Peter Goers: Winston Churchill saved Britain in WWII – but he was a racist drunk who hated Australians

THE Winston Churchill film Darkest Hour reminds us that the wartime leader was a drunken racist who hated Australians, says Peter Goers.

• Leigh Paatsch’s film review of Darkest Hour

GARY Oldman might as well pick up his Oscar now for playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. He’s quite good even though he looks more like Oldman than the old man.

Timothee Chalamet gives a much better performance in the superb Call Me By Your Name but Oldman will be victorious because Churchill’s time has come again. He’s the chewy on the boot of history – hard to be rid of.

Actors love playing Churchill. Churchill loved playing Churchill. It’s a girth’s circus of a role replete with oratory (pinched from Shakespeare), cigars, growling wit, delightful rudeness and a romper suit. Did Churchill invent the onesy?

Churchill has been essayed in movies since 1914 and he’s been played by Albert Finney, Richard Burton, Michael Gambon, Robert Hardy (nine times), Timothy Spall, Timothy West, Viktor Stanitsyn, Rod Taylor, Jan Beyts, Mel Smith, Christian Slater, Simon Ward, Edward Fox, Julian Fellowes, Bob Ellis, Peter Sellers, John Lithgow (the best) and Bob Hoskins opposite (are you sitting down?) Michael Caine as Stalin. Churchill is Falstaff in a bow tie. His flaws and largesse are very attractive to actors.

Churchill was a warmonger and the last hero of the dying British Empire. He’s appealing now because, in an era of weak, insane, vacillating, inept leaders, he – as always – crashes or crashed through.

He’s the English Gough Whitlam but less intelligent, bellicose and racist.

In 2002, he was voted the greatest Briton of all time. He was appalling. The ego had landed at birth.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill takes a seat in Hitler's chair outside the Fuhrer's air-raid shelter during his visit to Berlin, Germany, in 1945.

At 17, he was convinced he would save London and the empire. Then he was off “killing savages” with glee and derring-do and approving of the death of 20,000 women and children in British concentration camps in South Africa. Gallipoli was a great idea that didn’t work and left 120,000 dead (oops).

He was a bully, a blowhard, a white supremacist, a phony, a liar, an egocentric, a drunk and a bad writer – but good company.

He hated Australians (“They come of bad stock”) and abandoned us to our own defence after the sacrifice of Singapore. He hated Indians and he hated the Irish and wanted to use poison gas against them.

He merrily allowed three million Bengalis to perish of famine while he moved food past them to feed the British Army. He created Iraq, which has cost countless lives and trillions of dollars.

He disliked Israelis and Palestinians. He hated commies. He loathed dictators yet became one himself and believed “dark-skinned people” needed them.

He used war for political power and was, thus, admired by Margaret Thatcher and George W. Bush. He’s the only Nobel Prize literature laureate whose work was ghost-written. He even hated Citizen Kane.

No-one is all bad. Stalin was a lovely dancer and he adored kiddies and Churchill was the original “Lazarus with a triple bypass”. His whole career was comebacks.

He did love the Marx Brothers. And he was witty and made nice speeches but not as good as Obama or Keating.

He was cruel Britannia but he helped save Britain, so all is apparently forgiven. The best of Churchill is the moment in that masterpiece movie Dunkirk when a soldier reads the Prime Minister’s speech from a newspaper. That inspires.

■ Peter Goers can be heard weeknights on ABC Radio Adelaide

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