In 1874, when Winston Churchill was born, this place, the Royal naval Dockyard at Chatham, was in its prime, turning out the ships and guns that made Britain more powerful than she's ever been before or since.

He must have thought it would go on forever. Ninety years later, when he died, it was on its way to becoming a museum and a scrap yard.

But then history has a cruel way with optimism.

There never was any chance really that Winston Churchill could escape history.

He was, after all, born in a palace, Blenheim, the great limestone pile of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.

Winston's father, Randolph, boy wonder of the Tories, Chancellor of the Exchequer at just 37, seemed set to be the latest Churchill to embark on a meteoric rise.

But he was also a prima donna, forever stamping his feet and threatening to resign.

Finally, the Tories let him go. He never got back to power.

His mother, Jenny, was the ultimate society hostess, glamorous, rich, American, desirably luscious, perpetually surrounded by breathless admirers.

But Winston hardly knew his parents. As usual with little aristocrats, it was his nanny, Nanny Everest, who did most of the mothering.