Four thousand people an hour had filed past Winston Churchill's body as it lay in state at Westminster. But rarely has the legend of Winston Churchill been more outrageously misappropriated than it was by Tony Blair. But their rise to power had coincided with a renewed obsession in America with Churchill's war. Whereas the war movies of the 1970s and the 1980s had been about Vietnam (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now), Churchill's war was rediscovered. © Geoffrey Wheatcroft, 2021Abridged extract from Churchill's Shadow, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, published by Bodley Head on August 19 at £25.

Source: Daily Mail July 24, 2021 21:33 UTC