The first holder of the title was John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough ( 1650 – 1722 ), the noted English general, and indeed an unqualified reference to the Duke of Marlborough in a historical text will almost certainly refer to him.

James's support began to dissolve almost immediately upon William's arrival ; Protestant officers defected from the English army ( the most notable of whom was Lord Churchill of Eyemouth, James's most able commander ), and influential noblemen across the country declared their support for the invader.

Sarah was about fifteen when Churchill returned from the Continent in 1675, and he appears to have been almost immediately captivated by her charms and considerable good looks.

Gallup launched a subsidiary in the United Kingdom, where it almost alone correctly predicted Labour's victory in the 1945 general election, in contrast with virtually all other commentators, who expected a victory for the Conservative Party, led by Winston Churchill.

His later dream of becoming an actor has met with modest success ; he has had small parts as an extra ( almost always playing a cabbie ) in several TV programmes since 1986, including Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, The Bill, and twice in EastEnders, most recently in 2003.

Winston Churchill wrote: " The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Each year almost 120, 000 juleps are served at Churchill Downs over the two-day period of the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby, virtually all of them in specially made Kentucky Derby collectible glasses.

By July 1940 the design was complete and by December of that year the first prototypes were completed ; in June 1941, almost exactly a year as specified, the first Churchill tanks began rolling off the production line.

By 1944, the Valentine had been almost completely replaced in front-line units of the European Theatre by the Churchill ( the " Infantry Tank Mark IV ") and the US-made Sherman tanks.

Lady Randolph Churchill has been described as being a captivating woman, whose looks and demeanor made her almost irresistible to many who knew her.

A US Army officer claims the cigar-smoking iconic PM was an actor, Ray Bubbles, impersonating his own father, USMC lieutenant Winston Churchill, a genius spy who stole an enigma code machine and almost single-handedly won a very alternative battle for Britain

Beatrice Webb was to note her in her diaries his " almost unnaturally close friendship " with Churchill.

This gesture by Germany had an enormous positive impact with the Turkish population ; at the outbreak of the war, the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had caused outrage when he " requisitioned " without compensation two almost completed Turkish battleships in British shipyards, the Sultan Osman I and the Reshadieh, that had been financed by public subscription.

Auchinleck was sacked by Churchill, almost certainly because he refused to be bullied by Churchill into ordering a major offensive before he and his troops were properly prepared.

Legend has it that the director Raoul Walsh had co-star Tyrone Power, Sr. almost beaten to death for forcing himself on the leading lady, Marguerite Churchill.

The Progressive Conservatives were re-elected with a landslide majority in the 1958 federal election, and Churchill defeated his nearest opponent in Winnipeg South Centre by a margin of almost 20, 000 votes.

Churchill, relegated to the periphery of British politics by the late Thirties, lashes out against appeasement despite having almost no support from fellow parliamentarians or the British press.

Such was the strength of feeling, that almost forty years later, when speaking in Cardiff during the General Election campaign of 1950, Churchill was forced to address the issue, stating: " When I was Home Secretary in 1910, I had a great horror and fear of having to become responsible for the military firing on a crowd of rioters and strikers.

1986 saw Sterling almost carry a clean sweep of the major awards – except the Rothmans Medal – and win the inaugural Clive Churchill Medal in Parramatta's fourth grand final victory.

* Peter Sellers appeared on Michael Parkinson's BBC1 chat show Parkinson in a Nazi helmet reciting the entire " Hitler was a better painter than Churchill " speech.

When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, Wood was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which post he adopted policies propounded by John Maynard Keynes, changing the role of HM Treasury from custodian of government income and expenditure to steering the entire British economy.

In the Reminiscences of Watkin's niece Hepsie Watkin Churchill, she speculates that Watkin's sympathy for the lad was in part motivated by Hearn's ruined eye, a handicap Watkin shared from youth and which the entire Watkin family was especially sensitive to.

On June 5, 1907, African American jockey James Lee set a record that has never been beaten when he won the entire six-race card at Churchill Downs.

Churchill was again present at RAF Uxbridge on the fiercest day of fighting of the entire battle: Battle of Britain Day, 15 September 1940.

Upon hearing the news of his friend's failure First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill pressed for a greater scope of attack, Vice-Admiral John de Robeck ( Carden's newly appointed successor ,) decided to employ his entire battleship force in a daylight assault on the Narrows.

The entire area of Nelson was transferred into the new riding of Churchill.

When Nelson was abolished in 1933, its entire area was transferred into the new riding of Churchill.

This provoked a strong reaction across the country with The Daily Telegraph running the front page headline " Winston Churchill is OUT!

* Churchill Downs track page, NTRA

* Canadian Council for Geographic Education page with a series of articles on the history of the Churchill River

He believes that greatness is a marriage between the man and the times as was aptly represented by Churchill, who would very possibly have gone down in history as a political failure if it had not been for Hitler's war.

The title of Earl of Marlborough, which was created for Churchill in 1689, had been created one time previously in British history, for James Ley, in 1626.

The gunboats were in support at the Battle of Omdurman, where Beatty made the acquaintance of Winston Churchill who had become a cavalry officer in Beatty's father's old regiment, the 4th Hussars, and had there learnt his family history.

In recent history, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Edward Heath, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have not been elevated to the House of Lords.

Enfield also appeared as King George VI in Churchill: The Hollywood Years ( 2004 ), a satire on Hollywood's tendency to change elements of history.

After the King's initial dismay over Churchill's appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed " the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister ".

Buck has compared him to Winston Churchill, another advocate of imperial policies who held fast to his beliefs after the tide of history had turned against him, and who rose to his peak of prominence at his country's darkest hour.

Sarah Churchill ( née Jenyns, spelt Jennings in most modern references ), Duchess of Marlborough ( 5 June 1660 ( old style ) – 18 October 1744 ) rose to be one of the most influential women in British history as a result of her close friendship with Queen Anne of Great Britain.

In The Gathering Storm ( 1948 ), the first volume of Winston Churchill's history of WW2, Churchill describes Hitler's triumph at the moment he finally achieved total power in 1933 ;

Early in life, he developed an interest in politics and history, and, during the war years, a special admiration for Winston Churchill, whom he would later cite as an important influence in his life.

Churchill said in the House of Commons that considering the " greatness and splendour of Scotland ", and the contribution of the Scots to British and world history, " they ought to keep their silliest people in order ".

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by Winston Churchill, covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain ( 55 BC ) to the beginning of the First World War ( 1914 ).

Churchill, who excelled in history as a child and whose mother was American, had a firm belief in a so-called " special relationship " between the people of Britain with the Commonwealth of Nations united under the Crown ( New Zealand, Canada, Australia, South Africa etc.

At the suggestion of publisher Newman Flower, Churchill began the history during the 1930s, during the period that his official biographer Martin Gilbert termed the " wilderness years " when he was not in government.

After the war finished in 1945, Churchill was busy, first writing his history of that conflict and then as Prime Minister again between 1951 and 1955, and so it was not until the late 1950s, when Churchill was in his early eighties, that he was able to finish the work.

He successfully sued Churchill, forcing him to amend The Hinge of Fate, part of his history of World War II, so that an implied slur on the fighting mettle of Auchinleck was removed.

Churchill delivered a tribute to him in which he said, " Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged.

In January 2009, Churchill wrote a ten minute history of Israel, ending with the Israeli attack on Gaza, to be performed free at the Royal Court Theatre, with a collection for Medical Aid for Palestinians.

* Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War at the time of the debate in the British Parliament the House of Commons, called it " an episode without precedent or parallel in the modern history of British Empire ... an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation ... the crowd was neither armed nor attacking.

Over its history, these have included the Dalai Lama, President Ronald Reagan, Professor Germaine Greer, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Clint Eastwood.

When the official history of the Battle of Britain was published, Dowding's name was not mentioned, leading Churchill to minute Sinclair: " This is not a good story ...

* XPD by Len Deighton: Winston Churchill was far more of an appeaser than official history records, and in June 1940 he had a secret meeting with Hitler to discuss peace on the basis of recognizing the German domination of Europe ; decades later, the documents recording this shameful secret are the subject of an intensive and deadly power struggle.

Winston Churchill banned all news coverage of the disaster on learning of it and it remained largely forgotten by history.