On the 30th of January 1965,
an estimated 350 million people worldwide
tuned in their televisions to watch the funeral
of Sir Winston Churchill.
It was immense occasion. It was, to that date,
the largest state funeral in history.
The Queen was in attendance. The Royal Artillery had a 19-gun salute.
And at the service, which was in St Paul's Cathedral,
there were representatives from 112 nations.
I wasn't there, but I do remember it.
Because I was here,
in this garden, probably at about this spot.
And this is the garden of the vicarage,
on the Isle of Dogs, where I grew up.
And I think we must have be watching the occasion on television
because at the appointed moment, my father
brought the whole family out into the garden.
And holding my Dad's hand,
I looked up to the sky as a squadron of RAF fighters
flew down the Thames to mark the occasion.
It made enormous impact on me.
I was only two years and 11 months old.
In fact, it was my first ever memory.
After that, I thought for a long time that all funerals
would involve a fly-past.
It was great disappointment to me to discover that they didn't.
But the greater impact it had on me
was that it left me with a fascination for the man.
For Winston Churchill, who could command such an immense send-off.
And I'm not alone in that. Because even now, 50 years later,
the name Churchill still means a great deal to a great many people.
So I'm off to meet some of them.
I'll spend time with the people who knew him best...
It was lovely just having to myself, for periods of time,
the grandfather the whole world thought they owned.
..I'll sample some of his famous tastes...
Mm, makes me feel a lot better.
..I'll find out what the Germans think of him...
(METAL MUSIC PLAYS)
..as well as discovering just what he means to people on the street.
Greatest Briton ever.
I think of really good speeches.
I think he saved the world.
I want to look at the impact he had here and worldwide,
and to try and understand his legacy
and the way he continues to touch the lives of many people today.
And where better to start than the place Churchill called home?
Chartwell.
Churchill bought Chartwell and its surrounding 80 acres
in September 1922 for just £5,000.
He used it as a retreat, a place to work, write, paint,
and spend time with his beloved family, and to entertain friends.
If you're gonna visit Churchill's house,
what better way than to do it in Churchill's car?
A Hillman Husky. Just like this one,
which he got in 1964, the year before he died.
In his lifetime, he also had a Land Rover and a Rolls Royce.
And at election time, he drove around in a Daimler
with two speakers on the bonnet.
But this is the car that he ended up with.
It's not flashy, it's not glamorous.
It's just a little run around with lots of room in the back.
But it's a great reminder of a side to Churchill
that isn't often talked about.
Not war hero or statesman, but family man.
His granddaughter, Celia Sandys, has agreed to meet me at Chartwell
to show me around and tell me more about her famous grandfather.
Hello. Very nice to meet you. And you. Do you like my car?
Well, it's sort of familiar, but not quite the right colour, is it?
What colour was Winston's? I think it was sort of beige-y. Was it?
It is a fantastic house. The position is amazing.
Oh, it's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
As my grandfather said, "A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted."
(HUGH CHUCKLES)
Are we gonna go inside? Let's, yeah. Lovely.
So, is the house is as you remember it from childhood?
Mainly not. I mean, some parts are and some parts aren't.
But...this, when I was a child, was the cinema.
So we used to come here to watch films.
Wow. To have a cinema as a child. It was madness! What a fantastic thing.
After dinner, we would have a film and you'd come in here,
and there'd be lovely arm chairs, really comfortable.
Were they contemporary films that you were watching?
Well, my grandfather's favourites were Charlie Chaplin, Vivien Leigh,
Gone With The Wind, Lady Hamilton, Henry V, that sort of thing.
Having had rather a bleak childhood,
without any real family life himself, he treasured it.
And what his favourite thing was to look around
and see as many of his children and grandchildren there as possible.
And so he had a dynastic approach to life.
You knew that he had to be, you know, Prime Minister,
and was a great, sort of, war hero and Statesman.
But did you think of him like that? Did any of that, kind of, come over?
Or did you simply think of him as your grandfather?
Well, as I grew up, I observed how other people
talked about him and how they behaved when they were with him.
But it was a very gradual process.
I mean, basically, for me, he was just Grandpapa.
And I think, after the war, the only people in the world
who took Winston Churchill completely for granted
were his grandchildren.
So, was he a very formal grandfather?
Not at all, no. He was a very relaxed person.
His nature was very relaxed.
And he certainly wasn't like the others, probably of his class,
as people would have thought he'd be.
And I think this probably was the influence of his American mother.
Because... And also, he didn't speak in that, sort of,
poncey upper-class accent that you might have expected him to.
I was lucky enough to travel with him quite a bit in the older years.
Of course, as I grew up, he grew older, and he was pretty old then.
But it was lovely just having to myself,
you know, for periods of time,
the grandfather the whole world thought they owned.
You can really see why he would want to live here.
It must've been enormously relaxing, and it's set in beautiful countryside.
Oh, yes, absolutely. He bought the view, he didn't buy the house.
And the house had to fit in around him.
But he definitely bought the view.
Shall we go and see what it was that he liked? Yes, please.
Oh, that's fantastic, isn't it? Look at that view.
And it seems to be totally unspoilt.
Nothing seems to have grown up there as long as I can remember it.
This brings back so many memories, because we used to come here.
This was one of the favourite places to come with Grandpapa
and feed the fish.
There used to be a box here where the food was for the fish.
And my grandfather always had his chair right next door,
and he'd sit down and he'd get the fish food out.
And he would throw the food in.
And they'd come to the surface, and he'd say, "You see? They know me."
Perhaps they did, because they're not coming to the surface now.
They're not performing at all, these fish, are they?
You don't seem to be having the same effect.
No, I am not. There's not a fish to be seen.
Maybe you can hurl it that far. See if you can get it over there.
I'll give it a go, certainly.
It was a daily routine.
I mean, this was something...always. We'd come here, we'd feed the fish.
Then we'd go down to the lake and see the black swans.
And then we'd go to the pigs. And -
Did you like spending time with him? Was he good to spend time with?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was a real treat! A real treat.
Did he have a, sort of, twinkle?
A sort of mischievous... Was he mischievous?
Well, yes, absolutely. He had a very mischievous...smile.
And certainly, he was always looking for the sense of the ridiculous. Hm.
There's a wonderful film
of him taken on the White House lawn in his siren suit.
What they call now a onesie. And he was demonstrating.
He's obviously just invented it, so you could be out there
when the sirens went off for an air raid.
And so he had the zip going up and down for all the photographers.
He was obviously enjoying himself so much doing that. (HUGH CHUCKLES)
I think the one word that sums him up is courage.
And do you think that you have inherited anything from him?
I say that because I think you have definitely got his twinkle.
That's very kind indeed. I've definitely got his hair.
People don't realise that he was born with bright-red hair.
Is that right? People have a perception of him on the steps of Downing Street,
the cigar in one hand, a V-sign in the other.
And with a little, not too much, white hair.
Yeah. But in fact, he had hair absolutely this colour.
Whatever your views on Churchill,
it's undeniable that he's left a huge legacy on Britain and the world.
And no matter who you are or where you're from,
you know something about the man.
Winston Churchill was Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain.
Winston Churchill, our greatest Briton ever.
He's actually really popular in Germany.
He lived between 1874 to 1965.
My nan had a statue of his head in her living room.
Smoking a cigar, making the V-sign.
The peace sign. He was throwing that up a lot.
He wrote history books. I think of his stammer.
He was very stylish, as well as powerful.
I think of a bull dog.
In 1951, he became Prime Minister for the second time.
His secretary at the time was Jane Portal.
The now Lady Williams has agreed to meet me
to tell me more about those last years in power.
Hello, I'm Hugh. How do you do?
Lovely to meet you. Lovely.
Is this as much as you remember it when you were last here?
It is exactly as I remember it.
And the books as well, are they... Yes.
It all looks very unchanged to me, but I didn't work here, so...
It looks very... I don't remember that, up there.
Well, he lived in a world of books, didn't he?
He lived in a world of words. Of words.
What I do remember is the desk where he had his proofs
which he would correct standing up.
And read standing up. He liked to keep standing.
It's so exciting to come back to Chartwell,
and to be able to walk into this room, into the study...
..where I spent so many hours taking dictation for Churchill.
His best dictation time was after dinner.
And he would be in his siren suit,
he'd be relaxed because he was at Chartwell.
And I would have my typewriter on a table in the corner here.
And he would dictate straight to me on the typewriter.
And we'd go on until two o'clock in the morning. Wow.
And then, um...
..there'd be the magic words which were "soup."
And he would have a bowl of cold consomme
which would be waiting at the pantry.
And I knew it was the end of the day.
So, how long did you work for him?
I came to work for him in 1949.
He was Leader of the Conservative party in opposition.
When you started, you must have been very young.
I was young. (LAUGHS) I was 18.
Wow. So... working for Winston Churchill was your first job?
Yes, it was. What an amazing first job. Extraordinary.
And it shows what luck visits one in life.
Because, I had, in fact, been told
I wasn't up to getting into University.
And luckily, I was so angry... (HUGH CHUCKLES)
..that it made me determined.
You sound like you loved it.
You really enjoyed it. I loved every moment.
And he was so wonderful to work for.
One knew exactly where one was.
One just ahead to get on with the work. He was kind.
I can't say he was thoughtful, but why should he be thoughtful?
We didn't... We would've been horrified if he'd been thoughtful.
When he became Prime Minister again, do you think he found it
fulfilling again? Yes. It's obviously a very different role, wasn't it?
I know he found it fulfilling.
And in a way, he was such a...
..strong and marvellous character
that he wasn't going to allow people to tell him that it was time.
Mm. That perhaps somebody else took over.
I remember this going on the whole time.
Just shut his ears to it.
But he wasn't terribly well. He was dogged, wasn't he, by ill health?
He was very well until he had his stroke in 1953. Mm.
And it was at that point that he came down to Chartwell.
And unlike today, nobody in the outside world really knew about that.
The proprietors of the major newspapers were his great friends.
Yeah. So, they... This would not be approved off now.
In fact, it would be against the law, I believe,
to hide information. Mm.
But they were able to keep it under wraps.
In those days, it seemed that it was all right...
..to keep it secret. Mm.
The cabinet knew,
the government boxes continued to arrive downstairs.
And they were dealt with.
The country was governed perfectly adequately in most people's view.
And did his indomitable spirit and this idea of never giving in,
did that apply to his personal life as well? Yes, it did.
And particularly, this determination to recover from the stroke.
I mean, I could remember him walking from his bedroom here,
through... He went to every meal in the dining room next door.
Um... he would go walk through
with a stick and with some help to begin with.
And then he was able to walk perfectly adequately himself.
Have you ever invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill? And thought,
"I am not giving in, I know I have to do this, I have to get through this."
Yes. He's very much the beacon of determination in my life, yes.
Well, that's been delightful. Thank you. Lovely to meet you. I hope to meet you again.
I do hope our paths will cross again. Thank you.
But before I could leave,
there was just one more person I wanted to track down.
After his death, and following his instructions,
the family asked that there should always be a marmalade cat named Jock,
with a white bib and four white socks, living here at the estate.
Jock VI is the latest in a long line of marmalade toms
living here at Chartwell.
And I'm gonna find him.
Jock? Jocky!
(CAT MEOWS)
Jock.
(MEOWS)
Jock?
(MEOWS)
Jock!
(MEOWS)
(APPLAUSE)
And I am here to tell you that we will wage that war
side by side with you
in accordance with the best strategic employment
of our forces...
..while there is breath in our bodies
and while blood flows in our veins.
(CROWD CHEERING)
There's absolutely no doubt that Winston Churchill
was a master orator.
In fact, his ability to create and deliver
barnstorming and memorable speeches
really lay at the heart of his political success.
But how did he do it?
Well, he describes speech-making as the art of making deep sounds
from the stomach, sound like important messages from the brain.
One man who's admired and studied Churchill's words in great depth,
and for a very long time, is historian Professor Richard Toye.
He's become particularly fascinated
by the speeches made during World War II
and the impact they had on the war effort,
the nation, and the entire world.
So, was Churchill's reputation for rhetoric justified, do you think?
I think it was, but I think the story is more complicated
than we often think. So actually the process
by which he learnt to become a great orator was a very long one.
He had lot of practice. He was first elected to Parliament in 1900,
so he had decades of experience before he became Prime Minister.
And there were plenty of missteps along the way.
You don't think he was a natural orator? He taught himself.
He was not a natural orator in the sense of being very good
at doing it spontaneously.
So initially, he tried to learn all his speeches by heart,
and stand up and deliver them. And there was a famous occasion
in the Commons in 1904,
where he got almost all the way through of one of his speeches
and then suddenly forgot, basically, the last line or two,
and ground to a halt, couldn't do anything
and sat down with his head in his hands, and people -
You don't get a prompt in the House of Commons, do you?
Well, people thought that he might be losing his mind,
and there was a lot of concern about him.
And so after that, he always,
if he could, had a prepared text which he basically read from.
So he was very good at these carefully crafted orations
on set piece occasions.
But what he wasn't particularly good at was debates, spontaneous debate,
reacting to what other people had said
and making comebacks, if you like.
But, I mean, he's very famous to his witticisms, isn't he? But...
..were none of them spontaneous, then? None of them were ad-lib?
A lovely story which I think does indicate, in some ways,
two-levels of preparation,
which that one night, I think, in the 1950s,
when he was Prime Minister for the second time,
somebody encounters him late at night in the cabinet room,
sitting working away. And they say,
"Prime Minister, what are you doing still up this hour?"
And he says, "I was just preparing some of my spontaneous witticisms."
Would he deliberately have...
..you know, turned a phrase. It's the phrases, isn't it, that you remember?
Some of them, he had literally been working on for decades, so that,
you know, "never have so many owed so much to so few,"
you can go back and see that, in 1907, speaking in East Africa,
he's writing, in fact, about a dam and saying that
never has so much water been held up by so little masonry.
So, these are things - Not quite such a good phrase.
No, no. You work on it, and over time,
you've got several decades to work on it,
and you can see that at the appropriate moment,
he could sort of reach into his memory banks and pull it out again.
So his wartime speeches are the most famous,
but how important were they, do you think, for the morale of the nation?
They were perhaps effective in a different way than we think,
and they also aroused more controversy and more criticism
at the time than we would tend to think now.
He becomes Prime Minister on 10th of May.
It's not till the 4th of June
that we get this very famous "Fight them on the beaches" speech.
CHURCHILL: 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.
But that speech, it's worth saying. everybody has heard the quotation,
and yet he did not record that speech at the time.
That recording was made nine years later. He gave the speech -
So people didn't hear it?
People are remembering something that they didn't actually hear.
That's quite right. The speech was delivered in the House of Commons,
and that evening, the BBC announcer read out extracts of it
on the nine o'clock news.
But unless you happened to be an MP,
or sitting in the gallery of the House of Commons,
nobody heard it at the time.
Perhaps that says even more about how powerful the words are.
People suddenly remember hearing them when they didn't.
They sort of transcend reality and enter a world of their own.
We shall fight on the beaches.
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never.
We shall never surrender.
Decades later, and the Churchill oratory legacy lives on,
not just in books or recordings,
but in the latest generation of public speakers,
including 17-year-old Nathania Ewruje
who, in 2014, was the winner of the English-Speaking Union's
Winston Churchill Cup for public speaking.
She became the best young public speaker in the country.
Have you been to the Houses of Parliament before?
Yes, I was invited down a couple of months ago
to lay a wreath in a Winston Churchill memorial service.
And who was here for that?
Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, David Cameron, Nicholas Soames.
And they all laid wreaths themselves? Yes. We all laid wreaths.
We were all in a line. There's a really symbolic photo of us all.
And did that feel odd? Were they nice to you?
They were really nice to me. But, yeah, it felt really weird. Really weird.
And did it make you want to be a politician, to use public speaking?
As much as I love public speaking,
I don't really want to be a politician. Because, I feel like
I don't want to be a hate figure.
And what do you want to do, then, if not that?
I want to be a dentist.
(CHUCKLES) Do you? Yeah, I know it's very different.
If you don't wanna be a hate figure, don't be a dentist.
Like, 90% of the population hate going to the dentist.
What do you think Churchill means to your generation?
I think Churchill can kind of be used as a role model
to a lot of young people.
I mean, like, he's an example of someone
who kind of came from small beginnings,
who kinda got things wrong.
I think a lot of young people, they think,
just because there's so many opportunities available to them,
they can't really screw up.
Here's an example of someone who keeps getting it wrong, getting it wrong,
and just carries on and just picks himself back up
no matter what the circumstances are.
Meeting Nathania was a refreshing reminder
of just how the Churchill legacy
continues to inspire people of all ages.
And that's partly because he's been immortalised on stage and screen
by a number of Britain's best-loved actors.
Richard Burton, Timothy Spall, Bob Hoskins, Brendan Gleeson.
But no-one has come as close to mastering the role as Robert Hardy,
who was nominated for a BAFTA for the 1981 series
Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years.
Britain must regain
our former strength and confidence
in our role in the world.
(DOOR BELL)
Robert. Hugh Dennis. As I live and die. What an honour!
Not as great as mine. Come on in, come in.
I thought I'll bring you in here because there's a lot of...
..Churchilliana.
How many times have you played Churchill?
Nine, I think.
And did you take on the, you know, the first role
with a certain amount of trepidation or...
I refused it absolutely. I said, "No."
Cos I knew its impossibility. And what persuaded you?
Oh, ages and ages of pressure from them.
Eventually, I don't know how many lunches it took or how many months.
But months. Mm. Eventually I saw that they had such faith
in something in me which I didn't perceive at all. Mm.
Eventually I said, "Well, if you really think so, I'll have a go."
And are you glad you did?
Well, yes, of course, because I absolutely adored Churchill.
Mm. People of my generation,
you know, we listened to every speech he made.
And his genius at reporting the worst news to us,
week by week or month by month.
He somehow always just lifted us up.
And he took the nation by the hand
and simply led us through the worst time in our history.
There you are. That's it.
Well, how about moving on?
Take a chair. Thank you very much.
But not only did Robert become Churchill, he also met him.
I did. It was an extraordinary occasion
when my dear friend Richard Burton was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic,
and I was playing Laertes.
And we concluded the play well aware that Winston was in the front row,
because it's a very, very long play, and it's always cut.
And every time we cut, there was an eruption from the front row,
because he knew it all by heart, and that's wrong.
"Ro-ro", things like that. "Where are we now?"
All that was going on quite loud.
And then Richard said to me, "He's coming to my dressing room.
Come straight to my room."
So, I did, and we heard him,
puffing and rumbling down the corridor.
Heard him turning right, heard him knock at the door,
come in, and he said to Richard,
addressing him still as the Prince of Denmark,
"Your Highness, I'm in great need.
May I use your lavatory?"
And Richard said, "Sir, I'd be honoured."
Unlike most politicians,
where wit in the House of Commons isn't really wit, is it?
You can get away with all sorts because you have a captive...
Sure. 300 backbenchers will laugh at anything you say.
Churchill actually had genuine wit, I think. Oh, yes. He had.
There is the Nancy Astor story, isn't there?
She said... exhausted and infuriated by him on his feet, in the Commons,
said, "Oh...
..Winston...
..if you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee."
And he said...
.."Lady Astor, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
(HUGH LAUGHS)
You want that to be true, don't you?
You absolutely... You want all of them to be true.
I think that's in the House of Common's reports.
What do you think was the key for you in playing Churchill?
What did you have to master?
Well, I felt the most difficult thing was the voice.
All these nine times that I've attempted...
..Winston, you know, it has got a bit better each time, I think.
But I was best in French cos nobody knew...
..nobody in Paris knew or cared. (LAUGHS)
So, how do you do a Churchill voice? What's the...
What is the secret? (LAUGHS) I don't know.
Whatever secret it is, I've lost it now.
But I mean it's a...
You have to try and embody...
(IMITATING CHURCHILL) ..some of the curiosities.
And some of the tone,
and some of the tune.
Cos he had a particular tune.
Which is - He had a particular rhythm, didn't he?
A particular rhythm. Yeah. Yeah, he did.
Which I've really lost touch with.
Robert wanted to put my Churchill impression to the test.
(IMITATING CHURCHILL) "The news from France is very bad."
(IMITATING ROBERT) "The news from France is very bad."
(IMITATING CHURCHILL) "And I grieve for the gallant French people,
who have fallen into this terrible misfortune."
(IMITATING ROBERT) "And I grieve for the gallant French people,
who have fallen into this misfortune."
(IMITATING CHURCHILL) "Nothing can alter our feelings towards them,
or our faith that the genius of France will rise again."
(IMITATING ROBERT) You're making these sentences very long now.
I'm finding it difficult to remember them. Oh, I'm sorry.
CHURCHILL: Nothing will alter our feelings towards them...
..or our faith that the genius of France will rise again."
I think I did all right there. But it's harder to do than you'd think.
And it's one of those impressions everyone thinks they can manage.
We can all do a decent Churchill, right?
(IMITATING CHURCHILL) "We'll fight them on the beaches."
"We will never surrender." "We will never surrender."
"We will fight them on the beaches.
We will fight them on the shore. We will never surrender."
"Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few."
"We will fight them on the beaches."
"Never give up. Never, never give up."
I don't have an impression.
"Oh, yes."
Winston Churchill is perhaps best known as an orator,
a great speechmaker.
But less appreciated is his role as a fashion icon.
The top-hat, the cigar, and the cane. Big trench coat, big fella.
A bottle of champagne. Didn't he wear a jumpsuit?
The romper suits. A big cigar as well.
He used to smoke a cigar and wear a really cool hat.
His hats, yeah, the hat with the... I don't know how you call it...
Probably a hat.
He loved hats. In fact, it's said that Winston never found a hat
that he didn't like.
I'm completely the opposite. I've never found a hat that suited me.
But if I am gonna find one, it's gonna be here.
Because this is the company that made them for Winston.
Good morning, sir.
Established in 1676,
James Lock and Co is the oldest hat shop in the world, as well as being
one of the oldest family-owned businesses still in existence.
Come and have look and see what you think. Thank you.
I will look terrible in all these hats, by the way.
Well, come and try some of Churchill's. We've laid out a few.
This is a picture you're probably very familiar with,
which is Churchill on his wedding day, just getting out of the car,
wearing a nice, silk hat.
Now, there at the end, Hugh, is a...
..silk hat of exactly the sort he would be wearing.
See what that's like.
I never know which is the front and the back of hats.
It's sometimes obvious. But the bow is usually on the left-hand side.
Very good. I've got the weirdest-shaped head.
I think it's completely square, my head.
Well - You could use it as a kind of set square.
So, let's move on. And then this is the sort of hat
he was wearing a little later.
Do you wear this straight? Yeah.
And then, of course, we come into the First World War.
There's an interesting story, because during the First World War,
his career almost completely was destroyed
with the Dardanelles affair, which we now call the Gallipoli affair.
I think 50,000 or 60,000 lost their lives.
Strategically, it was brilliant, but the execution wasn't good.
And it cost him his job. He stays in the cabinet
as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
And he says, "Please, I must go and find out
why it's such a disaster."
The Prime Minister agrees, but the King stops it.
And the day before he's due to go, on the 20th of July,
he's told by the Prime Minister, "You may not go.
Somebody else is going instead."
And he must have been in the depths of depression.
Because there he is, he's lost his big job and so on.
He comes in here on the Tuesday, and he buys himself a brown Homburg.
But I think he was in sombre mood.
And I think he just wanted to cheer himself up,
and so he got himself a hat on the day that he's told he can't
even go to the Dardanelles to see what's going on.
Can you say that the number of hats he bought
is how many times he was feeling very down.
Well, I can't tell you. I, mostly, despite the reported
black dog depression, I think mostly he was up.
But - It's bad for business for you, of course, when he was cheerful.
And then later... Now, this is a hat you've certainly seen. Yeah.
Try that one. That's called a Cambridge.
And he liked wearing that style too. He wore so many styles.
You've got that at a slightly jaunty angle, but that's fine. Am I...
That suits you. I think it might be the shape of my head.
How does it fit? Well, it's... I've got a bit of...
You're very good.
At school, my nickname... cos I've got very high cheek bones,
I've got quite a large chin, one of my nicknames was snowplough.
Because my face is exactly the same shape as a snowplough.
If you push me along the playground on a snowy day,
the snow would be forced up, here, and away.
One little photograph which shows him wearing that hat. Oh, yes.
You'll probably be familiar with that one.
Where is this taken? Do you know the history of this?
That's taken in the Second World War.
And he's demonstrating that he's got whatever it takes.
You can see he's quite pleased with himself. Hm.
I've never found a hat that suited me.
Then come and have a look at some others too.
By all means, that one, maybe.
But I think you want one which doesn't make everybody look at you
when you go along but just some. That's about the right balance.
You think everyone will look at me in this? I think everybody will look at you in that one.
OK. What if I have a Tommy gun?
Then you might be looked at by some other people.
But if a hat can make you feel better,
it's clothes that maketh the man.
And it's just a short walk to the world's most fashionable street.
This is Savile Row, home to London's finest tailors.
It's a road that actually makes you feel really quite under-dressed.
But anyway, I'm heading up to Henry Poole, just here,
which is one of the finest tailors on this street.
Which since 1806, has dressed some of the world's most influential people.
Not surprisingly, it was one of Churchill's favourite tailors.
In 1876, Henry Poole died
and passed the business on to his cousin, Samuel Cundey.
The Cundeys have been running the family business ever since.
And today, Angus Cundey and his son, Simon, are in charge.
Hi. Hugh. Nice to meet you.
You knew who I was at the same moment that I told you. That's amazing.
That's amazing. Yeah.
So, this is the cloth that Churchill
wears in that famous photograph, isn't it?
That's right. With the Tommy gun. Yeah.
Very much a heavier cloth in its day.
It was, you know, a bit bullet proof,
a bit armour proof. At 18 ounces, It was heavy.
These days, we couldn't sell it. But now, we make it at 11 ounce.
But it does come from the original mill from back in the day.
And that's the Churchill stripe.
Churchill loved a stripe, didn't he? Why was that?
Because they basically elongate the body.
They make you taller. They make you, sort of, stronger.
The width of the stripe is important.
The stronger the stripe, the more authority it looks.
Power-play lawyers, that sort of character, have these big, bold stripes.
That's what it came down to. His body was petite, his head was large.
So he wanted something to balance him out. And stripes made him that.
You're wearing one, aren't you? Yes.
It makes you... How tall are you normally?
I'm about 5'2". But actually today I'm about 5'11".
Maybe pushing the six-foot mark by the end of the day.
So that's how it works for me.
What about zebra? What do you think they're up to?
Zebra's kind of mixed-bag. They tend to run all over the place.
I've often thought with zebras,
they are very like barcodes, aren't they?
If you ran a barcode scanner over a zebra, would it say 'zebra'?
Maybe it comes up with a price? Comes up with a price, it might do.
This is the weirdest conversation I've ever had.
Anyway, do you have this made up somewhere?
We actually have one made by the window there.
In fact, this jacket is even in Churchill's size.
Let's pop down Winston. There we go.
So, let's just try on the Churchill.
There we go.
Nicely on the neck.
That's it. It's fine, isn't it?
Well, it's fine apart from the arms.
I think the upper body is pretty good.
Thank you very much. (LAUGHS)
The lower part obviously is your sleeves,
longer arms, so a bit short in the coat.
I find it very surprising that he was this small, actually. Don't you?
Did you make suits for him the whole of his life?
Pretty much. But you'll have to meet my father on that one.
So, come and meet him.
Meet my father, Angus Cundey.
Pleased to meet you. Hello, Angus. And you.
Fantastic. What have you got there?
Sir Winston Churchill came to us first in 1905.
And at that time, he was living in Mount Street.
We think his chest was 37.
And waist 35.
So in 1906, according to this, he spent £243/4s/6d.
And you know, that really is a lot of money.
Hm. Wow. We had a British Warm overcoat, £9/9s.
So this is 1929, isn't it?
Did he carry on buying from you right through to the end of his life?
The orders all stopped.
And he in fact owed £126/5s/6d,
and he didn't pay us.
And he didn't pay us until...
..the most terrible thing happened, and it did upset my father.
Mm. And that was that he was made Prime Minister in 1940.
And the moment he was made Prime Minister,
we sent a bill to 10 Downing Street, and he paid us.
And sadly, we never saw him again as a customer.
Hm. So, it meant that, um...
..poor Churchill, Prime Minister,
not only had Hitler after him,
but also his tailor.
Hugh, would you like to come and see some tailors working on suits?
I'd love to, yeah. Come on through. Thank you. Thank you.
This is actually a British Warm.
Oh, so the kind of coat that Churchill...
Actually, let's just try this on you to see how it feels.
And this is what Churchill wore towards the end of his life.
So he went from this to this. Yeah.
(CLEARS THROAT) (CHUCKLES)
You sure there wasn't someone in there with him?
Not to my knowledge. That is huge.
And that is incredibly heavy, isn't it?
You can see the great photograph with him and Stalin together.
That was the coat he was wearing that we made him in 1918.
Is he looking the warmest, do you think?
I think Stalin - Stalin probably knew what he was doing, didn't he?
He knew about cold weather.
It was indeed a remarkable and very deliberate
transformation for Churchill.
He'd most definitely been considered a runt at school,
he showed no real sporting prowess and once went running into the woods
when the other boys threw cricket balls at him.
In 1897, Churchill wrote to his brother Jack,
"Being in many ways a coward, particularly at school,
there is no ambition I cherish so keenly
as to gain a reputation for personal courage."
Which may in some way, explain his seemingly unending desire
to put himself in danger, in war zones
as a correspondent or as a soldier.
Or his love of flying at a time when
the statistics were pretty much stacked against you.
Wherever the action was, that's where Churchill wanted to be.
And that was the case even on D-Day.
In the run-up to the D-Day landings,
Churchill decided that he couldn't sit here comfortably in London,
or in some headquarters in the home counties,
while so many people were putting their lives in danger.
So he hatched a plan. And that was that he would direct
his part of the operations from this warship, HMS Belfast,
as it sat off the Normandy Coast pounding enemy positions.
He spoke to the King to tell him that that's what he was going to do,
and the King, not wishing to be outdone,
as he was a military man as well, said that, OK, he'd go too.
Obviously it didn't take the King's secretary very long to point out
that this probably wasn't that good an idea.
The King then wrote to Churchill to say that...
"My dear Winston, I've been thinking a great deal of our
conversation yesterday, and I've come to the conclusion
that it would not be right for either you or I
to be where we plan to be on D-Day.
I very reluctantly come to the conclusion that the right thing to do
is what normally falls to those at the top on such occasions.
Namely, to remain at home and wait.
I hope very much that you will see it in this light, too.
But Churchill wasn't that easily dissuaded. He decided that, well,
if that's what the King was gonna do, Churchill would go on his own.
And it took a second letter from the Monarch effectively forbidding
Churchill from doing it, to dissuade the Prime Minister.
"My dear Winston, I want to make one more appeal to you
not to go to sea on D-Day.
I am a sailor. And as King, I am the head of all three services.
There is nothing I would like better than to go to sea,
but I have agreed to stay at home.
Is it fair that you should then do exactly
what I should have liked to do myself?
I ask you most earnestly to consider the whole question again,
and not let your personal wishes, which I very well understand,
lead you to depart from your own high standard of duty to the State.
Your very sincere friend, George."
You can't really imagine any modern Prime Minister, can you,
putting themselves in that kind of danger,
or putting themselves in the war zone in such a perilous position.
Perhaps that is why Churchill has become such an enduring figure.
For Churchill, his greatest legacy will surely be the defeat of Hitler.
He once said, "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least
a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.
Like all conflicts, World War II caused great pain
and came at a great cost to both sides.
So I'm here in Germany to see what the name Churchill
means to people in this country. And specifically,
to a group of men with a very interesting hobby here in Nuremberg.
(HEAVY METAL PLAYS)
Atlantean Kodex are a heavy metal band based in deepest Bavaria.
They might not strike you as the usual type of admirer of Churchill,
but they've immortalised one of his speeches in the way they know best.
Their song 12 Stars And An Azure Gown, an anthem for Europa,
features recordings of Churchill's 1946 Zurich speech
on the future of Europe, and his hope to unite countries
in their common inheritance.
I've come to their rehearsal studio to find out more.
There's gonna be another...
Yeah, great.
That was great. Thank you. Fabulous.
Hi, I'm Hugh, by the way. I'm Marcus. Nice to meet you.
Hello. Hi, I'm Hugh. Mario. How are you?
Hiya. I'm the only one not wearing black.
I'm slightly alarmed by that. Hello. It's like a wedding.
(ALL LAUGH)
Have a seat. Thank you. Wow.
So, do you always sing in English? Yes, we do.
You've used the speech of Churchill's.
Yeah, that's right. We used the speech of Churchill
for one of our songs on the last album.
And whose idea was it to sample that speech?
Well, the song was an idea of Florian,
and the lyrics are by Florian.
I guess the idea to use the Churchill speech
for the song was my idea.
What issues do you think are still current?
Why is this speech, sort of, relevant still?
First I'd say, the rise of fascism all over Europe.
And...secondly, the fact that most citizens of Europe
don't perceive Europe as a cultural union,
but as a political and economical union.
We're drifting apart rather than coming together.
And I think that's what also inspired that song cos we were...
..stating that fact that there is a crisis
but at the same time, in the lyrics, there's some sort of
expression of hope.
And how do audiences respond to it?
As a German band, using the words of Winston Churchill,
might be pretty difficult for the crowd and for our fans.
But actually, the people loved it because the words fit
just so perfectly with the whole lyrics of the song.
So, it went down pretty well with the crowds.
And actually, at our current shows,
this is, well, the favourite song.
I think it's a fantastic way of doing a speech.
Absolutely. "I wish to speak to you today." I could do that.
You wanna try it out in there? In the practice room? Play with us? Yeah.
Thank goodness I'd had that lesson from Robert Hardy.
This is so me.
We noticed that.
OK.
(IMITATES CHURCHILL) I wish to speak to you today, today, today...
..about the tragedy of Europe...
(METAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(MOUTHS) It's very loud.
(INDISTINCT SINGING)
"If Europe were once united
in the sharing of its common inheritance,
there would be no limit to the happiness,
to the prosperity, and the glory
which its 300 or 400 million people would enjoy."
That was awesome. You're hired.
Hey, that's... That was fantastic.
Thank you so much for letting me do my very poor Churchill impression.
I don't think I can hear, I won't be able to for a while.
Who's the one whose hand I can't shake cos he's got a very bad cold?
I'll just wave. Bye. Bye.
Got something for you.
A hearing-aid? Oh, no, it's not.
To remind you of the German band who used the voice of Churchill.
Is this gonna play in your car? That isn't, no.
Look at that. That will, though. I'm gonna listen to that tomorrow.
Thank you very much. Can you give us some play out music?
(MUSIC PLAYS) See ya. Bye-bye.
From Germany, I'm off to France,
somewhere very comfortable celebrating Churchill's legacy.
(METAL MUSIC PLAYS)
In 1947, the French awarded him the Medaille Militaire.
They have streets named after him. And in 1998,
a publicly-funded Churchill statue was erected in Paris.
(METAL MUSIC PLAYS)
But one celebration of his name would no doubt have been closer
to his heart than any other.
His own champagne.
He apparently once said that he'd taken more out of alcohol
than alcohol had taken out of him. But he had a lot of it.
It's estimated by some that, between 1908 and 1965,
Winston drank 42,000 bottles of champagne.
And he often had a pint of it with his lunch.
His favourite was from here on this road,
the Avenue de Champagne.
And he called it the most drinkable address in the world.
Now, to celebrate the connection with him,
it's official address is the Rue de Winston Churchill.
And it's the home of Pol Roger.
Christian Pol-Roger has agreed to meet me
and tell me more about the famous connection.
Hello. Hello. Welcome here.
I'm Hugh. Lovely. Christian. Christian. You already know.
It is still in the family, the business? Yes, it's one of the very few family companies
still run and managed by direct descendant of the founder.
And we're very proud of that, and give us a total freedom
to operate the way we want and to maintain
that famous quality without which we wouldn't be existing.
And your famous quality, of course, made you Winston Churchill's
favourite champagne.
Yes. He said, "A neat champagne to tease my brain when I have to write my speeches".
And his favourite vintage has been '28
which has been then followed by '34 and '37,
but we had this, you know, little problems, after '37.
And, the situation improved after '40 or '44, thanks to Mr Churchill.
And here we've got a fantastic document, it's an invoice.
Mr Churchill MP, Member of Parliament.
I wanted to tell you something about him regarding
a question we got from a journalist.
"Mr Churchill, do you consider yourself as a rich man?"
He said, "No, no. But never known a day when I could not afford
buying a case of Pol Roger,
and offering another case to a friend."
And because he liked your champagne so much,
you've created a Winston Churchill champagne.
We had that feeling, it was a way to pay him a tribute
for what he did for France.
And he loves the champagne so much that we approved the family
to the idea of creating a cuvee that will be named after him.
And when did you launch that? We did that in '84.
At the time we celebrate 40 years anniversary from the D-Day.
Oh, OK. And does it sell well? Does it do well as a champagne?
We've never got enough.
Am I able to try some?
Well, we'll manage. We'll organise that. It'll be lovely.
So, that should be 2002. Oh, yes.
Yeah. Churchill.
When you taste champagne, do you taste it the same way as wine?
You start just to try to catch the flavours that comes out of that.
The bubbles are playing the role of aromatic loudspeaker.
They express the very delicate feelings
that you've got in the wine.
And you look at the colour, it should be pale gold.
When it's with age, it may just be darker.
When it's still younger than that,
it may be slightly on the silver side.
But it's lovely and you assess
those microscopic bubbles climbing up to the surface.
It's wonderful.
And last but not least, you sip it.
It's delicious. It's good. Isn't it? Fantastically good, yeah.
It makes me feel better. Makes me feel a lot better. Yeah.
Winston Churchill apparently once said,
"My tastes are simple. I am satisfied with the best."
No-one could say that he had an abstemious lifestyle.
He smoked, he liked to eat well,
and he drank exceptionally well.
In fact, he was almost the opposite of a modern politician.
Modern politicians of course, need to be seen jogging
or cycling to work, even if there's a car behind him
carrying their ministerial boxes.
Given his lifestyle, it's incredible that Winston Churchill
achieved as much as he did.
But with all the finery of his life,
there came great responsibility.
He had to make very difficult decisions.
Some of them, very, very tough indeed.
In 1940, immediately after the fall of France, Winston Churchill
had to make one of the most difficult decisions of his career.
And that was to sink the French navy
at the port of Mers-el-Kebir,
in what was then French Algeria,
to stop it falling into German hands.
It was a decision that would cost the lives
of 1300 French sailors who, until that moment,
had very firmly been on the Allied side.
Not surprisingly, it's a very, very controversial decision.
In France, it still splits opinion.
Many regard it as completely unforgivable.
And in Britain too. But for some,
it proved absolutely that Winston Churchill had got what it takes
to lead Britain in war-time.
But there is no doubt that Winston Churchill made mistakes.
His decision to invade Gallipoli in 1915 was a disaster.
And although we think of Dunkirk as a kind of success,
militarily too, that was calamitous.
A calamitous failure, really.
It's intriguing though, that despite his flaws
and his foibles and his failings,
the legacy of Winston Churchill
still endures today.
On the 8th of May, 1945,
victory in Europe was declared.
And Winston Churchill was the man of the hour.
He addressed the nation in broadcasts.
He then addressed the House of Commons.
He went to a thanksgiving service,
and then he visited the King in Buckingham Palace.
But his next stop was here.
The balcony of what was then the Ministry of Health.
Beneath him the streets were lined with thousands of people,
and it was here he was to address them, minus, I hope,
this very attractive pigeon fencing.
The crowd were desperate to hear the words of their beloved
and victorious Prime Minister, so he began.
"God bless you all," he said.
"This is your victory."
But before he could continue, they roared back,
"No, it's yours."
This is your victory.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Victory of the cause of freedom.
For many, that day in May, 1945,
sums up Winston Churchill.
It was the pinnacle of his career, it was his finest moment.
He was a beloved Prime Minister,
who through his own indomitable spirit had become victorious in war.
And yet just a few weeks later, both he and his party
were voted out in the general election.
And it wasn't until 1951 that he came back as Prime Minister
and even then it was only for three-and-a-half years.
He finally retired from politics altogether in 1964,
and just three months after that, he was gone.
One of Winston Churchill's dying wishes
was that there should be no more statues of him.
He thought there were quite enough of those already.
So instead, a memorial trust was established,
which welcomed public donations.
And they reached the rather staggering figure of £2.8 million,
which is the equivalent of about £48 million today.
So, the purpose of the trust was to perpetuate and honour
the memory of Winston Churchill by establishing these things called
Churchill fellowships, which would be available to men and women
who wanted to travel,
to gain insight and knowledge into their chosen field.
Julie Stokes applied for her fellowship in 1992.
She used the knowledge she'd gained to set up the charity,
Winston's Wish, which offers support to children
who've suffered bereavement here in the UK.
This the hub. This is where we see children
whose mums, dads, brothers, sisters have died or are seriously ill.
We have a helpline here, the team go out,
they meet children, sometimes children come in.
So, this is your idea, this is your legacy.
Well, technically I think this is Churchill's legacy, actually.
I did the Churchill fellowship but hugely helped by an amazing
bunch of people who all just came together at the right time.
And how many children do you see a year, do you think?
Well, I think the team now, with all the different ways in which we work,
the educational agenda, the helpline,
the face-to-face work,
we're reaching about 30,000 children a year.
Julie wanted me to see some of the work that goes on here.
And so she invited me to meet Jemma,
a senior practitioner for the charity.
And Martina, a teenage girl who, two years ago, lost her brother.
So, what are you doing here? We're making a memory jar for my brother.
You pick a few colours and you write down what they mean to you.
And then you get salt and chalk, and you just add colour to the salt.
And then after you're done you just tip everything in here.
So, what do these colours mean for you?
Green is fun, yellow is love, pink is support,
orange is my family and purple is all the memories.
And green is the biggest of the colours you've done.
So, you had a lot of fun with your brother? Yeah.
And was he older than you or younger? Yeah, he was older than me.
He'd be 18. Wow.
And what did you do when you had fun with him?
We used to pretend-fight
because he wanted to become a wrestler when he grew up.
So, was that fun?
Well, I found it fun. Well, that's lovely.
So, do you think that Winston's Wish has helped you? Yeah, they have.
But it's a sort of process. So how long have you been working with them?
About two years now.
And how do you feel different now from where you did?
Well, I don't cry that much to be honest, any more.
And I've learned how to, like, live with it.
Martina will start making her memory jar.
I would've already got most of this on the table, by the way.
Yeah.
There you go. So, where will you keep that jar?
I usually keep it on my bedside table.
And look at it and think about it? Yeah.
Lovely to meet you and thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Well, I genuinely found that very moving, listening to those stories.
And seeing how Winston's Wish helps bereaved children across the UK.
And I think for a man who disapproved of, you know,
there being more statues of himself because he regarded them as rather pointless,
this is really a legacy of which Winston would be very proud.
One of the first things you notice when you look into the life and works
of Winston Churchill is just the sheer amount of stuff
that he got through.
He was Prime Minister twice.
He won the Nobel Prize for literature.
He was Time magazine's Man of the Year,
and man of the half century. He won countless military honours.
He got a knighthood, the list is absolutely endless.
It was a remarkable life and a remarkable career.
Absolutely fantastic Prime Minister. Brought us through some tough times.
Inspirational. He was Britain's greatest war-time leader.
He's an inspiration to others.
I think we owe a huge debt of gratitude for him.
Without the man, I don't feel we'd all be stood here.
On his 75th birthday, Churchill said, "I'm ready to meet my maker.
Whether my maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me
is another matter."
His maker had another 15 years to get ready.
Churchill lived to be 90 years old,
and died exactly 70 years to the day after his father.
And he's buried here in the village of Bladon in Oxfordshire.
When I stood in the back garden of our house in 1965
and I looked up, I had no real idea what I was looking at.
I had no idea of the influence that Winston Churchill
had had on this country, or on the rest of the world.
And I had no idea that some 50 years later
I'd get the chance to look at his life and his legacy.
And to meet some remarkable people with a unique connection to the man.
I've met people who've spent time with him,
worked for him and who even, effectively, became him.
I've met people who studied him.
Germans who sampled him, and those who've been inspired by him.
People who dressed him,
provided with him with hats,
encapsulate his name into bubbles.
And used his memorial trust
to start a remarkable charity.
I don't know quite what I was expecting to find out
from all those people and the stories that they told.
But what struck me, really,
is just the range of things
in his life that have inspired people.
And even now, this is remarkable really,
50 years later people are still leaving flowers
and notes on his grave.
This message here is from a 13-year-old child.
Who says, "Thank you for the freedom that I have today."
Probably done it in history at school,
but inspired by the man.
But for me, I think...
..what I love about him
is the fact that he was brilliant, but he was so flawed.
Every time that he failed,
and he failed an enormous number of times, in Gallipoli
and various decisions he made as a politician,
he just dusted himself down and he got on with it again.
And that's something, I think, we could all do.
It's something that you could apply to any aspect of your own life.
He lived by his own words effectively.
"Never give in."
And that is why the legacy of Winston Spencer Churchill
is going to last a very long time.