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The Huffington Post presented five reasons why Churchill should not be featured on Britain's five pound note. Four of these are common—but debunked—criticisms, and although the fifth is new, it holds up no better than the other four.

The longest biography in history takes a long step to completion with publication of The Churchill Documents, Vol. 19, Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944. Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr. Larry Arnn, these 2700 pages serve up another fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.

Winston Churchill was no saint, and it is a disservice to pretend he was. But he is too complex a figure to be pigeonholed by writers who criticize without considering the full picture.

For Churchill, Gandhi’s death was just one more unnecessary killing in the slaughter that had been going on in India since 1946.

Jordan may have been created with the stroke of a pen, but Churchill didn’t quite say that, and his creation has now survived for 100 years.

If we allow our monuments and memorials and place-names to be torn down because of our present-day views, it speaks to a pathetic lack of confidence in ourselves.

McKinstry is thorough and scrupulously fair. Unlike too many historians today, he goes in with no axes to grind. He simply tells the story, backed by a voluminous bibliography, extensive research and private correspondence. In scope and balance, the book reminds us of Arthur Herman’s Gandhi and Churchill—another elegant account of two contentious figures. Like Herman, McKinstry captures Churchill’s generosity of spirit, and his rival’s greatness of soul.

“It will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.” This was how Shashi Tharoor, a successful and popular Indian politician, concluded his recent op-ed for The Washington Post. Tharoor began his piece with the sensational claim that Churchill was a mass murderer in the vein of Hitler and Stalin. One would expect such statements to have a mountain of evidence behind them. There is a mountain of evidence on these and similar issues, but from even the briefest expedition up the slopes one will see Tharoor’s arguments for what they are – revisionist, manufactured history.

Return with us now to the crucial period September 1943 to April 1944. The prior volume, One Continent Redeemed, saw Africa cleared of Axis forces. Here the scene shifts to the invasion of Italy and planning for the Normandy landings, while the United States slowly expands operations in the Far East and Pacific, and the “Big Three” meet for the first time at Teheran.

A primer for the study of statesmanship: correcting a century of myth about Churchill, Langworth tells us something of ourselves and the world we live in.

King's self-published, print-on-demand paperback, The British Mad Dog: Debunking the Myth of Winston Churchill, needs some debunking of its own.