I refer to the two recent articles Dr Rodolfo Ragonesi on Churchill, ‘Betrayal at Dunkirk’ (February 24) and ‘Busting the Churchill myth’ (March 3). Churchill was, undoubtedly, a most controversial man with several shades to his character and the decisions he took when in power.

Like that of any other important historical personality, Churchill’s decisions need to be assessed in the general circumstances of the times rather than taken singly and out of context. Unless one does so, there is a risk of arriving at a misinterpretation of facts.

Let us not forget for one instance when discussing Churchill that in the final account, despite his many eccentricities and failings, we owe it to him that when Hitler was triumphant everywhere in Europe and Britain was at its lowest ebb, his determination and willpower to stay the course were the critical factors that stopped Nazism and Fascism from dominating Europe and finally winning the war.

Ragonesi makes reference to Churchill’s exultation at the break of World War I when, as young First Lord of the Admiralty, he wrote to his wife Clementine how “geared and happy” he was.  I also read those words many years ago and was astounded that a person in such an important and crucial position in government could be so cynical and insensitive.

My first reaction on reading those words was that they made him unfitfor any place in a government running a war on grounds of high moral values to justify its decision to enter the war against Germany.

Ragonesi admitted that Churchill himself felt pangs of outrage at his own base feelings. Churchill indeed finished his letter to his wife by making a rhetorical question that he alone could answer: “Is it not horrible to be made like this?”

Ragonesi’s assertion that Churchill was a racist is fully subscribed by recorded events and his speeches. In the book by Andrew Roberts entitled Eminent Churchillians, the author writes that: “Churchill’s racial assumptions occupied a prime place both in his political philosophy and in his views on international relations… He was a convinced white – not to say Anglo-Saxon – supremacist.”

Churchill’s racial assumptions occupied a prime place both in his political philosophy and in his views on international relations

Yet despite these awkward opinions on his part (they need also to be seen in the background of the times – Roberts, for example, says in his book that these racist views were “almost universally held until around the end of the 1950s”).

Ironically, however, it was during Churchill’s last premiership in the 1950s that Britain took the first steps towards becoming a multi-racial society. The door for large scale immigration from the Commonwealth was opened during the Labour government of 1945-51. It reached its peak during Churchill’s subsequent premiership when Britain began to take in an ever-increasing numbers of immigrants from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and Ceylon.

It is inevitable that around a figure so important in history many legends would grow.  One of them was Churchill’s relationship with Mussolini. There is no doubt that Churchill had an early admiration of Mussolini. In February 1933 Churchill went so far as to describe him during a speech at the Queen’s Hall, London as: “The Roman genius impersonated in Mussolini, the greatest lawgiver among living men, has shown to many nations how they can resist the pressures of Socialism and has indicated the path that a nation can follow when courageously led.”

It is maintained by some that Churchill never lost this admiration of Mussolini. A conspiracy theory linking the two men has been built up by popular legend regarding some close correspondence between them up to almost the end of the war. It is certain that by September 1944 Mussolini himself had begun to accumulate documents which would presumably serve to defend him before a war crimes tribunal and before history.

The legend states that some of these documents contained exchange of letters between Churchill and Mussolini that were very compromising to the British Prime Minister.

Mussolini’s flight in the winter of 1945 to the village of Grandola, 10 miles from the Swiss frontier, with a leather bag which he determinedly protected with his own person and rarely left his grip is interpreted by some as a final desperate threat on his part to reveal its contents unless Churchill offered him and his country favourable surrender terms.

However, the only genuine Churchill-Mussolini letters ever to come to light were those exchanged in May 1940 and which do not mention accords of any kind between the two protagonists.

Roy Jenkins (a distinguished former Labour chancellor of the exchequer in the 1960s) who wrote a much-acclaimed biography of Churchill in 2001 said in the concluding paragraph of the book that Churchill “with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street”. This is an opinion to which I fully subscribe having read extensively on the subject in question.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.