Plane Introductin

7.Death.

Churchill suffered his final stroke on 12 January 1965. He died nearly two weeks later on the 24th, which was the seventieth anniversary of his father's death. He was given a state funeral six days later on Saturday, 18 January, the first for a non-royal person since W. E. Gladstone in 1898.^[565]

Planning for Churchill's funeral had begun in 1953 under the code-name of "Operation Hope Not" and a detailed plan had been produced by 1958.^[567] His coffin lay in state at Westminster Hall for three days and the funeral ceremony was at St Paul's Cathedral.^[565] Afterwards, the coffin was taken by boat along the River Thames to Waterloo Station and from there by a special train to the family plot at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near his birthplace at Blenheim Palace.

Worldwide, numerous memorials have been dedicated to Churchill. His statue in Parliament Square was unveiled by Clementine in 1973 and is one of only twelve in the square, all of prominent political figures, including Churchill's friend Lloyd George and his India policy nemesis Gandhi.^[569][570] Elsewhere in London, the wartime Cabinet War Rooms have been renamed the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms.^[571] An indication of Churchill's high esteem in the UK is the result of the 2002 BBC poll, attracting 447,423 votes, in which he was voted the greatest Briton of all time, his nearest rival being Isambard Kingdom Brunel some 56,000 votes behind.^[572]

He is one of only eight people to be granted honorary citizenship of the United States; others include Lafayette, Raoul Wallenberg and Mother Teresa.^[573] The United States Navy honoured him in 1999 by naming a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer as the USS Winston S. Churchill.^[574] Other memorials in North America include the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, where he made the 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech; Churchill Square in central Edmonton, Alberta; and the Winston Churchill Range, a mountain range northwest of Lake Louise, also in Alberta, which was renamed after Churchill in 1956

Churchill was a prolific writer. He used either "Winston S. Churchill" or "Winston Spencer Churchill" as his pen name to avoid confusion with the American novelist of the same name, with whom he struck up a friendly correspondence.^[583] His output included a novel, two biographies, three volumes of memoirs, several histories, and numerous press articles. Two of his most famous works, published after his first premiership brought his international fame to new heights, were his twelve-volume memoir, The Second World War, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: a four-volume history covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914).^[584] For many years, Churchill relied heavily upon his press articles to assuage his financial worries. In 1937, for example, he wrote 64 articles that were published by, among others, the Evening Standard, the News of the World or the Sunday Chronicle. These contracts were quite lucrative: the News of the /World paid him about £400 per article. At times, his work was at least partially ghostwritten, mainly by Adam Marshall Diston who was paid a fee of £15 per article.^[585]

As well as writing, Churchill took great pleasure in painting and became an accomplished amateur artist after his resignation from the Admiralty in 1915.^[586] Using the pseudonym "Charles Morin",^[417] he continued this hobby throughout his life and completed hundreds of paintings, many of which are on show in the studio at Chartwell as well as in private collections.^[587] Most of his paintings are oil-based and feature landscapes, but he also did a number of interior scenes and portraits. In 1925 Lord Duveen, Kenneth Clark, and Oswald Birley selected his Winter Sunshine as the prize winner in a contest for anonymous amateur artists.^[588] Due to obvious time constraints, Churchill attempted only one painting during the Second World War. He completed the painting from the tower of the Villa Taylor in Marrakesh.^[589]

Churchill was an amateur bricklayer, constructing buildings and garden walls at Chartwell.^[417] As part of this hobby, Churchill joined the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers but was expelled after he revived his membership of the Conservative Party.^[417] He also bred butterflies at Chartwell, keeping them in a converted summerhouse each year until the weather was right for their release.^[590] He was well known for his love of animals and always had several pets, mainly cats but also dogs, pigs, lambs, bantams, goats and fox cubs among others.^[591] Churchill has often been quoted as saying that "cats look down us and dogs look up to us, but pigs treat us as equals", or words to that effect, but the International Churchill Society believe he has mostly been misquoted