Sir Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1940-1945 and again from 1951-1955. Listen to how PM David Cameron describes his “favorite” Prime Minister in March 2012 from Number 10.
See more on Winston Churchill as Prime Minister at Number 10 Downing Street.
by Martin Gilbert, M.A.
London, England, 17 September 1985
Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great honour for me to speak to you tonight. Three weeks ago exactly I was in Moscow, walking through the town house where Churchill met Stalin in October 1944; a magnificent building. I had hoped to bring a photograph of this fine building to show you tonight. Unfortunately my host on that occasion, as I produced my camera to take the photograph, tapped me gently on the shoulder and remarked: “My dear Professor, this is a high security building.”
Well, your tour of Churchill’s England, and my little tour of Churchill’s world tonight, have no security classification. While in London, I know you will visit many of the places associated with his life. I hope you will also find time to go and see some of the charming houses in which he spent his youth. The people who live in these houses, the first of which is 48 Charles Street, the second being 29 St. James’s Place, are puzzled that they cannot get blue plaques appended to the walls. Unfortunately the blue plaque policy is to select a few and abandon many.
Churchill lived such a long life that he had many London residences: it would be nice to feel that, as a result of interest such as yours, blue plaques will one day be put on all of them. For example, in the same street where Churchill spent several years as a child, there is a blue plaque on another house informing passers by that “from this house Chopin went to give his last concert.” Nor is there any plaque on 105 Mount Street, his first bachelor apartment, in which he lived from 1900 to 1905, and from which, incidentally, he went to the House of Commons to make his maiden speech; and in which he was living when he crossed the floor of the House from the Conservative to the Liberal benches.
