Winston Churchill at 150: the post-prime ministership

Sir Winston Churchill was born 150 years ago today. Rather like his (eventual) successor, and great admirer, Margaret Thatcher, there is a wealth of material about one of the most understudied aspects of his career: his life after Downing Street.

For any student of Churchill's post-prime ministership, these three books are an essential source. Sir Martin Gilbert's magisterial official biography, Lord Moran's controversial book (which at this distance seems a work of homage, shedding new light on a heroic personality), and the recollections of Anthony Montague Browne, Churchill's last Private Secretary.

There is material in The National Archives and there is Churchill's own archive. We visited Churchill's papers in 1997 while doing our postgraduate research on ex-premiers. The extent of the material revealed an important fact of life about former prime ministers: however much they may seem or be seen - or be claimed, sometimes by themselves - to be retired from politics, they're not really. They maintain correspondence with political contacts, they meet them, they speak with them. This is often away from the public gaze, but it happens and it matters.

There was also much media coverage of Churchill after 1955 and even if little parliamentary activity (he intervened only four times after resigning), there was parliamentary presence. Of his life in Parliament, we have previously written:

The purpose of two of Churchill's interventions was to thank the House for its greetings on the occasion of his birthday. Beyond that, Churchill was, within Parliament, an icon of past glories. The image of the great war leader never faded. He was, in modern parlance, an A-list parliamentary celebrity, as much a legend as a person. His mere entry to the Commons Chamber was greeted with something akin to rapture and was effusively reported, in almost Helloesque style, in the press. Of Churchill's first appearance in the Commons after the 1955 election, The Times' parliamentary corespondent wrote: 'His entrance was a signal for a great burst of cheering from both sides of the House, and as he came into view of the public up aloft they broke into the loudest round of applause - strictly out of order - which the oldest hands could remember. The tumult went on as he made his way to [his seat].' Some three years later, The Times reported: 'A sudden tumult of cheering burst on the Chamber in the middle of question hour to-day. It was the Commons' spontaneous, affectionate welcome to Sir Winston Churchill.' When he entered the Chamber in May 1963, 'the Commons rose from their seats as one man, as they seldom do, and roared their approval'.

What was also fascinating from our research was how young, newish MPs would chaperone Churchill on his visits to Parliament. A number of them shared their experiences with us of him, experiences which reinforced his iconography. All of this illustrates the earlier point: when it comes to former prime ministers, what matters as much as the measurable and the observable - if not even more than the measurable and the observable - is the unseen and the nuance, even with such an iconic former prime minister as Churchill.