Churchill choice

When Dundee’s most famous actor depicts the life of its most famous MP we should all sit up and take note. I’ll reserve judgment until I actually see how Brian Cox depicts Winston Churchill on film before I share Kirsty Gunn’s enthusiasm for the venture (Perspective, 5 June). For make no mistake, the wartime leader was a very controversial figure in mining communities throughout Fife and the Central Belt of Scotland. I’d like to think that if I could get into a time machine and go back to more than 70 years ago, I’d have done two things. First try to persuade friends and family in 1940 that, whatever their dislike of Churchill as a politician, he should be supported for his leadership qualities and military insight. Second, I hope I’d be able to persuade the same people in 1945 that he and his party should not be given a majority in the general election of that year.

I understand the film largely centres on events in the runup to D-day in 1944. Hopefully it can show Churchill in the round. He lost his seat in Dundee in 1922 for the same reason that he was defeated in the immediate post Second World War election – he became a symbol of an attitude of mind against which many voters had turned, an obsession with the past and a lack of concern for social policy.

He has been portrayed many times in films and documentaries, though I’m not sure any have fully grasped the paradox of the man – the great rhetorician and military strategist set against the bombastic social reactionary. We’ll see what Brian Cox has made of him.

BOB TAYLOR Shiel Court, Glenrothes