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The (In)Famous Winston Churchill Crown

By Dennis Tucker | Wed, 31 May 2006

Say what you will about the 1965 Churchill crown of Great Britain -- with its unorthodox depiction of the famous WWII prime minister -- this is the most unique of commemoratives minted to honor the great man.

Slightly more than nine and a half million of the crowns were struck following Churchill's death, and the issue remains one of the most popular of big British coins. We can only assume this is because of the wartime leader's legendary status, and not because of the design, which shows him in low relief wearing a siren suit. I remember reading once that it looked as if the Prime Minister were swimming out of a sea of clay (I forget where I read that, but it stuck with me!). If you lived through the war in England, you remember the "siren suit" as a jumpsuit Mum or Dad would quickly zip you into when the air raid sirens started sounding. It was a quick way to cover pajamas and/or get you into the air raid shelter without mussing up your day clothes.

As an aside, I love this account by writer Paul Merton, who contributed it to the Manchester Jewish Museum, telling of his days in Salford during the war:

"On our return to I remember having to go to the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden in the middle of the night. It was always very cold in the shelter especially in winter. So I used to wear a siren suit. Winston Churchill started the fashion for siren suits. The suits were like large baby grows made from a heavy material and it kept you warm in the cold shelters. I would leap out of bed at the sound of a siren and jump into my suit and hurry to the shelter. In the shelter we had a record player which had to be wound up by hand. We used to play records. I clearly remember the records by Flanagan & Allen entitled 'Umbrella Man' and 'Underneath the Arches'. The air raid shelter was basically a square hole in the ground covered by corrugated iron sheets. We all had gas masks in little cardboard boxes with a piece of string so that you could carry it over your shoulders. The boxes weren't very strong and my mum made better ones out of bits of cloth. My Uncle Philip has always had a loft of racing pigeons and during the war he bred carrier pigeons for the Army and the R.A.F."

Back to the coin -- the obverse has Mary Gillick's portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth II. With its portrait of Churchill on the back, this was the first time in history that a commoner was depicted on a British coin of the realm.

Sir Winston Churchill, most famous for serving as Prime Minister of Great Britain during WWII, was also an author, historian, painter, Francophile, a horse owner with dozens of brood mares and racers, Knight of the Order of the Garter (KG), 1953, Privy Councillor (PC), 1907, holder of the Order of Merit (OM), 1946, Companion of Honour (CH), 1922, and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), 1941, a smoker of Havana cigars, a horseman into his 70s and a swimmer into his 80s, Nobel Prize winner for Literature ... a truly remarkable man.

This is an odd but endearing coin that belongs in every world coin collection. Say what you will -- I like it!

-- Dennis Tucker