How Winston Churchill's aide confessed that Archbishop of Canterbury was his secret lovechild two weeks before he died...

• Justin Welby was brought up believing Gavin Welby was his father
• But he has discovered in the last month Sir Anthony Montague Browne - Winston Churchill's one time private secretary - is actually his father
• DNA matched with hair samples from Montague Browne's old hairbrush
• Sir Anthony's dying wish was to see his Archbishop son one last time
• 

The Archbishop of Canterbury's real father confessed the priest was his secret son shortly he died.

It also emerged that Sir Anthony Montague Browne's dying wish was to see Justin Welby one last time.

The most senior figure in the Anglican Communion discovered last month that the late Montague Browne was his biological father and not Gavin Welby.

Montague Browne, who was Winston Churchill's private secretary between 1952 and 1965, had told his step-son Paddy Macklin the truth, after years of denying his paternity.

Macklin, 56, is the son of Lady Shelagh Montague Browne from a previous marriage and is a renowned round-the-world yachtsman.

He had growing suspicious that Sir Anthony was Welby's father and the family used to joke about the striking resemblance between the two.

In 2013, in a nursing home, Sir Anthony said he would like to meet Welby, who was Bishop at the time. 

Macklin phoned the Bishop's office and made the request to Welby and also told him that he thought Sir Anthony, who was a friend and former colleague of his mother Jane Welby, was his father.

The surprised priest reportedly listened carefully but said he will discuss it further once the process of him becoming Archbishop of Canterbury was all over.

On March 21 he was installed as Archbishop and the next day Macklin showed his step-dad a picture of the ceremonial process.

Speaking in French so the care home assistants did not understand, Sir Anthony revealed that he was Welby's father.

The newly-crowned Archbishop approached Macklin two weeks later to say he would meet Sir Anthony. But it was too late - his real father had passed away on April 1. 

After finding out for sure in a DNA test last month, Welby insisted he was not disturbed by the discovery.

'In the last month I have discovered that my biological father is not whiskey salesman Gavin Welby but, in fact, the late Sir Anthony Montague Browne - who worked for Churchill between 1952 and 1965.

'This comes as a complete surprise,' Welby said in a highly unusual statement issued through the Church of England.

'I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.'

Anthony Montague-Browne his biological father

Despite the rumours, Welby had still assumed that his father was Gavin Welby. But The Telegraph approached him saying it had found evidence suggesting that Montague Browne was actually his father.

Montague Browne had one other child, a daughter named Jane Hoare-Temple.

According to the newspaper, the family had long discussed the striking resemblance between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Montague Brown - and Welby himself was aware of the rumours. 

He had even met the man who would later turn out to be his father as a child.

The Telegraph then discussed what they had discovered with Welby, who decided to take a DNA test.

A comparison between a swab from his mouth and hair samples from Montague Browne's old hairbrush showed a 99.9779 percent probability that they were father and son.

Welby, who is currently in Zambia for a month-long clergy event, said both his mother Jane and Gavin Welby had been alcoholics, although he stressed that his mother had not touched alcohol for nearly 50 years.

'To find that one's father is other than imagined is not unusual. To be the child of families with great difficulties in relationships, with substance abuse or other matters, is far too normal,' he said in his statement.