Churchill at War: A four-part Netflix documentary starring Christian McKay as Winston Churchill premiered on Dec. 4.
From Gaza to Ukraine, United Nations to United Europe, our legacy is the war that made us what we are. Winston Churchill had much to do with it, and Netflix now offers its version of his story. It is a one-dimensional portrait of a politician — not of Churchill the humanitarian who thought profoundly about governance, life, and liberty. Yet the warrior emerges approximately as he was.
There’s a way to derive a mostly correct picture from this show: ignore Part 1. The rest also suffers from occasional forays into fiction, but it is far more accurate, with honest dialogue, well-chosen quotations, and spectacular footage.
Part 1: A Creaky Wind-up
Part 1, alas, is a palimpsest of counterfactuals. Were it not for Andrew Roberts, and a few other scholars who have actually spent time studying Churchill, this introduction to him would be light, frothy, and tendentious.
Sprinkling in celebrities and the odd hostile biographer doesn’t help. (The more hostile they are, the more they indulge in the familiarity “Winston.”) Among the celebrities is George W. Bush, who says Churchill grew up in a “dysfunctional family.” By Victorian standards, it was more functional than the Bushes. Why Bush? Ask most politicians about Churchill and what you get are generalities: blood, toil, tears, and sweat. But Netflix also consults more serious commentators, who commit greater errors….
- Churchill’s father’s career-ending 1886 resignation comes when “his budget was rejected.” No, it was over a minor Army appropriation. At least Lord Randolph Churchill doesn’t die of syphilis — a canard that still haunts his memory.
- In South Africa in 1899, young Churchill “takes over defense” of the famous armored train from Boer attackers. Poor Alymer Haldane, who actually defended it, spent half a century lamenting that “Winston got all the credit.” And now Netflix bites Aylmer again.
- We skid past Churchill’s climb to fame and Parliament, noting that he changed parties twice — not over principle, but as an opportunistic power grab. (After his 1904 switch he waited two years to get power; the second time, in 1924, he was handed power before he switched.) Where do people get such stuff? Have they read anything?
The Escaped Scapegoat
Churchill’s vital efforts to prepare the fleet for war in 1914 are ignored as Netflix homes in on the Dardanelles operation, whose failure temporarily ruined him. Aside from confusing naval operations with the Gallipoli landings, which he had nothing to do with, the account is reasonably accurate. They assert incorrectly that he quit the Admiralty in 1915 in order to go fight in the trenches, but his service there is accurately represented.
We witness his deep depression over Gallipoli, but Christian McKay, impersonating Winston Churchill, gets the diction wrong and looks more like his son-in-law Christopher Soames. By straining hard, we can just visualize McKay in the role. But he’s no match for Robert Hardy (The Wilderness Years) or Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), who spent months studying their character “to find a way in.”
Part 1 ends as Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in 1940. The accuracy improves as 1940 approaches. Despite earlier errors, this is a fair presentation compared to popular mythology like Brian Cox in Churchill but hardly rates a cigar given the banal content.
Jon Meacham, who should know better, says Churchill “got lots wrong, but among what he got right, WWII ranks pretty high.” Duh! That’s about as profound as we get, though, to his credit, Meacham is more poignant later on. But after laboring through Part 1, I was beginning to think: “The things we do for England.”
Parts 2 through 4: A Good Pitch
The weakness of using celebrities or “historians” who are anything but Churchill specialists is still evident in the last three parts, but less disconcerting. Let’s get over the quibbles first.
- It’s true that the first bombing of London (August 1940) was accidental, prompting British retaliation on Berlin, leading to the London Blitz. But Netflix says Hitler and Churchill “egged each other on,” not acknowledging that bombing open cities had been the German practice since they leveled Warsaw in 1939.
- In July 1940, Churchill “sinks the French navy.” (It wasn’t the whole navy.) In August 1941, he pleaded with Roosevelt to declare war and was instructed about the U.S. Constitution. (That never happened — he knew the Constitution as well as FDR.) U.S. entry into the war in December is dramatically portrayed, omitting that Hitler validated the “Germany first” strategy when he declared war four days after Pearl Harbor.
- The 1943-44 Bengal Famine is misrepresented by Kehinde Andrews. Churchill caused it — well, he refused to send Canadian grain. (Actually, he sent more grain, via Australia.) Andrews claims Churchill saw his “main task” as “defending the Empire.” No, he saw his main task as defeating Hitler, and doing that helped to lose the Empire. Andrews offers several other red herrings. “I like the martial and commanding air with which the Rt. Hon. Gentleman treats facts,” Churchill once quipped. “He stands no nonsense from them.”
- Churchill is condemned for the 1944 “spheres of influence” agreement with Stalin. We are not told that he saw this as a wartime expedient, not a permanent arrangement — or that it saved Greece from communism.
Still, Netflix gets lots right: the quandary over bombing Auschwitz; concerns over invading Europe; and D-Day (if nothing about how Churchill made D-Day possible). Here the dialogue is accurate, the war footage admirable, and the commentary balanced.
Netflix can’t help editing some great speeches, even though deleted words would use up only a second or two. They make up for this by getting many right (unlike the British Post Office on a recent commemorative stamp): “You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory.”
Key quotations are deployed effectively, like Churchill’s warning to FDR of where the U.S. will be if Britain goes under. His classic speech at Harrow, clean and unedited, includes its often-ignored proviso: “Never give in — except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
This is all to the good. Every time a faux scholar muddies facts, Roberts or another solid historian — Meacham, Allen Packwood, Catherine Grace Katz—makes up for it with truths. Even David Lammy, Britain’s foreign minister, is thoughtful and doesn’t succumb to populist virtue-signaling. “The British people,” Lammy says, “saw in Churchill the image of themselves.”
After Part 1, I was expecting the worst. But on balance, it’s a good show, and the finale is well done. Kudos to Andrew Roberts and others for keeping it on track, and for his eloquent finale: “Physically brave, morally brave, full of insights and foresight, humorous to the point that he can still make people laugh sixty years after his death, Winston Churchill represented a resolute spirit that is very, very rarely seen in human history.”
Richard M. Langworth CBE has served Hillsdale College as senior fellow for the Churchill Project since 2014. He is the author or editor of 12 books and 1,000 articles about Sir Winston, his latest work being Churchill: Master of Language (Hillsdale College Press, 2025).
READ MORE from Richard Langworth:
‘A Terrible Lot of Lies’: Winston Churchill on Palestine and Israel