British War Exhibit Photoshops Out Churchill’s Cigar: PC Gone Mad?

posted at 4:34 pm on June 15, 2010 by Howard Portnoy

Sigmund Freud observed that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes it is nothing at all.

So seems to be the message emanating from the façade of an exhibition in South-East London titled the “Britain At War Experience.” Above the entranceway to the exhibit is a larger-than-life photo of Winston Chuchill that has been doctored such that his signature cigar is conspicuously absent.

A comparison of the image, reproduced here with the unretouched photo, leaves little doubt that someone deemed it prudent to deprive the the great English statesman and military leader of his much-beloved smoke.

According to a story in The Mail, curators of the exhibit professed to be shocked that someone had tampered with Sir Winston’s image.

So the question, then, is whodunnit? According to the article, it “wasn’t the anti-smoking lobby, which has had no known contact with the museum.” Nor was it Churchill’s descendants. But before you arrive at the conclusion that it was Prof. Plum using a candlestick in the Library, consider that the museum has declined to release the name of the party responsible for the display.

The image used was a snapshot taken in 1948 when Churchill. The photo was taken at the opening of new headquarters of an air force squadron of which Churchill had been commodore.

Museum visitor David McAdam, who spotted the altered photo, is quoted as saying that the “disfigured image reveals just how unhinged the vociferous anti-smoking lobby has become.” Allen Packwood, of Churchill Archives Centre, said he had never known of a previous instance in which the leader’s cigar had been airbrushed out. “The cigar,” he is quoted as saying, “is part of what makes Churchill an iconic figure and of course it was very much part of his image as war leader.”

No word on whether the exhibit contains photos of Sir Winston cradling a tumbler of brandy, another of his customs.

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