WARTIME LEADERS
Winston Churchill is viewed by most as the strongman who stood up to Hitler. Yet, as Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS – a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre – explains, on becoming Prime Minister the odds were stacked against him.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Sir Winston Churchill is an instantly recognisable figure. With his bulldog scowl, his ‘V-for-Victory’ salute, omnipresent cigar and eccentric wardrobe of velvet siren suits and military hats, he cannot be mistaken for anyone else. In the marketing parlance of today, he is a unique brand. His celebrated speeches continue to be quoted and misquoted, and his greatest phrases have become almost ubiquitous.
Churchill’s image now adorns the British £5 note, where the clock of Big Ben is shown frozen at 3pm, commemorating the moment on 13 May 1940 when the new Prime Minister stood up in the House of Commons and promised: “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however hard and long the road may be.” Yet strip away the layers of hindsight, travel back in time to 1940, and the question was: how? Churchill’s six-minute speech was deliberately big on rhetoric and …
