The movie is easily incoherent enough to be claiming that, though without the viewer realizing as much. If Ms von Tunzelmannn had more than a passing understanding of British military-civilian relations or indeed the British constitution she would know that as both prime minister and minister of defence Churchill had the ultimate power over deciding whether Operation Overlord should go ahead, unless this film is attempting to claim that there was a military coup in Britain in 1944. Let the sea churn into peaks and troughs and tidal waves!”) is particularly puerile, considering the hopes that Churchill really had for the success of the operation at the time.

Let the heavens open and a deluge burst forth such as has never been seen in the English Channel. The scene where he prays for bad weather for D-Day (“Please, please, please let it pour tomorrow. In this movie, however, Cox’s Churchill is instead shown shouting at his generals, his wife and secretaries, sweeping food, plates and cutlery off the breakfast table onto the floor, and even praying to God on his knees, all because he wants to stop Operation Overlord but had been overruled by a cabal composed of Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Bernard Montgomery and Alan Brooke, who despise him. He looked much better than at the last conference, and spoke with great vigour, urging offensive leadership, and stressing the ardour for battle which he believed the men felt.” Indeed in the final briefing for senior officers on 15 May, General John Kennedy noted in his diary how Churchill spoke “in a robust and even humourous style, and concluded with a moving expression of his hopes and good wishes. The major error of fact, of course, is that although Churchill did indeed oppose an over-hasty return of Allied forces to north-west France in 19, by the time of D-Day in 1944 he was completely committed to the operation. Never in the course of movie-making have so many specious errors been made in so long a film by so few writers. The only problem with the movie-written by the historian Alex von Tunzelmann-is that it gets absolutely everything wrong. Well-acted by Brian Cox and Miranda Richardson, and with some very good photography and music, it concentrates on Churchill’s opposition to the operation on the grounds of the numbers of deaths it would involve, and attempts an insight into Churchill’s psychology at that crucial stage of the Second World War. The film “Churchill” purports to tell the story of Winston Churchill’s life in the week running up to Operation Overlord, the attack on the Normandy beaches which began on D-Day, 6 June 1944. Minor problem: it gets everything wrong….

Andrew roberts on churchill