Winston Churchill

In Britain Churchill regularly tops polls of the greatest Briton for leading the country through 1940. In India the memory is dominated by his hostility to independence and by the 1943 Bengal famine, in which around three million died while his war cabinet limited relief shipments; historians still argue over how much blame he personally bears. In Ireland, Kenya and parts of the Middle East his record is viewed through other episodes of imperial policy. The outside view is a necessary correction, not a replacement.