CHURCHILL
Born in 1874, Sir Winston Churchill was one of Britain's most famous and most-loved Prime Ministers, guiding the country through WWII in his own inimitable way. Not everything he did was right, and he was known the hit the bottle rather hard on occasion, but in these pages, none of that really matters. What does matter is that he loved horses. Indeed, he once said: “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

Courtesy LIFE

Churchill started his military career in the cavalry, and was later responsible for saving thousands of war horses stranded in mainland Europe after the end of the Great War. That's actually a rather timely statement given the recent release of a movie on war horses, although my own image of Churchill's equine links comes from the racing side.

Seeing as Churchill was born and raised at Blenheim Palace, and the various Dukes of Marlborough (his ancestral family line) had always shown an interest in breeding Thoroughbreds, I'd assumed that Blenheim (an Epsom Derby winner, present in Jaguar's bloodlines) was one of his horses, but in fact it was Lord Carnarvon's stallion. As it happens, despite his deep love of the turf, it wasn't until he was 75 that he started to pour his attention towards creating a racing stable.

One of his first purchases was a French-bred horse named Colonist, which he bought as a three-year old in 1949. It came second in the Ascot Gold Cup, and later stood at HM the Queen's stud at Sandringham. In all, Churchill had around 40 horses at the peak of his days as an owner, bringing him a total of 75 wins, including one classic, when Dark Issue won the 1955 edition of the Irish 1000 Guineas.

Even though some MPs criticized his links with the turf, Sir Winston simply brushed aside the pressure from those in Parliament until ill health finally put an end to his racing enterprises. One of the most influential figures in Britain's history, he died in 1965.