Winston Churchill child Mary Soames
Secretary of State for the Colonies: 1921–1922
Churchill became Secretary of State for the Colonies in February 1921. The following month, the first exhibit of his paintings was held; it took place in Paris, with Churchill exhibiting under a pseudonym. In May, his mother died; followed in August by his two-year-old daughter Marigold who succumbed to septicaemia. Marigold's death devastated her parents and Churchill was haunted by the tragedy for the rest of his life.Churchill was involved in negotiations with Sinn Féin leaders and helped draft the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Elsewhere, he was responsible for reducing the cost of occupying the Middle East, and was involved in the installations of Faisal I of Iraq and his brother Abdullah I of Jordan. Churchill travelled to Mandatory Palestine where, as a supporter of Zionism, he refused an Arab Palestinian petition to prohibit Jewish migration to Palestine. He did allow some temporary restrictions following the 1921 Jaffa riots.In September 1922, the Chanak Crisis erupted as Turkish forces threatened to occupy the Dardanelles neutral zone, which was policed by the British army based in Chanak (now Çanakkale). Churchill and Lloyd George favoured military resistance to any Turkish advance but the majority Conservatives in the coalition government opposed it. A political debacle ensued which resulted in the Conservative withdrawal from the government, precipitating the November 1922 general election.Also in September, Churchill's fifth and last child, Mary, was born, and in the same month he purchased Chartwell, in Kent, which became his family home for the rest of his lifetime. In October 1922, he underwent an operation for appendicitis. While he was in hospital, Lloyd George's coalition was dissolved. In the general election, Churchill lost his Dundee seat  to Edwin Scrymgeour, a prohibitionist candidate. Later, he wrote that he was "without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix". Still, he could be satisfied with his elevation as one of 50 Companions of Honour, as named in Lloyd George's 1922 Dissolution Honours list.
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