 1898 until his second stint as Prime Minister, Churchill's income was almost entirely made from writing books and opinion pieces for newspapers and magazines. The most famous of his newspaper articles are those that appeared in the Evening Standard from 1936 warning of the rise of Hitler and the danger of the policy of appeasement.
Churchill was also a prolific writer of books, writing a novel, two biographies, three volumes of memoirs, and several histories in addition to his many newspaper articles. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". Two of his most famous works, published after his first premiership brought his international fame to new heights, were his six-volume memoir The Second World War and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples; a four-volume history covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914).
He was also an amateur bricklayer, building garden walls and even a cottage at Chartwell. As part of this hobby he joined the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers.
Honours of Winston Churchill
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| Statue in Parliament Square, London |
In addition to the honour of a state funeral, Churchill received a wide range of awards and other honours. For example, he was the first person to become an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
In 1945, while Churchill was mentioned by Halvdan Koht as one of seven appropriate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Peace, the nomination went to Cordell Hull.
Churchill received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his numerous published works, especially his six-volume set The Second World War. In a 2002 BBC poll of the "100 Greatest Britons", he was proclaimed "The Greatest of Them All" based on approximately a million votes from BBC viewers. Churchill was also rated as one of the most influential leaders in history by TIME. Churchill College, Cambridge was founded in 1958 to memorialise him.
Honorary degrees
University of Rochester (LLD) in 1941
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (LLD) in 1943
McGill University in Montreal, Canada (LLD) in 1944
Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri 5 March 1946
Leiden University in Leiden, Netherlands, honorary doctorate in 1946
University of Miami in Miami, Florida in 1947
University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark (PhD) in 1950
Ancestors
Ancestors of Winston Churchill
Portrayal in film and television
Churchill has been portrayed in film and television on more than 100 occasions. Portrayals of Churchill include Dudley Field Malone (An American in Paris, 1951), Peter Sellers (The Man Who Never Was, 1956), Richard Burton (Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years, 1961), Simon Ward ("Young Winston", 1972), Warren Clarke (Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, 1974), Wensley Pithey (Edward and Mrs Simpson, 1978), William Hootkins (The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, 1981), Robert Hardy (War and Remembrance, 1989), Albert Finney ("The Gathering Storm", 2002), Ian Mune ("Ike: Countdown to D-Day", 2004), Rod Taylor (Inglourious Basterds, 2009), Brendan Gleeson (Into the Storm, 2009), Ian McNeice (Doctor Who, 2010 and 2011), and Timothy Spall (The King's Speech, 2010).
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