English aristocrat, politician and writer Winston Churchill was BOTD in 1874. Born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the ancestral home of the Duchy of Marlborough, he had a typically aristocratic upbringing of nannies, parental neglect and private schools. After a poor academic career, he joined the British Army in 1895, overseeing ethnic cleansing in British-occupied India, South Africa and the Sudan, and becoming well-known as a war correspondent. Elected as a Conservative MP in 1900, he had a chequered career in politics, resigning in 1915 after his disastrous leadership of the Gallipoli campaign during World War One. He re-joined the British Army to fight on the Western Front, returning to government in 1917. He held various offices before becoming Prime Minister in 1940. Initially supportive of Britain’s efforts to appease Nazi Germany, he eventually recognised Hitler as a threat, and led the Allied defence of Europe during World War Two. Skilfully presenting himself as a symbol of British resolve and national unity, he became a popular public figure, proclaiming himself for the rest of his life as the man who defeated Hitler. He lost the general election in 1945 to Clement Attlee’s Labour government but was returned to office in 1951, stepping down due to ill health in 1955. His war writings won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. A charismatic and controversial figure, his legacy has been criticised for his pro-imperialist foreign policy and economic mismanagement. A bachelor until his mid-30s, Churchill married Clementine Hozier in 1908, with whom he had five children. He also had close friendships with an astonishing number of homosexuals, including his private secretary Edward Marsh, the poet Rupert Brooke and bisexual politicians Bob Boothby, Tom Driberg and Brendan Bracken. Churchill privately admitted to having once gone to bed with actor-composer Ivor Novello, an experience he described as “very musical”. When Conservative MP Ian Harvey was caught having sex with a guardsman in St James’s Park in 1957, Churchill reportedly commented “On the coldest night of the year? It makes you proud to be British.” He died in 1965, aged 90. He has been portrayed innumerable times onscreen, notably by Richard Burton, Timothy West, Albert Finney, Timothy Spall, John Lithgow, and Gary Oldman, who won an Oscar for the 2017 film Darkest Hour.