Advent 17

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

You do not need me to tell you that these were the words with which Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill addressed the House of Commons on the day that he was asked to lead a wartime coalition government. This most martial of politicians had never led a party into an election; he had twice crossed the floor of the Commons, from Conservative to Liberal and eventually back again. He had been both minister of state and a serving soldier during the Great War.

It says much about the Britain he led to salvation that his party was consummately defeated in the immediate post-war election. It says just as much that he again became Prime Minister in 1951.

He resigned from the Conservative Party in 1904 in opposition to Tory protectionism. History probably judges him on the correct side of that debate. He became a staunch anti-communist - again right. But he could be adamantly wrong - he was noisily against Indian home rule in the 1930's.

He was soldier, statesman, artist and author. He won a Nobel prize - for literature. When the BBC ran a series to judge the greatest ever Briton, Churchill's claim was promulgated by a Labour front-bencher. Churchill won the viewers' poll.