Elizabeth Shakespear Nel was a personal secretary to Winston Churchill from 1941 to 1945.
12 Facts About Elizabeth Nel
1.
2.
Elizabeth Nel was advised because of his health to emigrate to either British Columbia or Australia.
3.
Elizabeth Nel attended a secretarial college in London, before working at an employment bureau.
4.
Elizabeth Nel sat at a silent typewriter where she immediately fell foul of the Prime Minister by making a mistake.
5.
Elizabeth Nel liked his speeches typed in double-spaced lines as he dictated, but she used single spacing.
6.
Elizabeth Nel accompanied Churchill as he travelled abroad in the war years.
7.
Elizabeth Nel was a South African soldier who had been released from a prisoner-of-war camp following his capture at Tobruk.
8.
Elizabeth Nel returned in 2005 to join the Queen for the opening of the Churchill museum in the underground Cabinet War Rooms, beneath what is the Treasury on Horse Guards Road.
9.
Elizabeth Nel had two siblings: a brother Michael and sister Alison.
10.
Elizabeth Nel's brother served as a pilot in the Second World War.
11.
Elizabeth Nel is portrayed in the 2017 British film Darkest Hour by Lily James.
12.
Elizabeth Nel is portrayed as starting to work as Churchill's secretary on 10 May 1940 during the Battle of France.