Activities and affiliations

Government and administration United Kingdom state institutions 1874–1965 ○ Stroke

Britain's wartime prime minister who divided Europe with Stalin on a half-sheet of paper

Churchill's memoir account of the October 1944 Moscow meeting: 'I wrote on a half-sheet: Romania, Russia 90%… I pushed this across to Stalin. He took his blue pencil, made a large tick, and passed it back.' Soviet authorities denied in 1958 that Stalin accepted such a proposal.

A British statesman, army officer and writer, Churchill was born in 1874 at Blenheim Palace into the wealthy aristocratic Spencer family, of mixed English and American parentage. After army service in India, Sudan and the Boer War he entered Parliament in 1900. As a Liberal minister he was President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty, where he oversaw the failed Gallipoli campaign; in 1924–1929 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Prime minister from May 1940, he led Britain through the Second World War, warned in 1946 of an 'iron curtain', and held office again in 1951–1955. An imperialist, anti-communist and opponent of Indian self-government, he remains a contested figure; he died in 1965.

Government and administration United Kingdom state institutions 1883–1967 ○ Pneumonia

The laconic reformer who replaced Churchill mid-Potsdam and built Britain's postwar welfare state

After winning the 1945 election, Attlee stood in silence with George VI at Buckingham Palace before volunteering, "I've won the election." The King replied, "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News."

Clement Attlee was the man who replaced Winston Churchill as British prime minister in the middle of the Potsdam Conference, after Labour's landslide victory in July 1945. He had served loyally as Churchill's deputy in the wartime coalition, but voters chose the unassuming reformer over the war hero and his promise of a welfare state. His government created the National Health Service, nationalised major industries, and began dismantling the British Empire by granting independence to India and Pakistan. Abroad, he championed the Marshall Plan and NATO, aligning Britain firmly with the United States as the Cold War took shape.