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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.
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.
Before an impending Japanese invasion of India in 1942, Churchill ordered the stockpiling of food for the army, which exacerbated the famine a year later and was the largest loss of life on the British side during the second world war.
Relief efforts started to be put into place by the end of 1943, but by then the death toll was already significant.
Cammock is the latest Black British artist to be targeted by the rightwing press in Britain. Southbank chair Misan Harriman was accused of spreading “antisemitic conspiracies” because he shared a tweet asking why there was not more media coverage of the Muslim victim of the Golders Green attack in April.
In December 2025, news outlets reported that a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II taken by David Bailey had been “ditched” for a pan-African flag work by Larry Achiampong, which took its place in the Foreign Office.
Achiampong told the Guardian at the time that the coverage of his work was linked to growing anti-immigrant sentiment that elements of the media had exacerbated.
Artists who spoke to the Guardian under the condition of anonymity said the Churchill row was an “attempt to silence artists and institutions”, adding that it is part of a wider “battle … one that’s politically motivated”.
The NPG said it had received the letter from Roberts and would respond, but was not aware of any visitor complaints about the artwork, which was commissioned in 2023 and will be on display until August.
Cammock added: “The National Portrait Gallery is an incredibly important public resource and as such it’s vital that it continues to engage in dialogue about the works that it is custodian of, and their relevance historically.”
In a statement, the gallery said the work was “created and narrated by the artist and includes her personal reflections on historical and current events”.
It added: “We support freedom of artistic expression while not necessarily endorsing the opinions expressed by any of the artists shown at the gallery.”
