February 5, 2023

New Exhibit at ANCM Studies Churchill’s Funeral

Sir Winston Churchill died at age 90 on January 24, 1965, putting into motion a meticulous plan for a historic State Funeral. The plan, which had been started more than a decade earlier, was code-named “Operation Hope Not” and was decreed by Queen Elizabeth II to be “on a scale befitting his position in history.” America’s National Churchill Museum (ANCM) at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri has a new exhibition that tells the story in objects and images.

The exhibition examines Sir Winston’s State Funeral, the largest in British history at the time, and the private internment for family at the Church at Bladon, in Oxfordshire. It includes a series of rarely exhibited oil paintings by Churchill’s nephew John Spencer-Churchill and archival material from the Museum’s holdings along with material on loan from the Collection of Philip and Susan Larson. The exhibit runs through March 31.

The exhibition is made possible by the Anson Cutts Endowment for America’s National Churchill Museum. Programming support for the exhibition is made possible by the Kostich Endowment for America’s National Churchill Museum.

Image: John Spencer-Churchill (British, 1909–1992) Start of the State Funeral, Oil on Canvas. Gift of Hallmark. (detail).