Churchill may have guided Britain to victory in World War Two but he himself spent many years on the brink of financial ruin.
Son of the Duke of Marlborough, he was born into money and developed expensive tastes that he carried with him as he embarked on his political career.
He always told friends that he had lost money in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, losing around $50,000, equivalent to £500,000 today.
Churchill was born into money and developed expensive tastes that he carried with him as he embarked on his political career. He is seen sipping bubbly on a visit to Switzerland August 1946
However, it is well documented that Churchill, in his thirties, was borrowing equivalent to £2.5million a year at a time when he was a married man with four children.
He would take annual holidays to the south of France, when he would go on gambling spress at lavish casinos, spending an equivalent of £40,000 in a single trip.
In a year when he had vowed to cut down his drinking – not to curb costs but to win a bet with a friend who claimed he couldn’t – his accumulated bills for alcohol came to £900 (£54,000).
His gambling was even more costly — 66,000 francs (about £50,000) in a single holiday at a casino in Cannes in 1936, for example.
Faced with the bill from his wine merchants, which included £16,000 for Champagne alone, he tried to cut down on household expenses such as running a car.
Churchill smoked 12 cigars a day, which were costing him £1,300 a month, so he vowed to cut down to four, but his efforts weren’t nearly radical enough.
By 1939, the year before his election as Prime Minister, his overdraft had reached £35,000 (more than £2million) and his brokers were demanding an immediate payment of £12,000 (£720,000).
However, in the eleventh hour, he was rescued from bankruptcy by benefactors who paid his bills as he was about to become head of Britain at a time when Europe was on the brink of war.
But Churchill never really changed his ways, enjoying the benefits of mixing with world leaders at high society parties, living an extravagant lifestyle even while rationing remained in Britain.
In a two-month spell in 1949, Churchill and his house guests at Chartwell drank 454 bottles of champagne, 311 bottles of wine, 69 bottles of port, 58 bottles of brandy, 58 bottles of sherry and 56 bottles of Black Label whisky.