HE WAS the man who led Britain through the last world war and is famous for his cigars, but did Churchill pick up another trademark, his hat, when visiting Southport?
A poll conducted by the BBC named Sir Winston Churchill as our Greatest Briton, and certainly his characteristics and idiosyncracies are amongst the most enduring of any public figure.
From the walking cane to the smoking cigar, and the victory signal to his slightly stooped gait, his image is instantly recognisable to young and old even now, more than 40 years after his death.
And another famous feature of his clothing ensemble was the hat, slightly too small, sometimes just to one side.
In 1909, Churchill, then only a recently elected member of the Liberal Government, visited Southport as part of a tour of the north west to deliver a series of speeches on free trade.
While here, the man who would become Prime Minister stayed as a guest of one Baron de Forest at an address on Hesketh Road.
The period was blighted with political unrest, and the suffragettes were bringing a militant approach to establishing the vote for women.
At the time, only men had a say in public affairs, with women often banned from political meetings because they were considered to be emotional beings.
Churchill found himself hounded by the movement and his visit to Southport was no exception, as a Miss Dora Marsden succeeded in interrupting his speech by getting into the loft of the building in which it took place.
These encounters with various members of the campaign over his tour became the newsworthy items picked up, but Churchill later told a popular magazine that the Southport trip left a less well-known legacy.
He is said to have told the magazine that he was hurriedly leaving his Hesketh Road lodgings on one occasion and reached out for the first hat he could find.
It turned out to be a very small one, and, as he stepped out, his image was recorded for all time by a press photographer.
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