The man

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965), was a Member of Parliament (House of Commons) for 62 years: 2/3 of the 20th century and Prime Minister on two separate occasions. He is widely regarded as the leader that Great Britain needed to get through the Second World War, whose leadership and inspiring speeches gave the population hope during the darkest of times. On the international stage, he was influential in persuading the USA to enter the war, and he held together an alliance between the USA and the Soviet Union that enabled the war to be won on the Allied side. In May 1940 Neville Chamberlain had resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Churchill. During the Battle of Britain that followed, Churchill addressed the House of Commons with speeches that referred to the battle, one of which included the famous words ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’. The pose of the statue is itself based on a photograph of Churchill inspecting the destruction of the House of Commons in 1941.