The Churchill Myths

This is not a book about Winston Churchill. It is not principally about his politics, nor his rhetorical imagination, nor even about the man himself. Instead, it addresses the varied afterlives of the man and the persistent, deeply located compulsion to bring him back from the dead, capturing and explaining the significance of the various Churchill myths to Britain's history and current politics. The authors look at Churchill's portrayal in social memory. They demonstrate the ways in which politicians have often used the idea of Churchill as a means of self-validation - using him to show themselves as tough and honest players. They show the man dramatized in film and television - an onscreen persona that is often the product of a gratuitous mixing of fact and fantasy, one deliberately shaped to meet the preferences of the presumed audience. They discuss his legacy in light of the Brexit debate - showing how public figures on both sides of the Leave/Remain debate were able to use elements of Churchill's words and character to argue for their own point-of-view.

1 - Brexit May 1940
2 - The Churchill Syndrome
3 - Persistence and Change in Churchill's Mythic Memory

Steven Fielding is Professor of Political History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of a number of books, including A State of Play: British Politics on Screen, Stage and Page, from Anthony Trollope to The Thick of It (2014), and is currently writing The Labour Party: from Callaghan to Corbyn. Bill Schwarz is Professor of Modern Literature and History at Queen Mary University of London. He is completing a three-volume study for OUP, Memories of Empire, the first volume of which received the Longman/History Today prize in 2013, and has been an editor of History Workshop Journal since 1989. Richard Toye is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Exeter. His books include Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness (2007), Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (2010), and The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill's World War II (2013). Winston Churchill: A Life in the News is forthcoming from OUP in 2020.