Mr. Speaker, on Winston Churchill's 75th birthday a young photographer said to him, “I hope, sir, that I will shoot your picture on your hundredth birthday”. He replied, “I don't see why not, young man. You look reasonably fit and healthy”.
If we were to take Winston Churchill's picture tomorrow on his 138th birthday, we would see a warrior in the Boer War, where he was captured and escaped, leaving a note of thanks to his captors for their hospitality; the chief of the Admiralty in the First World War; and the chief defender of western civilization in the Second World War.
On winning the Nobel Prize for literature, the citation said that he was a Caesar with the gift of Cicero's pen. That pen authored 58 books. President Kennedy said, "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle".
The House of Commons was his battlefield for 62 years where he was the greatest parliamentarian the world has ever seen. On behalf of all parliamentarians, I say happy birthday to Winston Churchill.