National Portrait Gallery display withdrawn after Churchill row
Turner-prize winning artist Helen Cammock’s video has been pulled from the gallery after being challenged by a Churchill biographer and over 50 peers
A video display has been withdrawn from the National Portrait Gallery following a row over Sir Winston Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine.
Listen to this article
Artist Helen Cammock’s 40-minute video, which refers to "the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill" in the 1943 famine, has been pulled from the central London gallery.
The controversial exhibit item prompted an open letter to the gallery from Lord Roberts of Belgravia, a Churchill biographer, and signed by over 50 peers, including Churchill's grandson Sir Nicholas Soames, arguing that this was incorrect.
Cammock, a Turner Prize-winning artist, said in a statement on Monday: "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."
The video installation, titled Persistence, has been the focus of Cammock’s efforts since 2023.
The piece had been on temporary display for 10 months and was set to end in August as part of an exhibition titled “Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture”.
In the work, she covers Oliver Cromwell’s 17th-century military campaigns in Ireland, saying he “starved people, en masse”, which was “a little like” Churchill during the Bengal famine.
During the famine, an estimated three million people died in eastern India, resulting in disagreement between academics about the prime minister’s role in the tragedy.
Lord Roberts of Belgravia described Cammock’s work as an "ideologically motivated rant".
He went on to say that the Bengal famine was the result of a typhoon, and that Churchill instructed his war cabinet to ensure every effort was made to help those suffering, and asked international leaders to send grain.
However, some historians argue that Churchill’s wartime policies worsened the famine.
One recent study found that policies like delaying or refusing food imports, prioritising shipping and stockpiles in other regions, exacerbated shortages in Bengal.
On Monday, the gallery confirmed that the work had been withdrawn.
