Winston Churchill
Churchill in 1997
Member of Parliament
In office 18 June 1970 – 8 April 1997
Preceded by	Ernest Arthur Davies
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Constituency	Stretford (1970–1983) Davyhulme (1983–1997)
Personal details
Born	Winston Spencer Churchill (1940-10-10)10 October 1940 Chequers, Buckinghamshire, England
Died	2 March 2010(2010-03-02) (aged 69) Belgravia, London, England
Resting place	St. Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, Oxfordshire, England
Party	Conservative
Spouses	Minnie Caroline d'Erlanger ​ ​ (m. 1964; dissolved 1997)​ Luce Engelen ​ (m. 1997)​
Children	4
Parents	Randolph Churchill Pamela Digby
Relatives	Winston Churchill (paternal grandfather) Clementine Churchill (paternal grandmother) Arabella Churchill (paternal half-sister)
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford

Winston Spencer Churchill^[1] (10 October 1940 – 2 March 2010), generally known asWinston Churchill,^{[nb 1]} was an EnglishConservative politician and a grandson of the British prime ministerof the same name. During the period of his prominence as a public figure, he was normally referred to as Winston Churchill MP, in order to distinguish him from his grandfather. His fatherRandolph Churchill was also an MP and his motherPamela Harriman was the United States Ambassador to France.

Churchill was born on 10 October 1940 atChequers, Buckinghamshire, England, five months after his grandfather becamePrime Minister, a year into theSecond World War. He was educated atLudgrove,^[2]Eton College and atChrist Church, Oxford. His famous grandfather died in 1965, and his father died three years afterwards.^[3]

Before becoming aMember of Parliament he was ajournalist, notably in the Middle East during theSix-Day War, during which time he met numerousIsraeli politicians, includingMoshe Dayan. He also published a book recounting the war.^[3] During the 1960s he covered conflicts in Yemen and Borneo as well as the Vietnam War.^[4] He visited Czechoslovakia in 1968 to record thePrague Spring, and when, that same year, in the wake of public assassinations, theDemocratic National Convention was held at Chicago, he was attacked by thepolice.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1960s atBiafra,Nigeria, he witnessed both war andfamine, and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians was an outrage to him. He reported in further trouble spots includingCommunist China, and inPortugal during theCarnation Revolution. Like other members of his family, he began a lecture tour of the United States.^{[citation needed]}

In 1965, he became a member of thePennsylvania Society of theSons of the American Revolution.^{[citation needed]}

Churchill was not able to take up his grandfather's parliamentary seat atWoodford inEssex when he stepped down at the1964 general election, three months before his death at the age of 90. However, he was at the centre of theConservative campaign: despite being quite inexperienced in politics, he had been appointed asEdward Heath's personal assistant. Heath, who was already a senior cabinet minister, was elected party leader the following year after the resignation of SirAlec Douglas-Home, who lost the general election toHarold Wilson'sLabour Party.

Churchill's first attempt to enter Parliament was at the1967 Manchester Gorton by-election. In spite of the unpopularity of theincumbent Labour government, he lost, but only by 577 votes. He was still a journalist withThe Daily Telegraph when his father died in 1968; the paper's proprietor,Lord Hartwell, took the decision to employMartin Gilbert to continue the work on the former Prime Minister's biography that Randolph had started.

Churchill becameMember of Parliament for the constituency ofStretford, nearManchester, at the1970 general election. As an MP he was a member of the parliamentary ski team and chairman of the Commons Flying Club. He became a friend ofJulian Amery MP, who as Minister for Housing and Construction at theDepartment of the Environment, appointed him hisParliamentary Private Secretary. Churchill was not much interested in the mundane questions of housing, however, and doing as little as possible, took questions to the House from civil servants. Transferred to the Foreign Office with Amery, he became very outspoken on issues in the Middle East and on the Communist Bloc. After he attempted to questionAlec Douglas-Home's abilities as Foreign Secretary, he was forced to resign in November 1973, just over three months before the Conservatives lost power to the Labour Party for the second time in a decade.

Churchill resumed his great-grandfatherLord Randolph Churchill's precedent of protectingUlster Unionism, defending theDiplock Courts, internment and arguing for thedeath penalty for terrorists. He was part of a group of Conservative MPs of the era (includingMargaret Thatcher) who were heavily critical ofBBC coverage of the conflict inNorthern Ireland and for allegedly expressingcommunist sympathies, for which some journalists^[who?] were sacked.^{[citation needed]}

As a frontbench spokesman on defence policy, he took a hard line onRhodesia, voting against any sanctions. His presentation at the despatch box was strident for the times; he was censured by the Speaker for calling Foreign SecretaryDavid Owen "treacherous" over the abandonment of Rhodesia.^{[citation needed]} Thatcher, who succeededEdward Heath as Conservative leader in 1975, dismissed Churchill from the Conservative front bench in November 1978.^{[citation needed]} However, when the Conservatives came to power in theelection of May 1979 he was elected to the executive of the1922 Committee.

Boundary changes that took effect at the1983 general election made his seat more marginal (it was subsequently taken by the Labour Party), and he transferred to the nearbyDavyhulme constituency, which he represented until the seat was abolished for the1997 general election. Although well known by virtue of his family history, he never achieved high office and remained abackbencher. His cousin,Nicholas Soames, was first elected a Conservative MP in 1983 and remained in Parliament until 2019.^[5]

During his time as a Member of Parliament, Churchill visitedBeijing with a delegation of other MPs, includingClement Freud, a grandson of the psychoanalystSigmund Freud. Freud asked why Churchill was given the best room in the hotel, and was told it was because Churchill was a grandson of Britain's most illustrious Prime Minister. Freud responded by saying it was the first time in his life that he had been "out-grandfathered".^[6] After the1990–91 Gulf War, Churchill visited British troops in the desert. When he introduced himself to a soldier, the soldier replied "Yes, and I'mRommel", highlighting, as his father had told him, the comparative disadvantage in his name.^[7] He was the subject of controversy in 1995 when he and his family sold a large archive of his grandfather's papers for £12.5m toChurchill College, Cambridge. The purchase was funded by a grant from the newly establishedNational Lottery.^[8]

After leaving Parliament at the1997 election (his Davyhulme seat having been abolished), Churchill was a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, and wrote many articles in support of theIraq War and the fight againstIslamic terrorism. He also edited a compilation of his grandfather's famous speeches entitledNever Give In. In 2007, he acted as a spokesman for the pressure groupUK National Defence Association.^[9][10] He was also involved with theNational Benevolent Fund for the Aged, as trustee from 1974 and chair from 1995 to 2010.^[11] He attempted to be selected as anMEP, but was unsuccessful.^[12]

Churchill was the son ofRandolph Churchill (1911–1968), the only son of Sir Winston Churchill, and his first wifePamela Digby (1920–1997). His parents divorced in 1945. His father married June Osborne: their daughter wasArabella Churchill (1949–2007). His mother marriedW. Averell Harriman, former United States ambassador to the United Kingdom. Churchill's first marriage, in July 1964, was to Mary "Minnie" Caroline d'Erlanger, the daughter of the banker Sir Gerard John Regis d'Erlanger and granddaughter ofBaron Emile Beaumont d'Erlanger.^[13] The couple had four children, including a son named Randolph. Churchill's second marriage, to Luce Engelen, a Belgian-born jewellery maker, lasted from 1997 until his death.^[3]

Churchill lived inBelgravia, London, where he died aged 69 on 2 March 2010 fromprostate cancer, from which he had suffered for the last two years of his life.^[14][4] On 9 March, he was buried in the family plot atSt Martin’s Church inBladon, nearWoodstock, Oxfordshire.^[15]

• First Journey (1964)
• Six Day War (1967), co-written with his father, Randolph Churchill.
• Defending the West (1981)
• Memories and Adventures (1989)
• His Father's Son (1996), a biography of his father, Randolph Churchill.
• The Great Republic (1999), editor
• Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches (2003), editor

• Hansard 1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Winston Churchill
• Winston Churchill atIMDb
• Appearances onC-SPAN

• 1940 births
• 2010 deaths
• Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
• Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
• Deaths from prostate cancer in England
• English people of American descent
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• Spencer-Churchill family
• UK MPs 1970–1974
• UK MPs 1974
• UK MPs 1974–1979
• UK MPs 1979–1983
• UK MPs 1983–1987
• UK MPs 1987–1992
• UK MPs 1992–1997
• Burials at St Martin's Church, Bladon
• People educated at Ludgrove School
• People from Belgravia
• Family of Winston Churchill

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