Sir Winston Churchill, the British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War, died on 24 January 1965, aged 90. His was the first state funeral in the United Kingdom for a non-member of the Royal Family since Edward Carson's in 1935. It was the last state funeral until Queen Elizabeth II's on 19 September 2022. The official funeral lasted for four days. Planning for the funeral, known as Operation Hope Not, began 12 years before Churchill's death. It was initiated after Churchill's stroke in 1953 while in his second term, as the wartime prime minister of the United Kingdom. After several revisions due to Churchill's continued survival (mainly because "the pallbearers kept dying", explained Lord Mountbatten), the plan was i