Plane Introductin

8.Legacy.

The view of Churchill as a great man is owed to his leadership of the British people in the Second World War. In a 2019 interview, Boris Johnson stated that Churchill "saved this country and the whole of Europe from a barbaric fascist and racist tyranny, and our debt to him is incalculable". Even so, Churchill's legacy continues to stir intense debate among writers and historians.^[670] This difficulty had been expressed by Paul Addison in 1980 when he noted that there are many people "so prejudiced for or against Churchill" that they had no interest in critically assessing him as a historical figure; Addison himself considered Churchill to be a "great historic figure".^[671]

Churchill's idiosyncracies and indulgences have somewhat soured his otherwise great reputation. Throughout his career, his outspokenness earned him enemies^[69] and he was controversial even before he became an MP, perceived by many to be "an adventurer and a medal-hunter",^[672] thought to be egotistical and self-absorbed with a tendency to make choices reflecting poor judgement.^[673] According to Addison, Churchill was seen as "a politician obsessed by personal interest, pushing himself relentlessly forward in a blaze of publicity at the expense of worthier men".^[674] Until the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill's approach to politics generated widespread "mistrust and dislike",^[669] largely on account of his two party defections.^[675]

Churchill was long regarded as an enemy of the working class. His response to the Rhonda Valley unrest and his anti-socialist rhetoric brought condemnation from socialists. They saw Churchill as a reactionary who represented imperialism, militarism, and the interests of the upper classes in the class war.^[676] His role in opposing the General Strike earned the enmity of many strikers and most members of the Labour movement.^[677]

However, the historian Edward Moritz Jr noted that, while some on the left presented Churchill as "a vicious reactionary and a hater of the working class", this did not take Churchill's domestic reforms into account.^[678] Jenkins, himself a senior Labour minister, remarked that Churchill had "a substantial record as a social reformer" for his work in the first part of his parliamentary career.^[609] Similarly, Rhodes James thought that, as a social reformer, Churchill's achievements were "considerable".^[679] This, said Rhodes James, had been achieved because Churchill as a minister had "three outstanding qualities. He worked hard; he put his proposals efficiently through the Cabinet and Parliament; he carried his Department with him. These ministerial merits are not as common as might be thought".^[680]

While the biographies by Addison, Gilbert, Jenkins and Rhodes James are among the most acclaimed works about Churchill, he has been the subject of numerous others and has been widely depicted on stage and screen. Notable screen biopics include Young Winston (1972), directed by Richard Attenborough; Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981), starring Robert Hardy and with Martin Gilbert as co-writer; The Gathering Storm (2002), starring Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave; and Darkest Hour (2017), starring Gary Oldman. Finney and Oldman won major awards for their performances as Churchill