The BBC’s latest Churchill documentary is an outrageous hatchet job

Churchill: When Britain Said No
BBC2

The 50^th anniversary earlier this year of the death of Winston Churchill produced an international wave of commemoration. Churchill remains among the most widely admired – and most regularly quoted – political figures of the past century, especially in America.

While Churchill’s role in history will be legitimately analyzed for centuries, there is a class of Churchill-bashers (‘revisionists’) for whom the adulation of the last few months (and decades) cannot pass without a spirited answer. And where better to do this than on Britain’s state-owned broadcaster.

The revisionists’ first salvo was Jeremy Paxman’s programme (‘all the dockworkers hated Churchill’) on the January 1965 state funeral. Now to provide the coup de grace is BBC2’s Churchill: When Britain Said No produced and directed by Christopher Spencer.

Public broadcasting used to be a source of admiration for Britain around the world but with programmes such as this, now seems more an embarrassment.