In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

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4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart

David Franco, reviewing the film Churchill, starring Brian Cox, raises questions he says everyone should be asking. “Isn’t the ability to accept one’s mistakes part of what makes a man a good leader? …. To what extent should we rely [on] past experiences in order to minimize mistakes in the future? These are the questions that make a bad movie like Churchill worth seeing.”

Well, I won’t be seeing this bad movie. Described as “perverse fantasy” by historian Andrew Roberts, it joins a recent spate of sloppy Churchill bio-pics that favor skewed caricatures over historical fact.

Revisionism: A Thriving Industry

Makers of movies might think it novel to criticize Churchill, but this is far from the case. Attacks on his leadership began early after World War II and have continued ever since. There’s a thriving mini-industry in “Churchill revisionism.” But it started with books, not movies.

In 1963, R.W. Thompson’s The Yankee Marlborough portrayed Churchill as a man of flesh and blood, who made mistakes, like anybody else. In his 1970 study, Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939, Robert Rhodes James focused on Churchill’s political gaffes, such as his dogged support of King Edward VIII in the 1936 Abdication crisis. Edward, later Duke of Windsor, gave up the throne to marry an American divorcee. The Duke’s tepid admiration of Hitler, and dismal performance as Governor of the Bahamas, caused Churchill to reflect: “I’m glad I was wrong.”

In 1993, John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory rocked Churchill’s supporters by claiming that he should have backed away from the Hitler war to preserve Britain’s wealth, power, and empire. More recently, Max Hastings criticized Churchill’s war leadership on multiple issues in both World Wars: Catastrophe 1914, on the opening months of WW1, and Winston’s War, 1940-45.

Whatever we make of their assessments, these historians were qualified critics whose thoroughly researched theses merit consideration. Alas, we cannot say the same about the recent round of Churchill movies.

Movies Faithful to Reality

Churchill movies started off well and were honest for decades. Young Winston (1972), starring Simon Ward as WSC and Anne Bancroft as his mother, was a vivid presentation based on Churchill’s own account of his first twenty-five years. Its inaccuracies stemmed from Churchill himself in his autobiography. (In it, Anthony Hopkins played David Lloyd George. Lady Randolph says: “He has the most disconcerting way of looking at women.”)

In 1974, Lee Remick brilliantly reprised the role of Lady Randolph the television series Jennie: as accurate a portrayal as ever existed. We Churchlllians gave her an award for it—the dying Lee’s last public appearance. It was attended by Gregory Peck, who co-starred with her in The Omen, who praised her “depth of womanliness.”

That same year, Richard Burton played a believable Churchill in The Gathering Storm, about the years leading up to World War II. Again, it didn’t deviate from fact, although Burton spoiled the effect by denouncing Churchill for fictitious acts against Welsh miners, including Burton’s father. Privately, Burton had expressed his admiration for “the old boy”.…but later, the cameras were on.

The 1981 TV series Churchill: The Wilderness Years, remains the model Churchill bio-pic. Herein Robert Hardy showed us both Churchill’s human frailties and his greatness. Hardy and his writers partnered with Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert to portray the anxious politician of the 1930s, out of power, vainly warning of the Nazi menace. Brilliantly cast, the result was a masterpiece.

More Recently…

Albert Finney was a solid Churchill in the second Gathering Storm (2002), a 90-minute film for television. As skillfully cast as The Wilderness Years, it featured Vanessa Redgrave in a bavura performance as Clementine Churchill. The story line, while not uncritical, did not deviate from fact. Even in the cynical, anti-heroic 21st century, it seemed, filmmakers could still tell his story without reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or godlike caricature. Then came “Into the Storm,” a 2009 television drama broadcast by the BBC and HBO. Here in a series set in 1945 with 1940 flashbacks, Brendan Gleeson gave us the most accurate Churchill since Robert Hardy. Things were looking good.

Or so I thought. Alas, in the last couple of years, we’ve had three films which can only be described as “fake history,” and a one-dimensional documentary that fails to tell the full story.

A Turn to the Worse

The Crown, a 2016 Netflix series covering the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II, was well acted. But John Lithgow portrayed a senile prime minister who hides his 1953 stroke from the Queen and repeatedly paints his goldfish pond in a muddle of depression. Factually, the Queen knew of Churchill’s stroke three days after it happened—and he was never so dotty as to make repeated paintings of his fish pond. The Duke of Windsor resurfaces here, promising that he will get the new Queen to move into Buckingham Palace if Churchill restores his royal allowance. Where do they think of this stuff?

Viceroy’s House has not been seen yet in the US, and we’re missing nothing. A visually elaborate production, it covers the end of British rule in India, under the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, whitewashing the latter at Churchill’s expense. Mountbatten’s insistence that Britain leave before the India-Pakistan boundaries were settled led to violent strife and the massacre of millions. Somehow, the film manages to blame this on Churchill, who was not even in power at the time.

* * *

Churchill starring Brian Cox is built around the myth that Churchill opposed D-Day virtually to the moment of the Normandy landings. In reality, Churchill had sought “a lodgment on the continent” since the British were thrown out of Dunkirk in 1940. His concept of floating “Mulberry Harbors” for landing tanks and equipment dated back to 1917. This hasn’t prevented Mr. Cox from flaunting his ignorance in interviews repeating a host of canards, including the notion that Churchill wanted to invade Germany over the Alps.

I held my breath when the film Dunkirk appeared, hoping it would not be another dose of lame propaganda. Churchill doesn’t appear in it. But his absence, along with other heroes of the Dunkirk evacuation, reduces the film to a one-dimensional portrait. It’s war on a beach, with moving scenes of heroism and survival. Who was the enemy? A viewer has no idea why Churchill said after Dunkirk, “We shall never surrender”—though his words are read movingly by a soldier in the final scenes.

Hope Ahead? We’ll See

There’s no question that fictitious scenes and conversations are legitimate devices in bio-pics. But they must not depart from what we know. And thanks to historians like Martin Gilbert and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, we know a lot.

There is cause for hope. This autumn, Gary Oldman will star as Churchill in another bio-pic, Darkest Hour, about facing Hitler’s armies in 1940. Promisingly, Oldman has consulted with qualified historians, striving to find “a way in” to the real Churchill. Colleagues who’ve seen previews say he has Churchill down perfectly. But his script contains some bizarre counterfactuals.

One can only wish him success. Perhaps this film will answer David Franco’s questions. Yes, accepting one’s mistakes does make a person a good leader. Yes, Churchill did learn from his mistakes. He was a man of quality—a good guide for our troubled decade. And after a long lapse, he deserves a film that does him justice.

Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

PBS and ITV have succeeded where many failed. They offer a Churchill documentary with a minimum of dramatic license, reasonably faithful to history (as much as we know of it). Churchill’s Secret limns the pathos, humor, hope and trauma of a little-known episode: Churchill’s stroke on 23 June 1953, and his miraculous recovery. For weeks afterward, his faithful lieutenants in secret ran the government. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, the film is worth seeing, and worth going to see.

Sadness attends our mortality, death comes to us all. Sir Winston teetered in 1953; only his inner circle knew how close he had come. The “secret” has been public now for fifty years, since publication of his doctor’s diaries in 1966. But at the time it was a secret. Not a word leaked, thanks to family, staff, and three press barons—Beaverbrook, Bracken and Camrose. Private secretary John Colville wrote: “They achieved the all but incredible, and in peace-time possibly unique, success of gagging Fleet Street, something they would have done for nobody but Churchill.”

Secret Pathos

Exactly how ill the Prime Minister really was I leave to experts. At the time, many close to him thought he would die. Colville wrote: “he went downhill badly, losing the use of his left arm and left leg.” In the film Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran (Bill Paterson), summoned to Downing Street, finds the PM singing incoherently: “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” Great heavens, I thought, they are going to link this to Marigold….

“Bubbles” was the favorite song of a 2 1/2-year-old daughter who died in 1921. Rarely mentioned, Marigold was buried in a corner of their hearts. With poignant flashbacks, the film unfolds their memories of the loss they still deeply felt. In a moving scene, Clementine tearfully recounts Marigold’s story to her husband’s nurse. As a device for portraying her and Winston’s humanity, this is a touch of genius.

The nurse, Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) is the film’s only fictional character. She is meant to represent “the help”—too numerous to catalogue in the space of a short film. Millie has a Yorkshire accent but her father, she tells Churchill, was Welsh: “and no fan of yours.” (WSC once allowed deployment of troops during the Welsh miners strike in 1910.) Devoted to his recovery, but always her own woman, Millie sees the job through. Confronting all challengers, she’s a perfect foil for Churchill, his wife, and their sometimes obstreperous family.

Expert Casting

Critics who say PBS dotes on British drama forget that UK theatre offers unequalled depths of talent. There are so many exceptional actors that casting lookalikes for a historical film is a relative breeze. In Churchill’s Secret, the casting is superb.

Michael Gambon is an excellent Churchill: more drawn, less cherubic, but perfect in his mannerisms and bearing. Lindsay Duncan as Clementine is almost up to the standard set by Vanessa Redgrave, brilliant alongside Albert Finney’s Churchill in “The Gathering Storm” (2002)—and far superior to Sian Phillips, the great Robert Hardy’s opposite number in “The Wilderness Years” (1981).

Supporting actors are outstanding. Colville (Patrick Kennedy) and Christopher Soames (Christian McKay)—who bore the burden of state in those anxious days—could not be more lifelike. R.A. “Rab” Butler (Chris Larkin)—a Chamberlainite who had never liked and hoped to replace Churchill, whom he had hoped would retire since 1945—is the same weak reed he was in life. “I hope you don’t think of me as an enemy,” says Rab to a rapidly recovering Churchill in August. The Prime Minister replies: “I don’t think of you at all, Rab.” 

The portrayal of the Churchill children, boozing and bickering (correctly excepting Mary), is over-emphasized. These scenes are admittedly fiction. No one alive knows what really happened at Chartwell in those secret weeks. The family and staff I talked to never mentioned rows during those weeks. The film strives however to represent how the three elder children must have felt, and certainly acted, at one time or another. They had grown up under a great shadow in trying times. As Moran (perhaps wise before the fact) is made to remark: “There’s a price to pay for greatness, but the great seldom pay it themselves.” 

What Good’s a Constitution?

More time could have been spent on how Colville and Soames held the fort while the boss recovered.  Churchill once wrote a famous article, “What Good’s a Constitution?” In 1953, they must have asked themselves that question.

Today it would be impossible to keep a lid on such a secret. What they did might indeed be thought unconstitutional. Yet the nation owed a debt to those responsible lieutenants, who acted only when they knew the PM would approve. As Colville remembered:

…the administration continued to function as if he were in full control. We realised that however well we knew his policy and the way his thoughts were likely to move. We had to be careful not to allow our own judgment to be given Prime Ministerial effect. To have done so, as we could without too great difficulty, would have been a constitutional outrage. It was an extraordinary, indeed perhaps an unprecedented, situation….Before the end of July the Prime Minister was sufficiently restored to take an intelligent interest in affairs of state and express his own decisive views. Christopher and I then returned to the fringes of power, having for a time been drawn perilously close to the centre.

K.B.O.

While the testimony of insiders certainly suggests a close call, many were confident that Churchill would recover. The morning after the stroke, wrote Mary Soames, he “amazingly presided at a Cabinet meeting, where none of his colleagues thought anything was amiss.” She quoted Harold Macmillan: “I certainly noticed nothing beyond the fact that he was very white. He spoke little, but quite distinctly.” By the time he arrived at Chartwell on the 25th, he was at rock bottom. Yet a month later he was well enough to be driven the three-hour journey to Chequers, the PM’s official country house, and was resuming his literary and political work.

Churchill’s Secret is replete with Sir Winston’s famous admonition in the face of misfortune, K.B.O. (Keep Buggering On.) Amid growing calls for his retirement, he was determined to stay—long enough at least for one more try at his final goal: a permanent peace. The film is not clear about how much time elapsed between the stroke and the “test” Churchill set for himself. That was the Conservative Party Conference at Margate. There on October 10th he would have to make a major, fifty-minute speech. It was do or die: We are rushed through the weeks to Margate, actually almost four months after he was stricken.

Of course he brought the house down. Jock Colville noted: “He had been nervous of the ordeal: his first public appearance since his stroke and a fifty-minute speech at that; but personally I had no fears as he always rises to occasions. In the event one could see but little difference, as far as his oratory went, since before his illness.”

“See them off, Winston”

Some observers have faulted the portrayal of Clementine in Churchill’s Secret—not for Lindsay Duncan’s skillful acting, but for the words the script has her say. To some she seems a whiny, self-centered neurotic, the very picture given in recent biography.

I honestly didn’t have that impression. At Margate Clementine tells him firmly: “See them off, Winston.” Their daughter told me Clementine had thought in June that his life was ending. The film suggests that Lady Churchill had many regrets; and she did. She genuinely believed—and had for a long time—that he had stayed too long. “Clementine bore the brunt of all this,” Mary wrote, “and her anxiety concerning his political intentions was great.”

The film establishes a reasonably accurate picture of Lady Churchill. “None of us would be here without him,” one of his children says, “And he wouldn’t be here without you.” Winston himself tells her: “I shall face anything with you, the Tories, the Russians—even death itself.”

Unlike certain frothy popular accounts, Churchill’s Secret makes it clear that come what may, Clementine was the rock on which he depended. As he said of her on many occasions: “Here firm, though all be drifting.”

Churchill films seldom engender unanimity. But everyone who watched the preview, by kind invitation of the British Consul in Boston, had the same reaction. “The Gathering Storm” is really good. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, “The Gathering Storm” is outstanding.

Best performances

The two greatest supporting roles are female. Clementine Churchill was misplayed by Sian Phillips in the “Wilderness Years” documentary. But here Clemmie gets justice at the hands of Vanessa Redgrave.

Redgrave not only looks the part—grandson Winston Churchill, who should know, told me the resemblance is uncanny. But scriptwriter Hugh Whitemore has also provided her with exactly the right lines as she cajoles, scolds, wheedles and encourages her husband. “I often put myself in Clemmie’s shoes,” wrote Lady Diana Cooper. “And often felt how they pinched and rubbed till I kicked them off, heroic soles and all, and begged my husband to rest and be careful. Fortunately, Clemmie was a mortal of another clay.”

Ava Wigram

Equally compelling is Ava (Lena Headey), the beautiful wife of Ralph Wigram (Linus Roache). As Martin Gilbert revealed in the official biography, Wigram risked his career to bring Churchill secrets on German rearmament. Devotedly, Ava bears her husband’s strain, their deep concern for their young, autistic son. And the worst that politics can throw at her.

Angered by Wigram’s aid to Churchill, the government reacts. A toady named Pettifer (actually Board of Trade President Walter Runciman) visits Ava with a threat. If her husband doesn’t stop helping Churchill he will be transferred abroad, leaving Ava and the boy alone in London. She tells him to do his worst and throws him out.

This is an overdue tribute to a little-known heroine. Ava Bodley married Ralph Wigram in 1925. After Ralph’s premature death in 1936 she wrote to Churchill… “He adored you so & always said you were the greatest Englishman alive.” In 1941 she married John Anderson, Viscount Waverly, Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was he for whom the Anderson Shelter was named. Churchill was devoted to Ava all his life. When Anderson died in 1958, Churchill telephoned her from Chartwell. “After commiserating with her on Lord Waverly’s death he was silent for a while,” writes Martin Gilbert. Then he said “with what sounded like tears in his voice, ‘For Ralph Wigram grieve.'”

Finney and supporting cast

Albert Finney as Churchill is ten or fifteen years too old and looks more like WSC’s nephew Peregrine. But his mannerisms and pale blue eyes are right, and he grows on you, despite unnecessary toilet scenes and red velvet siren suits worn round the clock. Finney overplays the role—every Churchill impersonator does, except the inimitable Robert Hardy. But he is all right. Again Whitemore’s script comes through. Here and there is a snatch of words Churchill spoke in later or different contexts. (A 1939 broadcast to America is recast as a Commons speech in 1936.) But the flow is so seamless that only the determined critic will notice.

The rest of the casting is good—not as physically exact as in “The Wilderness Years,” but convincing and finely directed by Richard Loncraine. Sarah Churchill should have had a flame red wig to hide that mousy hair, and Brendan Bracken also starts too dark-haired, though his mop reddens as the crisis mounts! Randolph Churchill is too young and silly. Nigel Havers was a better Randolph in the 1982 version. Derek Jacobi makes a lifelike Stanley Baldwin. Sir Robert Vansittart (Tom Wilkinson) is the uneasy Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, balancing loyalty to his government with fear for his country, saying of Churchill, “he demands total loyalty,” and implying that it’s worth it.

Fine scenes with a major gap

The opening scenes at Chartwell in 1934 play like William Manchester’s prologue to his second volume of The Last Lion, providing a penetrating look at the household down to “Mr. Accountant Woods,” who on cue pronounces Winston’s finances a shambles. Winston’s hobbies—painting, bricklaying, feeding his fish, watching his pigs (the famous pig line is de rigueur)—are nicely done, though the fishpond is not the one at Chartwell. Mary Churchill (now Lady Soames) looks more like a young Chelsea Clinton than the beautiful Mary. Ronnie Barker is almost ideal as Inches, the long-suffering and devoted butler, but Barker is too English; as his grandson advises me (see comments), Inches was a Scot.

If this film were not so good, the gap in the story line would be unforgivable: After 1936 and Baldwin’s retirement as Prime Minister, we skip ahead to the war and Churchill’s arrival at the Admiralty. How can a film entitled “The Gathering Storm” ignore the premiership of Neville Chamberlain and Munich?

Granted, there are only ninety minutes, and one can understand the omission of, say, the Abdication Crisis. But without Munich the story falls short of its dramatic potential. Sadly too, Churchill in Commons mainly utters only banal statistics about aircraft production (too often to an empty House—most times he packed the place). By devoting fewer minutes to India and aircraft, they could have allowed Finney to tackle that most famous prewar oration, after Munich: “I have watched this famous island descending the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.”

Final thoughts

A minor flaw is the failure to identify all the characters. Modern audiences would benefit from seeing the credits before the film, the actors portrayed alongside a few lines identifying the characters they represent. But there’s little else to criticize, and what’s missing in 1937-39 is balanced by what’s included in 1934-36. Perhaps they’ve left room for a sequel?

The essence of this film is not so much the urgency of the hour, the naiveté of Britain’s leaders, their refusal to act “until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong,” Churchill’s defiant warnings when nobody would listen (his true finest hour, many think)—and the relevance of Britain’s inertia to our growing lethargy today, in the face of equally perilous threats. All that is there—but primarily this is a love story.

The intensity of Winston and Clementine’s devotion to one another permeates the tale. From their spats over money to their rapid reconciliations; from Winston’s chagrin at Clemmie’s four-month sojourn in the South Seas (“If it weren’t for Mary I’d be awfully miserable”), to his impromptu romp through his fishpond upon her return; to his touching tribute as he heads for the Admiralty (“thank you for loving me”), the film exudes the emotional ties that all marriages should have, and theirs did. Churchill once described his marriage: “Here firm, though all be drifting.” Fortunately for him, it really was. Give BBC and HBO a tip of the hat.