Three men who saved the world

Keynes’ health had been failing for years while an eccentric doctor he called “The Ogre” kept his heart going with a regimen of sulpha drugs and bed rest with ice bags on his chest. Exhausted by his labours fighting for a brighter future for Britain and us all, Keynes died in 1946.

In 1952 Turing’s life was ruined by a prosecution for "gross indecency and sexual perversion". Unapologetic, about his homosexuality, Turing offered no defence and was given the choice between incarceration and hormone therapy. Growing breasts as a result of his choice, he died of cyanide poisoning in 1954, presumably by his own hand.

By then, Churchill was nearing 80 and in his second term as prime minister. While some of his concerns remained typically visionary and ahead of their time - for instance his championing of nuclear disarmament and his (then) unfashionable hostility to Communism and decolonisation - he was too old to do his job well.

He remained nostalgic then as he did for the rest of his long life for those days of 1940 when, as he put it, “There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end”.

Cometh the hour; cometh the men. And then they went from hence, and were seen no more.