One of her sons, the Conservative MP Nicholas Soames, said: "She was a truly remarkable and extraordinary woman, who led a very distinguished life. Mary Churchill worked for the Red Cross and the Women's Voluntary Service from to , and joined the Auxiliary Territorial service with which she served in London, Belgium and Germany in mixed anti-aircraft batteries, rising to the rank of junior commander equivalent to captain.
She also accompanied her father as aide-de-camp on several of his overseas journeys, including the Potsdam conference in , where he met US president Harry S Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. She was patron of the National Benevolent Fund for the Aged. She was given a damehood for her public service, particularly in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and was appointed Lady Companion, Order of the Garter, in She also wrote an acclaimed biography of her mother, Clementine Churchill, in , which won a Wolfson prize, as well as her own memoirs.
Nicholas Soames, MP for Mid Sussex, said: "She was not just a wonderful mother to whom we were all devoted, but the head and heart of our family after our father died, and will be greatly missed. This is extraordinary timing — just before the anniversary of the Normandy landings, Churchill's last surviving child dies.
But her most notable personal achievement was a series of books she wrote about her family. Her other books included an annotated family photo album, a study of Churchill as a painter and a page collection of letters between the prime minister and his wife. Soames later came to be regarded as something of a national treasure.
After the death of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher in , she was one of only two living nonroyal women to be so honoured. Mary Spencer-Churchill was born at Chartwell in As a girl, she lived almost entirely with grown-ups. A rock of stability He doted on her, but she said she did not become close to her mother until her adolescence.
During her early youth, her closest companion was her nanny, Maryott Whyte, a first cousin of her mother and a trained nurse. Soames once attributed the divorces, substance abuse and relatively early deaths of her siblings to their lack of a rock of stability like Whyte. But I do think Nana made a great difference. During the war, Soames was briefly engaged to the son of an earl and also had a romance with an American army officer. In , she and her father made a private trip to Belgium with the apparent goal of her becoming engaged to Prince Charles, who was ruling the country as regent.
On September 27th, the press reported that an engagement announcement was likely the next day. That never happened. It also meant speaking off the cuff to guerrillas in Rhodesia.
Soames, short and stocky like her father and perhaps as stubborn, savoured a fine cigar. She is survived by her children, Nicholas, Emma, Charlotte, Jeremy and Rupert, and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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