January 1, 1970

Churchill later wrote in The Second World War (Volume 6), that Clementine, who was keen for him to retire from politics (he was, after all, seventy), had consoled him by saying, ‘It may well be a blessing in disguise’. He replied: ‘At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.’

Seventy years old, voted out of office and exhausted from the shattering defeat of his party, Churchill fell into depression, with a knock-on effect on his wife and family.

But there was to be a future. Churchill, as ever, fought back.