Sixty years ago this week, Blenheim-born Winston Churchill was appointed Prime Minister. Peter Unsworth recalls the hero-worship of one of the great leaders of the twentieth century

I don't claim to be unique in this respect, but I come from a house where the occupants faced the east at the mention of the name of Winston Churchill.

Like many people of my age, I was brought up by grandparents as dad did his bit in Europe and mother turned her skills to being a clippie on the corporation buses.

My grandparents' affinity with Churchill was that they were born in the same decade - the 1870s . All three also believed you were never too old to do a great job.

The fact that he was born at Blenheim, the grandson of a Duke, and they in more humble surroundings in the West Riding didn't matter a jot. He was the right man for the job. They felt they knew him. I cannot claim to remember Churchill being sent for by King George VI and offered the top job 60 years ago today (I was ten months old at the time and had troubles of my own) but his response was echoed dozens of times down the years.

"I feel that everything that has gone before was but a preparation for the task ahead," he is reputed to have said - or words to that effect.

Silence was always expected whenever he made his speeches on radio (what would the grandparents have thought had they known the actor Norman Shelley frequently stood in?) and when he called for greater sacrifice ways were sought to achieve it. Mind you, grandma's loyalty began to waver when the roses bushes had to make way for more vegetables in the 'dig for victor' campaign.

Still the vision of Churchill digging spuds at the back of Number Ten seemed to square matters. Children were similarly fascinated by this old age pensioner with the jutting law and big cigar. Those of us not shooting around on our trikes imagining ourselves to be Errol Flynn or Robin Hood (one and the same to many people) were likely to be General Montgomery (two badges in beret obligatory) or Winnie (normally portrayed by a chubbier boy) scrapping hand-to-hand with Hitler, the latter role cast to the puniest or the youngest in our gang.

Mr Churchill would win the war. We kids never doubted it. You heard of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers being killed or captured, but you were sure he would put things right. After all, death to a five-year-old was a matter of lying down, counting ten and then getting up to continue playing. When he came to my home town, the streets were packed and the number of people who claimed to have wrung his hand and picked up his cigar stub would have filled the local football ground. This was the stuff of heroes.

The names of Clem Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison were rarely heard. They were running the country while Winnie was winning the war. It was a fact the great man himself seemed to forget, especially the debt he owed to them when the General Election came around and party politics were again centre stage. His attitude clearly played a big part in his being pitched into opposition for the next six years.

When he eventually died, many of us could hardly believe it. What would we do if the chips were down again - although what a feeble 90-year-old man could have done we didn't stop to ask. Stories have suggested Churchill was medically unfit for his office for much of the war. Thank heavens we didn't know about it at the time. Those who think 'spin' is something new should reflect on this.

Since then he has had to pass through his own public purgatory, his actions scrutinised and criticised, his blunders highlighted and his triumphs belittled. It happens to most.

Perhaps there was quite a lot of tarnish beneath the gloss, but we will never know what the alternative would have been had Churchill turned down the King on May 10, 1940, and preferred instead to draw his old age pension, paint his pictures or write his memoires.

Mercifully we don't need to know.