Deep under London, Winston Churchill's memory is cherished. Last year, the Queen opened a new museum honouring her first prime minister and Britain's greatest war leader. The Churchill museum is an extension of the Cabinet War Rooms, the heart of Britain's wartime government.
The centrepiece of the new museum is an extraordinary interactive chronicle of Churchill's life. Click on a year, and the exhibit tells you what he was doing on a given day. Suddenly, a flight of Spitfires roar overhead, the Merlin roar echoing round the underground room.
Churchill was unique. He was an MP for 64 years (give or take the odd break, thanks to a capricious electorate). He was born when Disraeli was PM, and died during Harold Wilson's first administration, when the Beatles were helping to create the swinging sixties.
The museum displays Karsh of Ottawa's famous photo portrait of Churchill, taken during a visit to Canada in 1941. The image captured Churchill's defiance. But Martin Gilbert's book In search of Churchill revealed that it was far from authentic. Karsh snatched the PM's cigar, resulting in a gloriously belligerent expression. Gilbert's book published another shot taken that day, before Karsh stole the premier's cigar. It suggests Churchill at his most human.
That human side of Churchill was wonderfully captured in the diaries of John Colville, his wartime private secretary. Colville saw the premier in all his moods. Reading the entries, you get a vivid image of life at the heart of Government when Britain's survival was in the balance. (How can anyone who didn't live through that amazing time complain about stress?) It's difficult not to warm to a man who, seeing his private secretary approaching with a telegram in the darkest days of 1940, exclaims 'not another country gone west'!
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