Cultural depictions of Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill in his air commodore's uniform

Named the Greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll, and widely regarded as being among the most influential people in British history, Winston Churchill has frequently been depicted in film, television, radio and other media.

Film

• Royal Cavalcade (1935) – C.M. Hallard
• Ohm Kruger (1941) – Otto Wernicke
• Mission to Moscow (1943) – Dudley Field Malone
• Stalingradskaya bitva I (English: The Battle of Stalingrad) (1949) – Viktor Stanitsyn
• The Lights of Baku (1950) – Viktor Stanitsyn
• The Fall of Berlin (1950) – Viktor Stanitsyn
• Nezabyvaemyy god 1919 (Unforgettable 1919) (1952) – Viktor Stanitsyn
• The Siege of Sidney Street (1960) – Jimmy Sangster
• Operation Crossbow (1965) – Patrick Wymark
• Liberation (1970) – Yuri Durov
• Young Winston (1972) – Simon Ward
• The Battle of Sutjeska (1973) – Orson Welles
• The Eagle Has Landed (1976) – Leigh Dilley
• Picassos äventyr (1978) – Sune Mangs
• Sekret Enigmy (1979) – Józef Zacharewicz
• Bourreau des coeurs, Le (1983) – René Douglas
• Katastrofa w Gibraltarze (1984) – Wlodzimierz Wiszniewski
• Jane and the Lost City (1987) – Richard Huggett
• Casablanca Express (1989) – John Evans
• Caro dolce amore (1994) – John Evans
• Shaheed Uddham Singh: Alais Ram Mohammad Singh Azad (2000) – Joe Lamb
• Operación gónada (2000) – Craig Stevenson
• Two Men Went to War (2002) – David Ryall
• Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004) – Christian Slater
• Allegiance (2005) – Mel Smith
• Inglourious Basterds (2009) – Rod Taylor
• The King's Speech (2010) – Timothy Spall
• Paradox (2010) – Alan C. Peterson
• Queen of the Desert (2015) – Christopher Fulford
• Churchill's Secret (2016) – Michael Gambon
• Churchill (2017) – Brian Cox
• Darkest Hour (2017) – Gary Oldman – won Academy Award for Best Actor

Theatre

• Never So Good (2007) – Ian McNeice (premiere run in 2007)
• Three Days in May (2011) – Warren Clarke (premiere run in 2011)
• The Audience (2013, London) – Edward Fox (replacing Robert Hardy, who withdrew prior to press night for health reasons)
• The Audience (2015, Broadway) – Dakin Matthews
• Sylvia (2018) - Delroy Atkinson

Television

• The Valiant Years (1960–63) – Richard Burton
• The Gathering Storm (1974) – Richard Burton
• Days of Hope (1975) – this is a relatively negative portrayal of Churchill that highlights his attitude towards the coal miners during the strikes of 1921 and 1926
• Edward the Seventh (1975) – Christopher Strauli
• Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977) – Arthur Gould-Porter
• Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978) - Wensley Pithey
• Churchill and the Generals (1979) – Timothy West
• The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981) – William Hootkins
• Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) – Robert Hardy
• The Winds of War (1983) – Howard Lang
• The Last Bastion (1984) – Timothy West
• War and Remembrance (1988) – Robert Hardy
• Bomber Harris (1989) – Robert Hardy
• 'Allo 'Allo!, series 7, episode 4, "Up the Crick Without a Piddle" (1991) – John James Evanson (as John James Evans)
• The Treaty (1991) – Julian Fellowes
• A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia (1992) – Michael Cochrane
• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992) – Julian Fellowes
• World War II: When Lions Roared (1994) – Bob Hoskins
• Hiroshima (1995) – Timothy West
• Bertie and Elizabeth (2002) – David Ryall
• The Gathering Storm (2002) – Albert Finney
• Wallis and Edward (2005) – David Calder
• Agatha Christie's Marple - The Sittaford Mystery (2006) – Robert Hardy
• Horrible Histories (2009– ) – Jim Howick
• Into the Storm (2009) – Brendan Gleeson
• Doctor Who – "The Beast Below", "Victory of the Daleks", "The Pandorica Opens", "The Wedding of River Song'" (2010–11) – Ian McNeice
• Titanic (2012) - Colm Gormley
• Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012) - Robert Whitelock
• Murdoch Mysteries – "Winston's Lost Night" (2013) – Thomas Howes
• Peaky Blinders (2013) – Andy Nyman (2014) – Richard McCabe
• 37 Days (2014) – Nicholas Asbury
• The World Wars (2014) – Ian Beyts, Tom Vickers (young)
• Up the Women – "Train" (2015) – Harry Peacock
• The Crown (2016) – John Lithgow^[1]

Music

• The Kinks recorded "Mr. Churchill Says" for their 1969 album Arthur.
• The YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured Dan Bull as Churchill in its fifth season; Churchill battled against Theodore Roosevelt, played by EpicLLOYD.
• Iron Maiden included parts of Churchill's famous speech "We shall fight on the beaches" in live versions of the song "Aces High" from the 1984 album Powerslave.
• Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello
• Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie
• Fool's Overture by Supertramp includes excerpt from "Never Surrender" speech, from Supertramp's 1977 album Even in the Quietest Moments

Radio

• Peter Sellers included Churchill as his standard PM for The Goon Show. Churchill is depicted as he was during World War II. In The Goon Show, he is of course treated humorously, having a very African foreign secretary called Basil (played by Ray Ellington in Red Bladder mode). In addition he is responsible for supporting Neddie Seagoon's harebrained plans for long-range, jet-propelled guided NAAFI's, atomic dustbins, and throwing batter puddings at Clement Attlee.
• Churchill's Other Lives, documentary series, played by Roger Allam (2011)

Literature

• Churchill is a significant character in the novel Redemption (1995), by Leon Uris
• Players, a Doctor Who novel by Terrance Dicks (1999)
• Southern Victory series by Harry Turtledove, set in an parallel universe where the Confederacy seceded from the United States in 1862. In 1935, after the defeat of the Entente to the Central Powers in the First Great War, the Conservatives led by Churchill go into coalition with the Silvershirts. By 1941, they declare war on Germany, serving in an uneasy alliance with Jake Featherston's Confederacy.
• The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2012)
• Dominion (2012) by C. J. Sansom is written as an alternative history, set in a parallel 1950s in which the Nazis occupy Great Britain through a puppet government, and an ageing Churchill is leader-in-exile of the British resistance movement.

Winston Churchill novels by Michael Dobbs

• Winston's War (2002)
• Never Surrender (2003)
• Churchill's Hour (2004)
• Churchill's Triumph (2005)

Miscellaneous

• The 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony featured an animated version of Churchill's statue, over which James Bond and the Queen fly over in a helicopter: as they salute him, he raises his cane in response. It also featured an appearance from Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill.
• Churchill was featured in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Syndicate as an ally to Lydia Frye.
• Churchill was supposed to appear in Citizen Kane with Charles Foster Kane during the News of the March sequence but was cut due to runtime.
• A paperweight likeness of Churchill, based on a portrait by Miss Dora Marr, was produced in a very limited number by Baccarat in 1954.^[2]
• A fictionalised Churchill appeared in the Strike Witches series.

References

External links

• Winston Churchill – character page on the IMDB