The enduring legacy of Churchill 60 years after his death – and why Trump sees him as an icon to emulate
Sir Winston Churchill died 60 years ago this week on 24 January 1965. His funeral took place on 30 January, following three days lying in state in the Palace of Westminster.
It was the only occasion since the Second World War when a full state funeral was held for someone who was not a member of the Royal Family.
Churchill was venerated then as the prime minister who had led Great Britain to victory over Hitler and the Nazis. He has repeatedly topped surveys asking for the “Greatest Briton” since.
In 1965, many people who had lived through the war were still alive. The Royal Mint struck a ‘Churchill Crown’, with a nominal value of five shillings, to mark his life and death. Such commemorative issues were a rarity in the 1960s.
The funeral itself was an exceptional and grand event, involving thousands of troops from all branches of the armed services. It had been planned for at least 12 years, with its ailing subject taking an active interest.
Its sombre splendour cemented Britain’s reputation for ceremonial spectacle but afterwards, French President General Charles de Gaulle, who Churchill had grudgingly allowed to be invited, commented: “Now Britain is no longer a great power.”
As remarkable as the national and international reaction at the time of his death, is the phenomenon that Sir Winston Churchill endures as an iconic figure, more than half a century later.
Churchill endures as an iconic figure. Pic AP
Yet another drama depicting Churchill is opening on stage in London. This time Roger Allam, Inspector Thursday in the Endeavour TV series, is playing the great man in Churchill in Moscow, following in the footsteps of other stars including Brian Cox, Albert Finney, Timothy Spall, Timothy West, Robert Hardy and Richard Burton.
Bust returned twice
Meanwhile, with the inauguration of a new US president, the location of a bust of Sir Winston has once again become a hot topic, in Britain’s right-wing media outlets at least.
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Donald Trump has re-instated the bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein in a prominent position in the Oval Office. It was originally a loan from the British Embassy to President George W Bush. Both Trump’s immediate presidential predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, had it moved elsewhere in the White House. Trump has now put it back twice.
Obama put a bust of Martin Luther King Junior in pride of place. Joe Biden favoured the Irish-American Bobby Kennedy. RFK senior that is, not his son RFK junior, the Kennedy family renegade now nominated as Trump’s health secretary.
There has long been another identical copy of the Epstein bust in the presidential private quarters – a gift to Lyndon Johnson in 1965.
Trump proudly showed the Churchill bust to then-PM Theresa May in 2017. Pic: AP
Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, a former Conservative MP who is now in the House of Lords, is unimpressed by all the fuss. He points out: “It’s loaned. I promise you, it’s not a sign of the strength or otherwise of the special relationship, whether or not Churchill’s head is in the White House.”
Trump’s admiration for Churchill is more personal than anglophile. His glaring official photo portrait for this year’s inauguration is almost a pastiche of Churchill’s frequent “we shall never surrender” poses, just as some Trump posts on social media garble some of Churchill’s most famous quotations. The Darkest Hour, featuring Gary Oldman as Churchill, is one of the films Trump has identified as his favourite movie.
Leader comparisons
The president’s closest allies like to draw comparisons between the two men. In 2020, when Trump muscled his way to St John’s Church opposite the White House for a photo-op after it had been damaged by a firebomb, his official spokesman said it was “a message of resilience and determination, like Churchill inspecting the bombing damage”, presumably of the Blitz.
Trump’s controversial photo-op outside St John’s – often called the Church of the Presidents. Pic: AP
After visiting his father following this summer’s deadly assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump’s son Eric likened him to Churchill due to his “lack of political correctness”.
Trump is not the only US president to emulate Churchill. Both Eisenhower and George W Bush tried their hand at painting, inspired in part by Churchill’s skill with the brush.
Trump is a great admirer of pageantry and may be disappointed that, at 24.6 million, the TV audience for his second inauguration did not match either Joe Biden’s or Barack Obama’s first.
Part of the explanation may be increasing fragmentation of audiences by new media represented by the tech billionaires, who were invited to attend the ceremony in person by Trump.
In 1965 a similar number, 25 million, watched Churchill’s funeral in the UK, an overwhelming mass audience in a much smaller country than the US. There were only two TV channels then and the ceremony was broadcast live by both the BBC and ITV.
The naval party drawing the gun carriage bearing Sir Winston Churchill’s coffin during the funeral procession. Pic: AP
On the BBC, it was the last state occasion anchored by Richard Dimbleby, the patriarch of the Dimbleby broadcasting family. There were large TV audiences in the US as well. The funeral was not shown live on RTE in Ireland. Neither the Irish president nor prime minister attended the ceremony.
I was a small boy then and remember the coverage as one of the two great highlights of the black and white television era. The other was England’s World Cup victory in 1966. Extended outside broadcast from multiple locations were a rarity. Both the funeral and the cup final took place during the day on a Saturday – a time when, back then, there was usually nothing to watch on TV sets.
Rare honour of state funeral
The funeral was a television spectacular involving foot soldiers and cavalry, RAF fly-bys and travel by boat, train, manpower and hearse. The ceremonies had been in planning since Churchill had his first major stroke in 1953.
He was serving his second term as prime minister and the poor state of his health was covered up from the public, even though he was left partially paralysed. Officials in the know, working for the royals and at Westminster, set to work to prepare Operation Hope Not.
Crowds lined the street to pay their respects. Pic: AP
Putting the plan into action required a message from the Queen to parliament and a motion in parliament the day after Churchill died to authorise a state funeral.
Full state funerals are usually reserved for heads of state. The late Queen Mother, Princess Diana, the late Duke of Edinburgh, and former prime minister Margaret Thatcher were all given ceremonial funerals in recent years – but none of these were state funeral in terms of scale or international protocol. Britain’s next state funeral was for Elizabeth II in September 2022.
Churchill’s embalmed body lay in state round the clock in Westminster Hall for three days. More than 300,000 people filed past to pay their respects. Then the funeral began when Big Ben struck 9.45am. The bell was silenced for the day after that but there was a 90-gun salute in Hyde Park, a volley for each year of Churchill’s life.
Sir Winston’s coffin lay in state before his funeral, Churchill at Westminster Hall, as Elizabeth II’s would decades later
As soldiers and spectators lined the streets of London, Churchill’s coffin was placed on a gun carriage and pulled by 98 sailors from the Royal Navy all the way to St Paul’s Cathedral. It was carried inside with honorary pallbearers including three other British prime ministers and an Australian one. Clement Attlee, aged 82, stumbled on the steps and was given a chair to rest on.
Queen broke with protocol
After the service, the catafalque was drawn to the pier by Tower Bridge and taken upriver to Waterloo Station. Dockside cranes dipped as the boat passed. There is some dispute as to how voluntary this gesture by dockers really was. Even though his final journey was by locomotive down the Great Western Railway, Churchill insisted on going via Waterloo rather than Paddington station to make a point about British historical glory.
He was buried at St Martin’s Church, Bladon, on the Blenheim estate, seat of the Duke of Marlborough, a cousin, alongside his parents and other members of the Spencer Churchill family.
Churchill was the first prime minister of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Throughout the funeral day she broke with protocol to give him precedence. She hosted a reception for the dignitaries in attendance including the nine monarchs, 15 presidents and 14 serving prime ministers.
It is perhaps just as well that Donald Trump will not be around to see if his final obsequies beat that.
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A state of emergency has been declared in South Carolina as wildfires caused by dry and gusty conditions have forced people to evacuate some areas.
More than 175 fires covered 6.6 square miles in the state on Sunday as the National Weather Service warned of an increased risk of blazes in the region.
The number of fires was down to 163 by early Monday, the state’s forestry commission said.
South Carolina governor Henry McMaster declared a state of emergency on Sunday to support the wildfire response effort and a state-wide burning ban is in effect.
People in eight neighbourhoods were forced to evacuate as several fires raged in the state’s Horry County, officials said.
Soldiers used two Blackhawk helicopters to drop water 600 gallons at a time on the blazes, the South Carolina National Guard said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, firefighters made progress containing a fire in Carolina Forest, where people had been ordered to evacuate several neighbourhoods, according to Horry County Fire Rescue.
Footage showed some people running down the street as smoke filled the sky.
However, Horry County Fire Rescue announced by late Sunday that Carolina Forest evacuees could return home.
The Red Cross of South Carolina said approximately 135 Carolina Forest residents had taken shelter in a county recreation centre.
Smoke is seen rising from fires in Horry County. Pic: AP/Horry County Fire Rescue
The fire in the area had burned 2.5 square miles as of Sunday evening, the South Carolina Forestry Commission estimated.
No structures had succumbed to the blaze and no injuries had been reported as of Sunday morning, officials said.
It came as fire crews were working to contain multiple wildfires burning in four forests across North Carolina.
The largest covered around 0.6 square miles and burned in Uwharrie National Forest – about 50 miles east of Charlotte.
The North Carolina Forest Service said on Sunday that it had been made progress on the fire, reaching about one-third containment.
People flee an area in Myrtle Beach. Pic: AP
The small southwestern town of Tryon in Polk County, North Carolina, had urged some residents to evacuate on Saturday as a fire spread rapidly there.
The evacuations remained in effect on Sunday.
A decision on whether to lift the evacuation orders was expected to be made on Monday after intentional burns are set to try to stop the fire from spreading.
That fire had burned about 0.8 square miles as of Sunday evening, with 0% containment, according to the Polk County Emergency Management and Fire Marshal’s office.
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A helicopter drops water to help contain a fire in the Carolina Forest area. Pic: AP
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The North Carolina Forest Service was conducting water drops and back-burning operations on the ground and residents should expect a lot of smoke during those operations, officials said.
It comes as at least six active fires were burning in Georgia on Sunday, with nearly 5.8 miles burned in a seven-day span that brought the region gusty winds and low humidity, according to a Georgia Forestry Commission fire summary.
Officials have not said what caused any of the fires.
The dry and gusty conditions fuelling the fires are expected to fade as a cold front pushes out the dry air mass over the southeast of the US and brings rain by Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.
The convergence of warmth, dry air and gusty winds is not inconsistent with the season’s La Niña weather phenomenon, which is associated with warmer, drier winters in the Carolinas, according to North Carolina State University.
The blazes come after two wildfires in Los Angeles killed 29 people and scorched thousands of acres across 24 days.
More than 18,000 structures were damaged or destroyed in the deadly Eaton and Palisades blazes, which swept across California in January.
Cryptocurrency prices have jumped after Donald Trump revealed he would like Bitcoin and other lesser-traded tokens to be in a new US strategic crypto reserve.
He said his January executive order on digital assets would create a stockpile of currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Cardano (ADA).
The names had not previously been announced.
The American president said in a post on Truth Social: “A US Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA.”
“I will make sure the US is the Crypto Capital of the World.”
“And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable Cryptocurrencies, will be at the heart of the Reserve,” he said in a follow-up post. “I also love Bitcoin and Ethereum!”
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, rose over 11% to $94,164 after Sunday’s announcement.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was up around 13% at $2,516.
XRP surged 33% while the token tied to Solana jumped 25%. Cardano’s coin soared more than 60%.
Bitcoin was trading up around 20% from last week’s lows.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on cryptocurrencies in January. Pic: Reuters
The total cryptocurrency market rose about 10%, or more than $300bn (£238bn), in the hours since the announcement, according to cryptocurrency data and analysis company CoinGecko.
This is the first time Mr Trump has specified his support for a crypto “reserve” rather than a “stockpile”. While the former assumes actively buying crypto in regular installments, a stockpile would not sell any of the crypto currently held by the US government.
Mr Trump is hosting the first White House Crypto Summit on Friday, and investors will be watching closely for more clues about the direction of the reserve plans.
His family have also launched their own coins, including his wife Melania.
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Mr Trump first introduced the idea of a Bitcoin stockpile, which would “keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future” last summer at major industry conference Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville.
After his re-election to the White House in November, there were more calls for a strategic Bitcoin reserve, helping to send the price of the flagship cryptocurrency to new all-time highs.
Under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, regulators cracked down on the industry in an attempt to protect Americans from fraud and money laundering.
Under Mr Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission has withdrawn investigations into several crypto companies and dropped a lawsuit against Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US.
But in recent weeks, crypto prices have fallen sharply, with some of the biggest digital currencies erasing nearly all of the gains made after Mr Trump’s election win triggered excitement across the industry.
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