September 28, 2022

The Art of Being Winston Churchill: Forever

By BARRY SINGER

When Sir Winston Churchill decided to retire as Prime Minister in April 1955, he unknowingly set off discussions at Buckingham Palace about the possibility of honoring him with a dukedom, thus sending him to the House of Lords. Arriving at the palace on 5 April to tender his formal resignation to the young Queen Elizabeth II, he was touched by her offer to make him a duke.

“You know, I very nearly accepted,” Churchill told his private secretary John Colville immediately after, with tears in his eyes. “I was so moved by her beauty and her charm and the kindness with which she made this offer….But finally I remembered that I must die in the House of Commons; I must die as I have lived—Winston Churchill.

Barry Singer is proprietor of Chartwell Booksellers in New York City and author of Churchill Style (2012).