Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965 was a British statesman, soldier and author who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964, excepting the period 1922 and 1924. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
Sir Winston Churchill is described in the novel The Wallenberg Dossier, here is an excerpt from the novel, with the authorization of the author.
“The three officers lined up in front of Sir Winston Churchill’s desk. One of them placed a substantial dossier on the desk with the words Top Secret on the cover. Churchill looked up at the officer.
“Good man. Now, do you expect me to wade through all this paper?”
“Sir, here you have our observations regarding the need for
prompt intervention in Budapest.”
“Give me the short version, my lad.”
“We will work together with the American agents. Taylor Cole from the OSS is already on the spot and Robert Wallenberg…”
“Who?”
“A Robert Wallenberg sir, a Swedish.”
“Let’s get down to the salient facts,” Churchill cut in, waving his hand to signal he was not interested in the details of the operation.
The desk carried two stacks of folders on the ends, an ashtray, some matchboxes and a pack of Cuban cigars. Churchill moved away the ashtray, read the document briefly, signed it, and returned it to the officer.
“Go, my boy,” he said lighting a half-smoked cigar.
A short time later, blowing away the ash from a sheet of paper, Churchill wrote to his Secretary for Foreign Affairs, “…there is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.”
