Churchill's reputation

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Wartime saviour or the symbol of nostalgic imperialism ? David Reynolds, Priya Satia, Richard Toye and Allen Packwood join Anne McElvoy to look at the ways Churchill's story and legacy are being written now by both historians and in the press. How can we untangle the culture war that is raging over his reputation and what can we learn if we look at the research coming out of the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge?

Richard Toye is Professor of History at the University of Exeter co-author of The Churchill Myths (2020) and author of Winston Churchill: A Life in the News (OUP, 2020) Priya Satia is Professor of International History at the University of Stanford, author of Time's Monster: How History Makes History (2020) and Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (2018) David Reynolds is Professor of International History at the University of Cambridge and author of One World Divisible: a Global History since 1945 (2000) and In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (2004) which was the winner of the Wolfson Prize Allen Packwood is Director of the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge

Producer: Ruth Watts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
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0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:42.0	Hello, I'm Anne McHellvoy, and in this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast,
0:47.2	we'll be talking about Sir Winston Churchill, a big figure in current culture wars,
0:50.4	but what do historians today actually make of him?
0:53.5	Stay listening to find out after this short message.
1:01.0	With the BBC Sounds app, you can find some of your favourite shows with ease. For example,
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1:29.1	podcasts. I was talking to my teenager the other day about Churchill and her view was clear
1:36.3	there's little good to be said for him and what there is is outweighed by his flaws. Like many
1:41.5	in her generation, she's attracted to a view that reflects a new iron curtain.
1:46.6	It's driven by certainties and by conversations on social media, presenting their own
1:52.0	selective view of Britain's best-known Prime Minister. But there's also the sense of a reckoning,
1:58.2	particularly at the moment, about how far policy and politicians
	...

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