A video installation that accused Winston Churchill of using 'wilful' mass starvation during the 1943 Bengal famine has been taken down from the National Portrait Gallery after a blistering row that drew in a Churchill biographer, the artist, and more than 50 signatories including the former prime minister’s grandson.
The 40-minute work, titled Persistence, was created by Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Cammock. It had been on temporary display for 10 months and was due to end in August. Cammock narrated the piece, drawing a comparison between Oliver Cromwell’s 17th-century military campaigns in Ireland — where she said he 'starved people, en masse' — and Churchill’s role in the famine that killed an estimated three million people in eastern India.
“Helen Cammock's video artwork accusing Churchill of 'wilful' starvation in the Bengal famine removed from National Portrait Gallery after row.”
The accusation provoked an immediate response from Lord Roberts of Belgravia, a Churchill biographer and former trustee of the gallery. He wrote to Professor Shearer West, the interim chair of the board of trustees, to 'protest in the strongest possible terms' against the installation, describing the claim as 'foul and vile'. In his letter, which attracted more than 50 signatures from peers including Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames, Lord Roberts accused the institution of telling a 'barefaced lie' and called the work an 'ideologically motivated rant'.
The nature of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine has long been subject to academic dispute. In 2019, researchers in India and the US concluded that the famine was due to a 'complete policy failure during the British era'. Others have argued that Churchill’s policies contributed. But Lord Roberts countered that the famine was caused by a typhoon and that Churchill told his war cabinet every effort must be made to help those affected. 'He would not have done this if he were the genocidal maniac described by Ms Cammock in her taxpayer-funded rant against one of our greatest national heroes,' he wrote.
After the row received widespread media coverage, the gallery announced that Cammock had decided to remove her film. 'Today, Helen Cammock decided to remove her film, Persistence, from display at the National Portrait Gallery. We respect her decision, just as we acknowledge the opinions of those who were offended by what was said in the film,' a spokesperson told the BBC.
Cammock, who had been working on the video since 2023, said in a statement: 'There is an incredible pressure on artists and arts institutions to bend to external pressure; to be benign at best and silent at worst. I do not accept this pressure. To question, challenge and explore ideas and histories is vital to a healthy society and art is intrinsic to this.' She added that the work was not a documentary but people should 'hear it out'. The removal brings an abrupt end to a display that had sparked a fierce debate about history, art, and the limits of institutional tolerance.