"...it was on the eve of war as he sat at home at Chartwell awaiting the nation's call to arms that he was to return to this childhood passion with an unexpected fervour.
In the end, Churchill had to put his grand plans to reintroduce some of the lost British species of butterfly to his Kent estate on hold until after 1945. But it was a mission he was to resume as soon as the conflict ended. Now more than half a century later his breeding efforts are being recreated by the National Trust in the grounds of the red-brick Victorian country house where he lived until his death in 1965. The old summerhouse which he converted into a butterfly sanctuary has been revived with breeding cages.
Visitors will be able to experience the butterfly garden with its insect-friendly lavender borders – thought to be the oldest of their kind in existence – as well as the vast buddleia jungles just as they were in the 1940s and 1950s when the Churchills used to throw magnificent garden parties in which they would buy in hundreds of butterfly specimens from the renowned dealer L Hugh Newman."
The Independent
Butterflies in decline
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/27/butterfly-decline-conservation-endangered-species
http://www.kentbutterflies.org/
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