Winston Churchill:

Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) served as the thirty-seventh President of the United States from 1969 to 1974. He frequently said that Winston Churchill was the most impressive man that he ever met. Likely it was as a member of the House of Representatives in January 1952 that Nixon first saw Churchill in person, when the Prime Minister was a guest of President Harry Truman at the annual State of the Union address to Congress. Evidence at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, however, indicates that, due a family commitment, Rep. Nixon probably missed Churchill’s own speech to Congress that took place a few days later.

Nixon served as Vice President to President Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. In this capacity, Nixon twice had substantive meetings with Churchill. The first was during the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington in 1954. The second was during the Vice President’s visit to London in 1958. In his 1982 memoir Leaders, Nixon described these meetings in detail, as is shown in the following extracts.

I first met Churchill in June 1954, when I headed the welcoming party that greeted him on his arrival in Washington for his official visit as Prime Minister. I still remember the eager anticipation, even the excitement, that I felt that day as I waited for his plane to come into view. I had already travelled extensively abroad. I had met many national and international leaders and famous celebrities. But none matched Churchill as a larger-than-life legend. In the Pacific during World War II, I had been moved by