LONDON LETTER: "We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow worm," Winston Churchill said, in words now emblazoned in light at the new £6 million museum in London that bears his name and celebrates the life of the man voted by his compatriots as history's "greatest Briton".
Described by one of his former secretaries, Elizabeth Nel (87), as "difficult, impatient, demanding, but never impossible", Churchill has become a symbol of British resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, the man who encouraged and badgered his countrymen to stand up to Hitler's menace even when defeat seemed certain.
"He never flinched. He just stayed absolutely firm," said Elizabeth, who was 23 when she joined Churchill's staff, referring to his resolve in the face of mounting losses in Asia and Africa in 1942.
"He set an example to the Allies, and in particular to the British, that what they had to do to survive was to give 100 per cent effort and stand firm. And that, I think, was the measure of him. Whatever he felt in himself nobody knew."
The opening of the Churchill Museum at London's Cabinet War Rooms, the top-secret underground bunker that served as the headquarters of Churchill's wartime command, safe from German bombing raids, comes soon after the 40th anniversary of his death, in January 1965 aged 90, and the 60th anniversary of the end of second World War.
Churchill was Queen Elizabeth's first prime minister, beginning his second term in 1951, and by all accounts remains her favourite.
"During those wartime years Churchill's determination and example gave us all the hope, the courage and the confidence to 'tread safely into the unknown'," the queen said as she formally opened the new museum this month.
"It was the unique quality of his leadership that so inspired the British nation and free peoples throughout the world, as well as those suffering under Nazi occupation. That quality continues to inspire us today and should forever do so."
The exhibition, a triumph of state-of-the-art technological presentation of tens of thousands of documents and speeches, photographs and artefacts - from his ivory-handled baby rattle to an Enigma decoding machine credited with helping the Allied victory - presents a multimedia, interactive biographical narrative of Churchill's life.
His speeches boom out from loudspeakers that dot the ceiling, along with overhead projectors that flash maps and timelines on to table-height displays in a manner that seems sure to attract a younger audience and perhaps redress the sad fact that many young Britons are ignorant of their country's comparatively recent history.
It offers a comprehensive look at Churchill - soldier, journalist, best-selling novelist, painter, polo player, racehorse owner, prodigious drinker and smoker - and attempts to reveal him as a complex and mutlifaceted man.
The son of an English aristocrat and his American wife, Winston Churchill was born in 1875, "a child of the Victorian era," as he said himself, whose views reflected a Victorian outlook and have forced a re-examination of his legacy.
Did his opposition to Indian self-rule, for instance, offer proof that he was a racist?
"He was a man of his time, and his views reflect that, but he took on and beat the biggest racist of the lot in Hitler," said Terry Chapman, a historian with the Imperial War Museum's research department.
Lady Mary Soames, Churchill's daughter, said: "Here we are reminded of the tumultuous times in which my father lived out his political life. We can follow the ups and downs of his career and evaluate his mistakes."
A glass cabinet holds one of the velvet "flying suits" he took to wearing in a variety of colours for their comfort, though today it looks odd and hints at his eccentricity.
There is footage of his state funeral which attracted 300,000 mourners. He remains the only British prime minister accorded the honour.
The revolvers he carried during his service in Africa in the first World War are here, as are a collection of his paintings, and betting tickets.
Visitors are told of his favourite brands of whisky (Hine) and champagne (Pol Roger), as well as his taste for Cuban cigars, Hollywood movies and the French countryside.
The centrepiece is a massive "Lifeline," a 15-metre electronic table dividing the exhibition in two that when touched can potentially open up 4,600 pages of documents, 1,150 photographs and 206 animations, often accompanied with light and sound, that detail various aspects of Churchill's life.
The high-tech exhibit contrasts sharply with the musty, almost quaint, Cabinet War Rooms adjacent to the new exhibition.
Each year they attract more than 300,000 visitors eager to soak up the atmosphere of wartime dedication, deprivation and sacrifice they invoke, with life-size resin models of generals placing pins in the maps on the walls to show troop movements, and flanked by a battery of Bakelite phones of different colours.
Down one claustrophobic hallway is a tiny room that served as Churchill's bedroom, though he hated being underground and used it on only a handful of occasions.
A model of the man in a silk dressing gown, famous cigar clamped between his teeth, sits at a small desk, back to the viewer.
One of the phones rings a jangly, old-fashioned ring, and a recorded voice answers simply: "Map Room."
"Sometimes I think they're going to move," Zoe Carmichael, a museum assistant, said of the lifelike dummies. "It can be a bit spooky."