You would think that it was a simple history question: Who is Winston Churchill? You know, the revered cigar-chomping, scotch-swilling, elder statesman and second world war hero leader who stood up to the Nazi menace and eventually saw them off. He is not, repeat not, an insurance salesman.
Still, according to a new poll, one in six British 15-year-olds believe he is just that - the man behind the high-profile Churchill Insurance company. Their adverts litter cable and cheap daytime terrestrial TV commercial slots, employing an animatronic bulldog perched on the back shelf of a car with a Vic Reeves' voiceover to help sell policies. The dog's catchphrase, 'Give the dog a phone' hardly rivals Churchill's, 'We will fight them on the beaches.'
When it comes to history questions, this was not British teenagers' finest hour, especially considering that two years ago Churchill was voted the 'Greatest Ever Briton' by the vast majority of BBC viewers.
Perhaps British children were too busy listening to music or playing video games to tune in to a fuddy-duddy history show. Churchill's grandson, also called Winston (who also has nothing to do with insurance) waded into the debate, saying how horrified he was by the findings, while firmly blaming the 'appalling and abysmal' history teaching in schools. 'It makes one want to despair,' he said.
Still, there is hope yet for Winston (the wartime leader, not the cigarette brand) after London's latest museum opened its doors on Thursday. Across a park from Buckingham Palace, chiselled out of the ground next to the civil service War Rooms bunker in Whitehall, where Churchill plotted the downfall of the Third Reich, is an exhibition dedicated to the great Briton.
Costing ?15 million ($218 million), the museum uses state-of-the-art audio-visual and computer techniques to reveal Churchill's life, from his birth in 1874 into the Marlborough clan (the English aristocratic dynasty, not the cigarettes), through his journalistic jottings of the Boer war, and the first and second world wars, to his death in 1965. There is signed correspondence from Stalin and Roosevelt, plus numerous, authentic cigar butts, apparently salvaged by staff who picked them up as mementoes. Pride of place, claim reviewers, goes to the recordings of Churchill's spine-tingling wartime speeches. Imperial War Museum curators overlooking the venture said it was one of the few museums dedicated to just one person - recognition in itself perhaps.
