Winston Churchill |
1895 portrait. | November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965 Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, British statesman, author and Conservative Prime Minister (1940-45, 1951-55), rallied the British people during World War II. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, the same year he received his knighthood. Churchill was a regular lodge attender, although not an office holder, until his resignation in July, 1912. In 1918 he signed an unsuccessful petition for a new lodge to be called the Ministry of Munitions Lodge and, in his only other recorded masonic contact, he visited Royal Naval Lodge No. 59 on December 10, 1928. Anti-masonic claims to the contrary, there is no documentation extant that Churchill publicly renounced Freemasonry. Initiated: May 24, 1901 Passed: July 19, 1901 Raised: March 5, 1902 Studholme Lodge, London, later Studholme Alliance Lodge No. 1591 (1976) |