On a frosty morning in January 1965, a carriage bearing a coffin left Westminster Hall and proceeded to St. Paul's Cathedral through London. On a route lined by thousands, a dignified silence reigned, interrupted by a thunderous 19-gun salute and a fly-past by the Royal Air Force. Inside the coffin, lay Sir Winston Churchill, the great warrior, making his final journey home to Oxfordshire.

In 2000, a BBC poll returned Churchill as the greatest British Prime Minister of the twentieth century. Two years later, another BBC poll found that most Britons thought Churchill to be the greatest of their countrymen in all history. Post-war British Prime Ministers are said to look to his ghost in times of stress; his rough, cheerful face greets all occupants of

The pivotal year in his long and eventful life was 1940. It was the year, he is said to have insisted in his twilight years, that he would re-live over and over given the chance. It was the year that Britain stood alone. Rejecting Hitler’s offer of peace, Churchill rallied the country to war. Presiding over the miracle of Dunkirk and the furious Battle of Britain, he was in his element. By holding the Nazis at bay until the Americans joined the war, Churchill surely saved Europe from Hitler.

But would a Nazi flag have flown over Buckingham Palace had peace terms been agreed in 1940? There is little evidence that Hitler wanted to occupy Britain. His admiration for the British Empire was widely known. He considered Oxford a bastion of Aryan achievement. He was friendly with the Duke of Windsor, formerly Edward VIII. Hitler’s ambitions lay east, to the lebensraum of Poland and the Soviet Union. From Britain, he desired friendship.

The question is worth asking because 1940 is the year on which Churchill’s reputation rests. His political career appeared over when in 1931 Ramsay MacDonald did not invite him to join a National Cabinet. Militarily, he was better known for Gallipoli than anything else. Had he not risen to the role of dux bellorum upon the outbreak of the Second World War, we might remember him only as a fascinating but failed politician. But history bent to Churchill’s will. As the Reich crumbled around Hitler, Germany was once again crushed. Europe was divided by an iron curtain. The war over, the old warlord’s reckoning seemed vindicated. He had taken action - and stopped fascism.

Victory in 1945 was met with jubilation. Britain had shown incredible bravery and deserved its moment of triumph. Several years would pass before the uncomfortable truth became apparent. The fall of Singapore in 1942 had been a disaster and Indian independence in 1947 was something Churchill had long fought against. Rebellions in Kenya and Malaya during his peacetime premiership proved intractable. Yet it was the debacle of Suez in 1956 that finally forced Britain to face facts - The age of British supremacy was over. Churchill had presided over its demise.

To the public who threw him out at the war’s end then voted him back into Downing Street afterwards, Churchill appeared to be the man with whom the future could be trusted. He would preserve the British Empire, maintain British strength and protect tradition at home. But the war made decolonisation inevitable and left Britain financially dependent on America. Churchill himself failed to challenge the advent of radical socialist economic policies. Within a decade of his grand funeral, the country was in the grip of seemingly irreversible decline, wracked with self-doubt and on the verge of obscurity. Churchill walked, talked and dressed like a guardian of the old order. But behind his back the new Britain, torn between America and Europe, subordinate to the former and suspicious of the latter, uncertain of its place in the world, was taking shape. Not until the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher would Britons enjoy a rebirth of self-confidence.

Queen Elizabeth offered to make Churchill the Duke of London. He refused. He was, to the last, a democrat, who chose to die a commoner. Perhaps the original neo-conservative, he believed in human rights and the primacy of Western values. His method was intervention: abroad, at home and wherever it was needed. He was a Whig imperialist whose curriculum vitae rang with the names of the Empire: Malakand, Omdurman, Ladysmith and London. He was simultaneously an aristocrat and a man of the people.

Churchill's leadership during the war can never be forgotten. He was the man of the hour, who deserves to be immortalised as the leader who inspired his people to stand firm against facism. But, as the wreckage of interventionist policies in Iraq and Afghanistan will confirm, valour in war cannot by itself bring prosperity. The Second World War was almost a catastrophe for Britain. Even in victory, it took a heavy toll. It cost Britain her position and her independence, to say nothing of many of her finest men and women. Churchill continues to be lionised as a great Briton. Deservedly so. But were he alive today, celebrating his 135^th birthday, we must wonder whether he would not lament the loss of the grand, imperial Britain he led and loved…