Winston Churchill’s grandson has accused the National Portrait Gallery of an “ideologically motivated rant” after it claimed the wartime leader deliberately starved Indians.
Lord Soames, who sat in the House of Commons from 1983 to 2019, signed a letter alongside 50 other peers describing a taxpayer-funded attraction as a “barefaced lie”.
The National Portrait Gallery has been urged to explain itself after Helen Cammock’s 40-minute film suggested Churchill “wilfully” inflicted mass starvation during the Bengal famine of 1943.
Ms Cammock, an artist, also criticised Oliver Cromwell in her film for his campaigns in Ireland.
She said: “He starved people, en masse, a little like the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill.”
Lord Roberts, an award-winning historian who released his biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny in 2018, has since written to the gallery’s board to voice concern about the film.
In the letter sent to Professor Shearer West, the Tory peer wrote: “The accusation that it was deliberately visited upon Bengalis by Churchill is foul and vile. It is also historically ludicrous.”
Lord Roberts went on to point out that Churchill directed “every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to alleviate local shortages”.
Winston Churchill is still lauded as one of the nation’s greatest Britons
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However, Lord Roberts opted to send his letter after predominantly left-wing academics mounted a prolonged campaign to undermine Churchill’s legacy.
During the height of the Black Lives Matter campaign, Churchill’s Parliament Square statue was defaced.
The graffiti accused the UK’s wartime leader of being racist.
Meanwhile, Churchill’s country home, Chartwell, was added to the National Trust’s dossier of sites linked to “colonialism and slavery” shortly after.
Lord Roberts penned a letter to the National Portrait Gallery
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An academic panel at Churchill College in Cambridge, which was named in honour of the man widely considered the “Greatest Briton of all time”, claimed the two-time Prime Minister was a white supremacist who led an empire “worse than the Nazis”.
Ms Cammock, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2019, has herself called for Israel to be banned from the Venice Biennale.
She claimed Israel is conducting “genocide in Gaza” and carrying out a “78-year occupation of Palestine”.
The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition echoes claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used starvation as a weapon of war.
Lord Soames is the grandson of Winston Churchill
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However, Mr Netanyahu consistently denies allegations of using starvation in the conflict.
Speaking last year, Mr Netanyahu said: “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.
“We enable humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza – otherwise, there would be no Gazans.”
The installation is expected to remain open until August.
The statue of Winston Churchill outside Parliament has been vandalised in recent years
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PAThe National Portrait Gallery said: “In addition to our own permanent collection displays, we also give opportunities to artists to create works of art in response to our collection.
“This work by Helen Cammock, which was commissioned in 2023 and has been on temporary display at the NPG since September 2025, is created and narrated by the artist and includes her personal reflections on historical and current events.
“We support freedom of artistic expression while not necessarily endorsing the opinions expressed by any of the artists shown at the gallery.”
GB News has approached the National Portrait Gallery for comment.