Churchill

“I am ready to meet my Maker, but whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter,” said Winston Churchill (1874–1965), one of Britain’s most prominent and imposing statesmen and politicians, with his characteristic self-irony and sarcasm. He not only drank whisky and smoked Cuban cigars, but also championed the idea of the European Union in his own time, coined the term “Iron Curtain,” and received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature for his speeches inspiring nations and his memoirs. A self-made man*—from a stuttering boy to a decisive strategist, never renouncing his human weaknesses. American actor and playwright Ronald Keaton’s play Churchill (2015), a mosaic of memories, invites us into Winston Churchill’s inner world. Giving free rein to his passion for painting, Churchill creates his own subjective biography, in which events engraved in the annals of history sit alongside intimate moments dear only to him. “Ronald Keaton’s play is an emotional story about a historical figure and the role of the individual in an era of global geopolitical upheaval. Parallels with events today allow us to view it through the lens of history. It is an open conversation about the end of a politician’s life, about ageing and what he accomplished in politics,” says director Reinis Suhanovs.