“Professor John Charmley says in a podcast that Neville Chamberlain believed a prewar grand alliance against Hitler was not feasible. He was referring to alliance between the UK and France and the United States and USSR. Do you agree?”

Answer:

As Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) tells the District Attorney (Lane Smith) in “My Cousin Vinny” (1992), “that’s a B.S. question.”

(To voir dire Miss Vito on “general automotive knowledge” the D.A. had demanded the ignition timing of “a 1955 Chevrolet 327 V-8.” (Readers less mechanically inclined than Miss Vito may enjoy her devastating two-minute rebuttal to this “trick question.”)

Thirty years ago Professor Charmley and I engaged in a grand harangue over his highly readable critique, Churchill: The End of Glory. The argument was over whether Churchill was right to prosecute the Hitler war after mid-1940. Neither side gave an inch, but John engaged with gentlemanly verve and collegiality that I admired, and tried to reciprocate. Afterward he invited me to lunch at his club, where I promised to order the most expensive champagne. Alas we were never able to make it work.

I am sure Dr. Charmley correctly represents Chamberlain’s belief that alliance with Russia or the Americans was not feasible. But never mind 1940. Why is the question, “would alliance have prevented WW2” like the question about a 1955 Chevy 327? Because as Mona Lisa Vito says, “nobody could answer that question.” It is unanswerable.

The subject of alliance between the Anglo-French and Russians, and then the Americans, is considered in my 2015 monograph, Churchill and the Avoidable War. (For a review by Professor Manfred Weidhorn, click here.) Relevant to your question are two chapters….

Alliance with Ivan

Chapter 6, “Favourable Reference to the Devil,” considers the notion, strongly pushed by Churchill, of a Soviet alliance. These excerpts may be pertinent. (Endnotes are in the book):

From the time Hitler marched on the Rhineland, Churchill had pondered Anglo-Russian  cooperation. The historian Donald Cameron Watt wrote: “He fell into the clutches of Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London…writing to Viscount Cecil of the need to “organise a European mass and, perhaps, a world mass which will confront…the heavily armed unmoral dictatorships.”

Maisky was clever and worldly, practised in English ways…. But saying Churchill fell into his clutches is very wide of the mark. Churchill loathed and feared the Soviet Union, and it was a huge decision to court Maisky. Yet Churchill could add and subtract, and he needed the help. He acted for big reasons, and he explained them. In the event, his forebodings about the USSR would be proven entirely correct.

Churchill, a private Member of Parliament without office, was able to play only a background role as Britain considered a Russian arrangement. But it is incorrect to believe he did not call for one until 1938. He had many conversations with principals, including Nazis, which he duly forwarded to the Foreign Office.

Up until Munich, Churchill’s stand on Russia was closer to that of his party than has been generally recognized. After Munich, he correctly concluded that the only way left to prevent war was to revive the Triple Entente that had faced Germany in World War I. In view of Stalin’s obvious ambitions in eastern Europe, the question is whether that would have prevented a world conflagration: an issue we shall now consider.

Alliance and America

Chapter 7, “Lost Best Hope,” considers the chance of alliance with America. In this case Chamberlain was even more disdainful:

Churchill made his views about America known as early as 1935: “We must keep in the closest touch with the United States of America….” In 1937, Churchill was heartened to hear of President Roosevelt’s “Quarantine Speech” in Chicago. “A reign of terror and international lawlessness,” FDR said, threatened “the very foundations of civilization.” He proposed economic pressure on the aggressor nations. Churchill responded that these were “exactly the same ideas that are in our minds, and I have no doubt that it will be cordially welcomed by Mr. Chamberlain.”

They were not: On 11 January 1938, Roosevelt telegraphed Chamberlain proposing to invite representatives of Germany, Britain, France and Italy to Washington in the hopes of mediating an easement of affairs, or at least taking part in discussions. Before doing so, he wrote, he wished to consult with the Chamberlain government. Not the French or German government—the British government. This was not alliance, but it certainly was a suggestion that Britain and America might work together.

It was a golden opportunity, but Chamberlain was in a belligerent mood. In December, after Japan attacked British and American gunboats on the Yangtze, he had proposed a concerted Anglo-American response including a joint naval task force, Roosevelt had settled for a Japanese apology. The Americans, Chamberlain complained, “are incredibly slow and have missed innumerable busses….I do wish the Japs would beat up an American or two!” Japan fulfilled his wish four years later at Pearl Harbor.

Back to the Unanswerable Question

Chamberlain’s rebuff of Roosevelt ended the last frail chance to save the world from catastrophe. Churchill was on holiday in the South of France during this episode, and could not have known of it at the time. But his memoirs were censorious:

That Mr. Chamberlain, with his limited outlook and inexperience of the European scene, should have possessed the self-sufficiency to wave away the proffered hand stretched out across the Atlantic leaves one, even at this date, breathless with amazement. The lack of all sense of proportion, and even of self-preservation, which this episode reveals in an upright, competent, well-meaning man, charged with the destinies of our country and all who depended upon it, is appalling. One cannot today even reconstruct the state of mind which would render such gestures possible.

So the answer to your question, was alliance with Russia or America feasible, is impossible to supply. Neither option appealed to Mr. Chamberlain. And contrary to many opinions, he was a very astute man, trying “according to his lights,” as Churchill said, to avoid war.

Under the right leadership, perhaps one alliance or the other might have worked. But that required extraordinary vision—the persuasiveness, mindset and savoir faire Churchill might have brought to the task.

Was it possible? Yes, but with great difficulty. I welcome reader opinions.

Churchill and the Perspective of History 144 Years On

Continued from Part 1…. Do you want the good news or the bad news on Churchill today? The bad news is the high level of ignorance, as measured by that electronic Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner, the Internet.

Churchill’s name elicits 100 million Google hits, a colleague says, “Some are questions, many of which simply require the answer ‘No’—such as: ‘Was Churchill anti-Semitic?’ ‘Did Churchill hate Indians?’ ‘Was he bipolar?’ ‘Was he born in a ladies’ loo?’ ‘Did he have an affair with Lady Castlerosse?’ ‘Did Alexander Fleming save him from drowning?’” Of course, this was going on long before the worldwide web. Churchill wrote in 1938:

It is astonishing to me, looking back…how many different kinds of people—Suffragettes, Sinn Feiners, Communists, Egyptians, and the usual percentage of ordinary lunatics—have from time to time shown a very great want of appreciation of my public work. To be guarded and shadowed day and night…is only rendered tolerable…by the extraordinary tact, courtesy and skill of those entrusted with the duty of watching over public persons, who, at particular times, are thought to be worthy of powder and shot.

* * *

He’s still worthy today—although the powder and shot of history is digital not literal. Let’s face it: the web is where people GO. So much of it warps reality. A recent survey revealed that most British schoolchildren think Churchill was a mythical figure and that Sherlock Holmes was a real person in history.

Professor John Charmley said: “After holding our heads in our hands and deciding that the world has indeed gone to the dogs, we might care to reflect that there may be an irony in this. Churchill did set out to make himself a mythical figure; so it may be only just….that he seems to have become one.”

Surviving the Internet

But here’s the good news. Churchill has defied this mother load of ignorance. His social media critics don’t go unanswered anymore. Sometimes the answers are from people we’ve never heard of, who take the trouble to learn the truth. Last month a former U.S. astronaut, who said something nice about him, cravenly apologized when dunned by Tweets claiming Churchill was a racist who starved the Bengalis in 1943. He was greeted with a cacophony of digital guffaws, referring to a dozen different websites that disprove such nonsense. As a writer I have to be glad for all this calumny. After all, it furnished me with enough material for a book, Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality, which Ron and I will be happy to sell you tonight. Alas it’s already out of date, because new charges are constantly invented.

My website recently listed all the false claims of 2018 along with links to the best rebuttals. The defenders range from Toronto’s Terry Reardon, a Mackenzie King historian, on who was really to blame for the disastrous 1942 Dieppe raid—to Zareer Masani, an Indian scholar, on what really caused the Bengal Famine. One of us posted a quotation you won’t find among the attacks: “The old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go….We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada.” (Churchill said that in the War Council in 1943.)

I think we should be encouraged and heartened by such defenses. We didn’t have nearly as many allies five or ten years ago. We owe thanks to diligent efforts of Churchillians like yourselves. Which brings me to the many societies like this one.

National societies…

…like the one I founded fifty years ago, are increasingly creaky—like me. People just don’t join clubs the way they used to. The exchange of information and opinion they offer is freely accessible with a gadget you hold in your hand. Yet local societies, like this one, are going strong. What past political figure can you think of, besides perhaps Lincoln, who engenders such enthusiasm? The more advanced Churchill societies, like this one and Vancouver’s, welcome speakers on current events—not necessarily about Churchill, but keeping Churchill firmly in mind. It’s a remarkable credit to a man who realized the value of encouraging informal discussion by all shades of political opinion when he founded his own club for that purpose 107 years ago. In Wisconsin they named theirs after it. They call it the Other Other Club.

In print media…

…his reputation stands. Critics arose soon after the war. In 1957 Lord Alanbrooke published his frustrated, late night harangues with Churchill—and then apologized to him for leaking those private diaries. Brooke’s fuming is often used to show Churchill’s feet of clay—and Lord knows he had them.

But lately we’ve seen another side of Brooke—as when the PM arrives in France after D-Day. “I knew that he longed to get into the most exposed position possible,” Brooke wrote. “I honestly believe that he would really have liked to be killed on the front at this moment of success. He [often said that] the way to die is to pass out fighting when your blood is up and you feel nothing.” I think that little aside, by a frequently cited critic, captures a key aspect of Churchill.

Books about him keep piling up. At Hillsdale we’ve reviewed 100 since 2014, twenty per year. Yes, a few dwell in muddy byways, half-baked history. Some are pretty grim. To paraphrase Sir Winston, in war you can only be killed once—but by writers, many times. And yet, 144 years on, his reputation survives.

Ten Great Books in the Space of a Year

Think of all the really good books we’ve had just this year. Lewis Lehrman’s Churchill and Lincoln, a scholarly comparison of two dominant statesmen. Antoine Capet’s exhaustive encyclopedia, Dictionnaire Churchill. David Lough’s My Darling Winston, the insightful letters between WSC and his mother. Brough Scott on his life with horses, Churchill at the Gallop. Jill Rose’s Nursing Churchill on his health in wartime. Larry Kryske’s Churchill without Blood Sweat and Tears applied his leadership principles to modern living. Leslie Hossack’s Charting Churchill is a beautiful photo documentary of Churchill’s London. Piers Brendon’s Churchill’s Bestiary is a scholarly account of his relations with and allusions to animals. Hillsdale College’s The Churchill Documents offer massive new primary source material from D-Day through 1945. All these books are reviewed, with ordering links, on Hillsdale’s Churchill website.

The crowning achievement is Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny. Full disclosure: I was one of Andrew’s readers and kibitzers. Together with the tenacious Paul Courtenay, we exchanged a thousand emails. We ran down facts and factoids, from the Royal Library to gossip columns, arguing out every conclusion. With Hillsdale’s help, we checked even the unpublished parts of Sir Martin Gilbert’s “wodges”: documents, clippings and diaries covering almost every day of Churchill’s life. We didn’t agree about everything, but the average isn’t too bad.

* * *

This was the first biography I’d proofread since William Manchester’s The Last Lion, so I am perhaps qualified to compare. No one will ever reach the lyrical heights of “Horatius at the Gate,” as Manchester did. Andrew is however far more insightful, accurate, up to date, and critical where he needs to be. Walking with Destiny is I think the best single volume life of Churchill you can read.

Right now Andrew is on book tours. He’ll be here in Ottawa on May 27th. “Where are you now?” I just asked him. “New York en route to Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison,” he said—“just like Churchill in 1901. And guess what—I don’t even have to pay the crooked major.” He was referring to Major Pond, Churchill’s 1901 lecture agent, whom WSC called “a vulgar yankee impresario.”

Here’s what matters: these books have again brought Churchill to the forefront of history. Andrew writes: “There’s an explosion of love for him among ordinary people that would make you very happy. It’s like 1940 in terms of his popularity, whenever you get away from the smug elites. Big audiences. We sell out constantly. They ask good questions. No questions about firebombing Dresden, Iraqi gassings or the Bengal Famine. Sometimes one can feel down over the Twitter eruptions and statue smearings. But out in the real world, he’s as much loved as ever. Our life’s work has borne fruit.”

Scholarly Institutions…

…are a third part of his stature. The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has become the Center for Churchill Studies Ron and I used to dream about. It began in 2006, when Hillsdale President Larry Arnn declared he would finish the Official Biography. Oddly, this reminded me of what Churchill said when Japan declared war on the United States, the British Empire and the Dutch East Indies. “They have certainly embarked upon a very considerable undertaking.”

Considerable? It seemed impossible. The great history had stalled after the 1941 document volume. Undaunted, Dr. Arnn reprinted all twenty-four previous volumes, most of them out of print. Since then, helped by the Churchill Fellows, our dedicated student researchers, Hillsdale has published five more, taking the documents through 1945—seven volumes in all on World War II. In June, the 31st and final volume completes the job Randolph Churchill began fifty-six years ago. We celebrate with a cruise around Britain and a London banquet. But this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end….

The Churchill Project’s endowment finances an array of activity: seminars, online courses, conferences, tours and publications. We are building the largest Churchill archive in North America, housed in a new purpose-built Archives building. It includes the Martin Gilbert Papers—all of them, on 20th century and Jewish history as well as Churchill. My own library and papers are in trust for it. We are 2/3rds of the way to a $9 million endowment. Hillsdale maintains a Canadian link through its recognition by your CRA. So your support too is tax-deductible.

* * *

My first surprise when I joined Hillsdale in 2014 was to find so many young people with a keen interest in the great man. They have varied opinions and questing minds. My second surprise was the events. There is no registration charge. They’re free, whether online, on campus, at the Kirby Center in Washington, or elsewhere. We even provide lunches and dinners. You just have to get there. The secret is owning most of the necessary real estate and pre-financing expenses.

With the Official Bio behind us, the Churchill Project will turn to events, online education, and new publications. The work is something great and lasting, to “keep the memory green and the record accurate,” as Lady Soames charged us to do. And all of it is financed and set in stone to continue long after we are gone. This is the only way, in the long run, to assure that Churchill’s statesmanship will be recognized and studied forever.

Concluded in Part 3…

Charmley reviewed

What publicized this work was a section arguing that Churchill should have backed away from fighting Germany in 1940 in order to preserve Britain’s wealth, power and empire. (Charmley did not say “make peace with Hitler,” as some reviewers stated.) Per the author, Churchill chose instead to make Britain a client state of America, allowing Soviet power to wax and the British Empire to wane. Whatever we may think of that argument, this is a well written, critical biography from a self-described “Thatcherite historian.” The bibliography lists every significant book in English relating to the political Churchill, but is light on foreign works.

Prof. Charmley provided an entertaining interlude with his thesis and the arguments over it 25 (can it be possible?) years ago. You can download these issues by Googling “Finest Hour 78” and so on:

On Singapore

Excerpted and condensed from “Great Contemporaries: Hilaire Belloc,” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the full article click here.

_______________

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc

(1870-1953)—writer, sailor, poet, friend of Churchill—helped fuel Churchill’s passion for the survival of free government. Anti-statist, anti-collectivist and anti-establishment, he deplored the servitude of the industrial wage-earner and longed to reconcile his two great loves, “the soil of England and the Catholic faith.”

Born in France but educated at Birmingham and Oxford, he served with the French Artillery before becoming a naturalized British subject in 1902. Between 1906 and 1910 he was Churchill’s Parliamentary colleague.

* * *

French though he was, Belloc looked more like John Bull than anyone: “He wore a stand-up collar several sizes too large for him [and] was big and stocky and red of face.” Churchill’s nephew John Spencer-Churchill described him as “plump and cherub-like…. He used to take me sailing. We would start early in the morning, chug down the narrow Sussex lanes in his vintage Ford, lustily singing shocking French songs, and board his boat at Arundel.…Belloc was a devout Catholic, and undoubtedly his intellectual approach to the Catholic religion influenced my own interpretation of it in later years.”

Although English by choice, Belloc shared Churchill’s reverence for France. A friend remembered an Oxford Union debate in 1893. The motion was “That at the present juncture the advent of a Dictator would be a blessing to the French people.” Belloc replied with “passionate eloquence…reminding us of all that France had meant to human thought and human freedom, of how treacherously she had been forced into war in 1870 and how ruthlessly dismembered. It was one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard…. Belloc’s eloquence prevailed and the motion was defeated.”

Incandescent Brilliance

His book, The Servile State, championed “Distributism,“ a combination of apparent opposites. At the same time it involved broad land distribution, corporate organization of society and workers’ control of the means of production. It also emphasized decentralization of power, Jeffersonian democracy, and private property. Like Churchill, Belloc had traveled in America. It is odd that he never saw aspects of the USA as close to his vision.

Belloc shared Churchill’s interest in John Churchill First Duke of Marlborough. But Churchill thought Marlborough’s victories had contributed to British glory. Belloc disagreed, saying they had only entrenched the class system and rule by elites. In stimulating sessions at Chartwell they hashed over their differences. Few English writers, thought Brendan Bracken, “could hold a candle to Belloc, in his day, for wit, hard logic and felicity of phrasing.”

What a joy to have been to be present at such conversations! “Wit, charm, genius for friendship, conversational brilliance, all these are transitory qualities not easily captured,” wrote John Charmley.  “Bob Boothby recalled a lunch with Alfred Duff Cooper and Belloc when ‘the food was excellent, the claret superb,’ where he would never again ‘hope to listen to talk of such incandescent brilliance.'” Belloc started to recite some of his own poems, but laughed so much that Duff had to finish them…. A unique experience, not repeated.

World War II

Churchill was a fiftyish 65 when the next German war came. Belloc was an aging 69, and in no way ready for it. Uniquely and sadly, he had lost his first son in World War I, his second in World War II. He did not like the modern world. Still less he liked the horrific, blacked-out streets of shattered London. The England of his time was far away. He flourished only there. Churchill offered him a high honor in the name of the King, in the twilight of Belloc’s life. Belloc turned him down courteously.

Old and dispirited, Belloc had become pessimistic about the future. An admirer noted lines of his (often repeated by William F. Buckley, Jr. in morose moments). They might describe everyone you met at your last cocktail party….

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

Churchill’s Tribute to Belloc

Nearing his eighty-third birthday, Belloc was dozing before the fire in his daughter’s home when he fell into the flames. Badly burned, he died in hospital on 16 July 1953. The mourners were few. Churchill was one of them.

After the war Hatch Mansfield, Churchill’s wine merchants, bought up all the ’28 and ’34 Pol Roger champagne in France for Churchill’s exclusive consumption. In 1954, they investigated Chartwell’s cellar and pronounced it a “shambles.” Accordingly, Ralph Mansfield threw out the dross and instituted a cellar book. It was scarcely necessary. The cellar was almost all Pol Roger, vintage Hine and Johnny Walker scotch.

One set of bottles, which Mansfield pronounced “awful,” was designated for the rubbish bin, but Sir Winston intervened. They contained a white burgundy which Churchill had personally bottled with Belloc.

Don’t touch them, declared Sir Winston Churchill. Let them rest.

David Franco, reviewing the film Churchill, starring Brian Cox, raises questions he says everyone should be asking. “Isn’t the ability to accept one’s mistakes part of what makes a man a good leader? …. To what extent should we rely [on] past experiences in order to minimize mistakes in the future? These are the questions that make a bad movie like Churchill worth seeing.”

Well, I won’t be seeing this bad movie. Described as “perverse fantasy” by historian Andrew Roberts, it joins a recent spate of sloppy Churchill bio-pics that favor skewed caricatures over historical fact.

Revisionism: A Thriving Industry

Makers of movies might think it novel to criticize Churchill, but this is far from the case. Attacks on his leadership began early after World War II and have continued ever since. There’s a thriving mini-industry in “Churchill revisionism.” But it started with books, not movies.

In 1963, R.W. Thompson’s The Yankee Marlborough portrayed Churchill as a man of flesh and blood, who made mistakes, like anybody else. In his 1970 study, Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939, Robert Rhodes James focused on Churchill’s political gaffes, such as his dogged support of King Edward VIII in the 1936 Abdication crisis. Edward, later Duke of Windsor, gave up the throne to marry an American divorcee. The Duke’s tepid admiration of Hitler, and dismal performance as Governor of the Bahamas, caused Churchill to reflect: “I’m glad I was wrong.”

In 1993, John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory rocked Churchill’s supporters by claiming that he should have backed away from the Hitler war to preserve Britain’s wealth, power, and empire. More recently, Max Hastings criticized Churchill’s war leadership on multiple issues in both World Wars: Catastrophe 1914, on the opening months of WW1, and Winston’s War, 1940-45.

Whatever we make of their assessments, these historians were qualified critics whose thoroughly researched theses merit consideration. Alas, we cannot say the same about the recent round of Churchill movies.

Movies Faithful to Reality

Churchill movies started off well and were honest for decades. Young Winston (1972), starring Simon Ward as WSC and Anne Bancroft as his mother, was a vivid presentation based on Churchill’s own account of his first twenty-five years. Its inaccuracies stemmed from Churchill himself in his autobiography. (In it, Anthony Hopkins played David Lloyd George. Lady Randolph says: “He has the most disconcerting way of looking at women.”)

In 1974, Lee Remick brilliantly reprised the role of Lady Randolph the television series Jennie: as accurate a portrayal as ever existed. We Churchlllians gave her an award for it—the dying Lee’s last public appearance. It was attended by Gregory Peck, who co-starred with her in The Omen, who praised her “depth of womanliness.”

That same year, Richard Burton played a believable Churchill in The Gathering Storm, about the years leading up to World War II. Again, it didn’t deviate from fact, although Burton spoiled the effect by denouncing Churchill for fictitious acts against Welsh miners, including Burton’s father. Privately, Burton had expressed his admiration for “the old boy”.…but later, the cameras were on.

The 1981 TV series Churchill: The Wilderness Years, remains the model Churchill bio-pic. Herein Robert Hardy showed us both Churchill’s human frailties and his greatness. Hardy and his writers partnered with Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert to portray the anxious politician of the 1930s, out of power, vainly warning of the Nazi menace. Brilliantly cast, the result was a masterpiece.

More Recently…

Albert Finney was a solid Churchill in the second Gathering Storm (2002), a 90-minute film for television. As skillfully cast as The Wilderness Years, it featured Vanessa Redgrave in a bavura performance as Clementine Churchill. The story line, while not uncritical, did not deviate from fact. Even in the cynical, anti-heroic 21st century, it seemed, filmmakers could still tell his story without reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or godlike caricature. Then came “Into the Storm,” a 2009 television drama broadcast by the BBC and HBO. Here in a series set in 1945 with 1940 flashbacks, Brendan Gleeson gave us the most accurate Churchill since Robert Hardy. Things were looking good.

Or so I thought. Alas, in the last couple of years, we’ve had three films which can only be described as “fake history,” and a one-dimensional documentary that fails to tell the full story.

A Turn to the Worse

The Crown, a 2016 Netflix series covering the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II, was well acted. But John Lithgow portrayed a senile prime minister who hides his 1953 stroke from the Queen and repeatedly paints his goldfish pond in a muddle of depression. Factually, the Queen knew of Churchill’s stroke three days after it happened—and he was never so dotty as to make repeated paintings of his fish pond. The Duke of Windsor resurfaces here, promising that he will get the new Queen to move into Buckingham Palace if Churchill restores his royal allowance. Where do they think of this stuff?

Viceroy’s House has not been seen yet in the US, and we’re missing nothing. A visually elaborate production, it covers the end of British rule in India, under the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, whitewashing the latter at Churchill’s expense. Mountbatten’s insistence that Britain leave before the India-Pakistan boundaries were settled led to violent strife and the massacre of millions. Somehow, the film manages to blame this on Churchill, who was not even in power at the time.

* * *

Churchill starring Brian Cox is built around the myth that Churchill opposed D-Day virtually to the moment of the Normandy landings. In reality, Churchill had sought “a lodgment on the continent” since the British were thrown out of Dunkirk in 1940. His concept of floating “Mulberry Harbors” for landing tanks and equipment dated back to 1917. This hasn’t prevented Mr. Cox from flaunting his ignorance in interviews repeating a host of canards, including the notion that Churchill wanted to invade Germany over the Alps.

I held my breath when the film Dunkirk appeared, hoping it would not be another dose of lame propaganda. Churchill doesn’t appear in it. But his absence, along with other heroes of the Dunkirk evacuation, reduces the film to a one-dimensional portrait. It’s war on a beach, with moving scenes of heroism and survival. Who was the enemy? A viewer has no idea why Churchill said after Dunkirk, “We shall never surrender”—though his words are read movingly by a soldier in the final scenes.

Hope Ahead? We’ll See

There’s no question that fictitious scenes and conversations are legitimate devices in bio-pics. But they must not depart from what we know. And thanks to historians like Martin Gilbert and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, we know a lot.

There is cause for hope. This autumn, Gary Oldman will star as Churchill in another bio-pic, Darkest Hour, about facing Hitler’s armies in 1940. Promisingly, Oldman has consulted with qualified historians, striving to find “a way in” to the real Churchill. Colleagues who’ve seen previews say he has Churchill down perfectly. But his script contains some bizarre counterfactuals.

One can only wish him success. Perhaps this film will answer David Franco’s questions. Yes, accepting one’s mistakes does make a person a good leader. Yes, Churchill did learn from his mistakes. He was a man of quality—a good guide for our troubled decade. And after a long lapse, he deserves a film that does him justice.