The Churchill cult.

BOOKS & CULTURE On the back cover of Tariq Ali's new book on Winston Churchill, a less flattering and so less familiar portrait of the wartime icon comes into view. A wartime leader Churchill may have become, but on many occasions, from Tonypandy in 1910 to Clydeside in 1919, and during the general strike of 1926, to mention but a few, "Churchill treated his own citizens as enemies", writes Ali, willing to send in troops to manage "skirmishes on the home front." At the heart of Ali's account is this historical reality, one that is evaded in Britain today in favour of a burnished and bullish mythology in which both Churchill and his beloved British Empire emerge with untarnished courage and virtue. [Extracted from the article]