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personality since I last saw him at Windsor. He is young to think so much.’ He had
enjoyed, he said, ‘such good talks’ with the Duke of Edinburgh about ‘the Navy, Flying,
Polo and Politics’. Shortly after he left Balmoral he was immensely flattered by
Elizabeth’s request that he should have a portrait bust sculpted by Oscar Nemon to be
placed in Windsor Castle. Nemon wrote that Churchill said that the honour the Queen
had done him had ‘touched him more than if she had bestowed upon him the Order of
the Garter!… he is deeply moved and is very proud to be immortalized in company with
his great ancestor the first Duke of Marlborough.’ 11 In fact Elizabeth, after careful
enquiries to find out whether it would be accepted, went on to offer Churchill the
Garter, which he had refused in the previous reign. Now that it was in the personal gift
of the sovereign (Churchill had been offered it in 1945 when nominations for the Garter
were still in government hands, but since 1946 George VI had succeeded in wresting it
into the total control of the sovereign), he felt it would be discourteous to repeat his
refusal, which had greatly disappointed the King, and although he would have preferred
to remain ‘Mr Churchill’, he was attracted by the idea that the first Duke of
Marlborough’s father’s name had been Sir Winston Churchill. And so, when Elizabeth
had formally made the suggestion in April 1952, he accepted and was installed as a
Knight at the Garter Ceremony on 14 June 1954.
To Elizabeth he was the towering war leader of her adolescence and her father’s
friend. Churchill more than any other single figure represented Britain’s ‘glorious
historical past’. He had fought in one of the last cavalry charges ever made, at the Battle
of Omdurman in 1898 when her great-great-grandmother was on the throne; he had
served in Government under her grandfather and fought in the First World War, and he
had been her father’s Prime Minister during the Second. His huge grasp of world affairs,
his fierce patriotism and his rolling periods of speech spiced with puckish humour
fascinated her, and they shared a passion for racing. Churchill was there to commiserate
with her when her horse, Aureole, was beaten by Pinza in the post-Coronation Derby;
racing talk occupied a certain proportion of the weekly prime ministerial audiences. At
Christmas Elizabeth wrote congratulating him on the success of his horse, Pol Roger, at
Kempton Park. When Aureole won the Derby Trial Stakes at Lingfield on 16 May 1953,
Churchill sent a congratulatory cable to which the Queen replied, ‘Most grateful for your
kind message of congratulations. Sorry you were not in closer attendance.’
At seventy-eight he was no longer the man he had once been; he was now rather deaf,
had suffered a mild coronary in 1941 and his first stroke in 1949. His enormous
stamina, indomitable spirit and enjoyment of power had borne him along, but he was
now carrying the additional burden of the Foreign Office in the absence of Eden, who
was undergoing surgery in Boston. Despite all this he had in no way changed his style of
life; there were still huge cigars, pints of champagne and draughts of brandy over latenight
after-dinner conversations which fascinated but wearied his colleagues. Fate
caught up with him on 23 June 1953 during an official dinner in honour of the Italian
Prime Minister, Alcide de Gasperi. Churchill rose to lead his male guests into the
drawing-room to join the ladies, tottered and slumped into the nearest chair. Clutching