UNITED FRONT

If Winston Churchill had not been born at Blenheim Palace, as he was in 1874, would he have been a different person? David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister who steered Britain to victory in the First World War, once suggested that Churchill hated communism not just because of its ideology, but because Churchill’s ‘ducal blood’ was revolted by the way the Bolsheviks slaughtered the Tsar and his family after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

During the Second World War, Churchill entered into a wartime coalition government with his Labour Party counterpart Clement Attlee and the pair were united by their opposition to communism; Churchill likened the comrades to “baboons”, while Attlee labelled them “gratuitous asses”.

Attlee was born in far more modest circumstances than Churchill. His father was a solicitor.