"You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war."
-Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain.

I've just finished watching Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, picked up in HMV last week for a rather bargainous ten of your English. It's a television series originally filmed in 1981 dramatising the events of Winston's decade long political exile in the 30s. What is striking about the show is how much Churchill, even starved of position, achieved during this time. Having studied history I knew about the period but having an excellent and well acted dramatisation really makes it sink in how vital what Churchill achieved in the pre-war years was. Without his constant and committed work to make people aware of the Nazi threat and the need for defences Britain would not have been able to go to war when we did; we were under-prepared in 1939 but left to his own devices Chamberlain would have had us so far down the path of disarmament and appeasement that it could have been irreversible.

I think what really summed up the events of the series is when Chamberlain is told towards the outbreak of war that he needs to bring back Winston Churchill and he refuses and says that Churchill has his own cabinet in exile. It's pretty accurate; Winston worked ceaselessly with all those who were like minded about the threat of Hitler and had a wide reaching network of sources and allies in the military, intelligence and political worlds that kept him in the know. There were even things that did not make the film itself; such as his work with Claude Dansey's Z organisation which gathered intelligence for Churchill from all over Europe in the 30s. Churchill knew war was coming and he was certain that, even if he had to do it single-handedly, Britain would not be left at the mercy of Hitler.

Robert Hardy, he of Seigfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small, played Churchill excellently. It is rare that an actor can play a well known character so well that you forget you're watching an actor but Hardy does it here. His diction and accent are superb and he takes on the character in it's completeness. The whole cast was brilliant but particular mention should also go to Siân Phillips whose Clementine worked as a convincing and believable foil to Hardy's Churchill. 

For the duration of this series - compromising eight fifty minute episodes - you see the political giants of another age and the hard work of the widely acclaimed greatest Briton. What makes this show so watchable is that the story of what happened is both powerful and real. It's worth it just for the sheer, stirring, stubborn nature of Churchill who refuses to relent but stands by what he believes destiny has called him to do.