Winston Churchill took to painting for solace during the First World War, and it sustained him for the rest of his long life, when he went on to beat Hitler in war and art. His exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London, until 29 November 2026, is a thrilling revelation.
Churchill and John Craxton met in the summer of 1960, when the elderly statesman sailed to Crete on Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, and the painter gate-crashed the Chania welcoming party (aided by fellow cruise guest Margot Fonteyn). War heroes presented ‘the Father of Victory’ with a ceremonial dagger, but Craxton delighted him with art talk and a plot to sketch together the following day. Both revered bright colour and brilliant light. Churchill had already painted the Todra Gorge in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and Craxton planned to show him the nearby ravine at Theriso.
But Cretan dignitaries stepped in, and Craxton was moved down-table. Next morning Churchill was driven to the spot near Herakleion where Patrick Leigh Fermor and a band of partisans had kidnapped General Kreipe – the German commander of Crete – in 1944. Then, returned to Souda Bay, he sailed into history.
