Winston Churchill in Retrospect

Yesterday was the anniversary of Winston Churchill’s birth in 1874.
That occasion offers me the opportunity to point once again to
Churchill and the central role he played in the twentieth century.

I will let Geoffrey Best, one of Churchill’s finest recent
biographers, explain Churchill’s significance, and why it is often
missed:

By the time Churchill died, Britain was fast turning into a land
in which such a man as he was would never again find room to flourish,
with a popular culture increasingly inimical to his values and likely
therefore not to notice or properly appreciate his achievments. . . .
In the years 1940 and 1941 he was indeed the saviour of the nation. His
achievements, taken all in all, justify his title to be known as the
greatest Englishman of his age. I am persuaded that, in this later
time, we are diminished if, admitting Churchill’s failings and
failures, we can no longer appreciate his virtues and victories.

See: Geoffrey Best, Churchill: A Study in Greatness (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 336.