“Mem­ber for Wood­ford,” 30 Novem­ber 1949. As Churchill turned 75, still in the thick of pol­i­tics, Illing­worth craft­ed this elo­quent trib­ute, remind­ful of his youth­ful sol­dier­ing, high office in both World Wars, pas­times of paint­ing and polo, brandy and cig­ars. Even then WSC could hard­ly imag­ine that 15 years lat­er, as he turned 90, his old school Har­row would add a verse to the school song “Forty Years On”: “Bla­zoned with hon­our! For each gen­er­a­tion / You kin­dled courage to stand and to stay; / You led our fathers to fight for the nation, / Called ‘Fol­low up; and your­self showed the way. / “We who were born in the calm after thun­der / Cher­ish our free­dom to think and to do; / If in our turn we for­get­ful­ly won­der, / Yet we’ll remem­ber we owe it to you.” (From “Churchill in Punch”)