Dominic Sandbrook

I think he is the greatest Briton, and I don't mean that he's the best, or I don't mean he's the one who always made the most considered decisions, and I don't mean by that that Churchill is perfect.

So the poll that was done, the Greatest Britons poll in 2002, when you look at the names in that kind of top 10, so you mentioned Brunel that Clarkson was promoting, Horatio Nelson, Elizabeth I, and so on,

They're all complicated characters with dark as well as light.

That's certainly true of Churchill.

But I think Churchill does a couple of things.

Clearly, Churchill stands for something bigger than himself, which is the story of British resistance in the World Wars.

I think Churchill also has become a kind of...

because of his shape, because of the look and the sound of him.

He's a brilliant avatar for Britishness, the kind of bulldog spirit and all of this kind of thing.

But, you know, when we did a series on The Rest Is History about young Churchill, what was so striking for me, reading his book My Early Life and telling the story of him at Harrow and in South Africa and all of this stuff, was...

the remarkable humanity of the man.

Everything is in technicolor.

Everything is larger than life.

He's extremely funny.

He's complicated and sometimes he's difficult, but he's often extremely generous.

He's endlessly curious.

I mean, this is one of the amazing things about Churchill.

When he was a very young man and he was sent out to India, he decided to kind of educate himself by reading all the great books.

And he wrote afterwards, you know, he was delighted for the first time to open Plato's Republic.

And he said,