The World in Time

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Friday, December 03, 2021

Totes Meer (Dead Sea), by Paul Nash, c. 1940. Photograph © Tate (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“About twenty years ago,” the historian Geoffrey Wheatcroft says on the latest episode of The World in Time, “Umberto Eco said he was amused by a survey in which a quarter of British schoolchildren thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. But in fact in a way that is what he has become. He has become something outside conventional history. This is demonstrated by his portrayal in popular culture. It dawned on me in recent years: if you go to a movie called Lincoln, it will be hero-worshipping, and respectful in the Spielberg manner, but it will stick quite close to historical fact. But if you go to a movie called Churchill…or Darkest Hour…they are complete travesties that bear no resemblance whatsoever to historical fact. And nobody minds.”

 

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Geoffrey Wheatcroft, author of Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

More Podcasts

October 15, 2021

The World in Time:

Charles Foster

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness. More

September 04, 2020

The World in Time:

Richard Kreitner

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union. More

May 27, 2022

The World in Time:

Eric Jay Dolin

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. More

November 22, 2019

The World in Time:

Matt Stoller

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. More

November 11, 2011

The World in Time:

Death Is Nothing to Us

Lewis Lapham talks with Stephen Greenblatt, 2011 winner of the National Book Award in nonfiction.  More

February 04, 2022

The World in Time:

Joseph J. Ellis

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773–1783. More