Artist defends Churchill video at National Portrait Gallery after being accused of ‘barefaced lie’

Helen Cammock says her comments blaming wartime leader for Bengal famine were intended to create ‘dialogue’ 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