5 Pounds - Elizabeth II Sir Winston Churchill - Silver

Issued in the centenary year of Churchill's birth — he was born November 30, 1874 — this Guernsey piece reflects the island's particular claim on Churchill's memory. He was instrumental in the decision not to defend the Channel Islands in 1940, a strategically sound but deeply unpopular choice that left Guernsey under German occupation for five years. The islanders' relationship with that decision, and with Churchill himself, was complicated long after liberation in May 1945.