Artist defends Churchill video at National Portrait Gallery after being accused of ‘barefaced lie’

Winston Churchill, pictured outside Downing Street in 1943 - the year of the Bengal famine. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Winston Churchill, pictured outside Downing Street in 1943 - the year of the Bengal famine. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Artist defends Churchill video at London gallery after peer condemns ‘lie’ Helen Cammock says her comments blaming wartime leader for Bengal famine were intended to create ‘dialogue’ A Turner prize-winning artist accused of telling a “barefaced lie” about Winston Churchill in a video piece installed at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has defended her work, saying it was intended to create a “dialogue” about figures in the gallery’s collection. Helen Cammock ’s 40-minute moving image piece called Persistence has been at the centre of a row about the role Churchill played in the Bengal famine of 1943. In the work, Cammock, who narrates the piece, discusses Oliver Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland , saying “he starved people, en masse, a little like the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill”. Lord Roberts of Belgravia – a biographer of Churchill – wrote a letter to the directors of the NPG, signed by more than 50 peers, describing the claim as a “barefaced lie” and calling the film an “ideologically motivated rant”. Cammock’s work was also criticised by the Telegraph, which called her assertion that Churchill caused the famine “incorrect”. In a statement to the Guardian, Cammock wrote: “The work thinks about the role of the portrait historically and its relevance today. It considers who is honoured and valorised and who is not; whose stories are told and whose are not … and how histories are created and then maintained. “It is not a documentary, it is a creative work that explores ideas and thoughts in response to the National Portrait Gallery, its collection and its archives.” Churchill’s role in the tragedy, in which an estimated 3 million people in eastern India died, is fiercely debated by academics. View image in fullscreen Helen Cammock said the video was not a documentary but a ‘creative work that explores ideas and thoughts’. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Images for Turner Contemporary Many accept that Churchill’s policies caused the famine but those who defend him say that was inadvertent and that the wartime leader was not aware of the situation on the ground. Others blame drought conditions and point out that once Churchill became aware of the severity, he took measures to alleviate the food shortage. The Telegraph described the famine as “a lethal food shortage caused by natural disasters and exacerbated by local mismanagement and wartime supply problems”. However, other academics argue that Churchill ignored warnings about rice shortages , which were made worse by diverting food across the British empire during the conflict rather than keeping it in India. ‘We thought we were being naughty!’ The thrilling show by Black and Asian women that roc