V-sign Archives - Richard M. Langworth http://localhost:8080/tag/v-sign Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project, Writer and Historian Wed, 28 Aug 2024 16:15:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 http://localhost:8080/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/RML-favicon-150x150.png V-sign Archives - Richard M. Langworth http://localhost:8080/tag/v-sign 32 32 Churchill’s V-Sign (both ways) and the Peace Symbol http://localhost:8080/v-sign http://localhost:8080/v-sign#comments Mon, 26 Aug 2024 22:19:07 +0000 https://richardlangworth.com/?p=17953

Q: Where did Churchill get his V-sign?

I was wanting to find out about the two-finger V-sign in the picture. It appears to be either the earliest peace symbol. Did he flash it both ways? —R.L. Sonoma, Calif.

A: Unknown, but it was a great prop

The “crow foot” peace symbol predates Churchill’s V-sign by four or five centuries. Its 20th Century form was popularized by Picasso in the World Peace Conferences of the 1950s. There it was alleged to represent the Christian cross upside down and broken, the symbol of a Communist peace.

V-sign
Getting it right (palm-out, as he usually did) with Clementine Churchill aboard HMS Renown, returning from a visit to the United States, September 1943. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)

Whether this is true or has any relation to Churchill’s “salute” the reader will have to judge. Wikipedia has an interesting discussion. The “crow foot” was later adopted in Britain by the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.

I’m not sure where Churchill picked up his V-sign, but he certainly popularized it during the Second World War. And most often, he got it right—flashing the V-sign palm-out.

According to members of his family and colleagues, he was completely oblivious to the alternate meaning. That occurs when you flash the V-sign palm-in. (See photo at top!)

The derisive alternative

The V-sign when made palm facing in is equivalent in Britain to the “one-finger salute” in America.

The late actor Robert Hardy was an expert on the history of archery and was sure of the V-sign’s origins. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French promised to cut off the index and middle finger of Henry V’s English archers. They lost, and the captured French prisoners were paraded before King Harry’s bowmen. The latter flashed their intact middle fingers at the vanquished French as a gesture of disdain. That insult has persisted in England and other places ever since.

It is virtually certain that Churchill was unconscious of the meaning of the palm-in V-sign, when on occasion he used it. Former secretary Elizabeth Layton Nel told me he was “astonished” when (with some embarrassment) she told him what it meant. This moment is humorously reenacted in the great film Darkest Hour, with Gary Oldman as WSC and Lily James as Elizabeth.

Related reading

“The Pool of England: How Henry V Inspired Churchill’s Words,” 2019.

“‘Tim’—In Memory of Timothy Robert Hardy,” 2017.

“Downing Street Annexe and Secretary Elizabeth Nel,” 2020.

“‘Then Out Spake Brave Horatius’: A Review of Darkest Hour,” 2018.

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