Andrew Roberts

What the Marxist Tariq Ali gets wrong about Winston Churchill

In a biography riddled with factual errors, Ali portrays Churchill as cruel, incompetent and blinded by prejudice

Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament Square after it was defaced (photo: Getty images) 
issue 14 May 2022

Tariq Ali, the Marxist writer and activist, believes that a ‘Churchill cult’ is ‘drowning all serious debate’ about the wartime leader, and that ‘an alternative was badly needed’. He has therefore written a book that parrots every earlier revisionist slur about Churchill – war criminal, evil imperialist, mass murderer, pro-fascist – from detractors such as Caroline Elkins, Priya Gopal, Richard Gott, David Irving, Madrushee Mukerji, Clive Ponting, Richard Toye and Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

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