Elizabeth Nel

Elizabeth Shakespear Nel (née Layton; 14 June 1917 – 30 October 2007) was a personal secretary to Winston Churchill from 1941 to 1945, during the Second World War.

Biography Elizabeth Layton was born on 14 June 1917 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Her father, a veteran of the First World War, suffered from tuberculosis. He was advised because of his health to emigrate to either British Columbia or Australia. The family moved to Canada and settled in Vernon, British Columbia.

She attended a secretarial college in London, before working at an employment bureau. In the summer of 1939, she returned to Canada on holiday. After training in air raid precautions, she returned to London, where she obtained work with the Red Cross. It was from here she was sent to Downing Street. Her last work in wartime was to take dictation of Churchill's VE-Day speech. Churchill and his wife Clementine, upon hearing the news, advised them to have four children, reciting together, "One for Mother, one for Father, one for Accidents and one for Increase."

In 1958, she released a memoir titled Mr. Churchill's Secretary. Churchill initially objected to the publication, sending a telegram. However, his views softened and he removed his objection when the matter was broached again. She also returned in 2005 to join Queen Elizabeth II for the opening of the Churchill museum in the underground Cabinet War Rooms, beneath what is now the Treasury on Horse Guards Road.

Family She had two siblings: a brother Michael and sister Alison. Her brother served as a pilot in the Second World War.

After the war, she married South African soldier Frans Nel and settled in Port Elizabeth.