John Gilbert Winant, 1941–46

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) appointed John ‘Gil’ Winant as Ambassador to Great Britain in early 1941.1 From then to the end of the Second World War, he helped to steady the Anglo-US relationship and repaired damages inflicted by Joseph Kennedy. Winant drew the sting from many of those irritations that plague even the sturdiest of alliances. To countless Britons, high and low, he also symbolised American commitment to their safety. Labour party’s Ernest Bevin, a wartime minister in Churchill’s coalition cabinet, explained in 1946: ‘It’s a vivid recollection to us to see [Winant] walking round the streets during an air raid witnessing how London took it … he shared our sorrows … he gave one a feeling of optimism.’2