Winston smoked FFS!!!

[Gob]

The face is instantly familiar, the two-fingered salute unmistakable.

But are these actually the same photograph of Sir Winston Churchill?




In the original photograph the war leader has his cigar gripped firmly in the corner of his mouth.

But in the other image - currently greeting visitors to a London museum - his favourite smoke has been digitally extinguished.

It seems the man who steered Britain through the most dangerous period of its recent history may have fallen victim to the modern curse of political correctness.

Last night the question of who removed the cigar and when was something of a mystery.

The Winston Churchill's Britain at War Experience, in South-East London, confessed to being astonished to discover that the image may have been doctored.

Which is a little embarrassing for the staff at the charitable trust, because the photograph features on a giant poster hanging above the museum's main door.

So just who did pinch the great man's Havana?

It wasn't the anti-smoking lobby, which has had no known contact with the museum; it certainly wasn't Churchill's family - his grandson Nicholas Soames said 'it doesn't matter one way or the other'; and it wasn't the museum itself - in fact it's got wartime posters advertising cigarettes on the walls.

But intriguingly the museum, which gives all profits to charity, declined to name who put together the display and, crucially, who enlarged the image for the poster.

Museum manager John Welsh was astonished to be told the image was missing one vital ingredient.

'We've got all sorts of images in the museum, some with cigars and some without,' he said. 'We've even got war-time adverts for cigarettes in the lift down to the air raid shelter, so we wouldn't have asked for there to be no cigar.'

Museum owner Don Robinson, who handed the museum to a charitable trust 20 years ago, was equally surprised.

'If we'd known we would have said "no it stays as it is". Everything we do we try to do accurately and the cigar symbolises Churchill.'

Mr Robinson insisted the person who designed the posters would not have removed the cigar and said he would like to get to the bottom of the mystery too.

The original picture was taken in 1948 when Churchill was opening the new HQ of 615 County of Surrey Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force of which he was commodore.

The altered image was spotted by museum visitor David McAdam.

He said: 'I pointed out this crude alteration to a museum steward who said she hadn't noticed the change before, nor had anyone else pointed it out.

'Viewing the now disfigured image reveals just how unhinged the vociferous anti-smoking lobby has become. So much for the notion that only communist tyrants airbrushed history.'

Allen Packwood, of Churchill Archives Centre, said he had never known of the leader's cigar being airbrushed out before.

'The cigar is part of what makes Churchill an iconic figure and of course it was very much part of his image as war leader - it went hand in hand with his victory salute and the uniforms he wore.

'What's politically correct for 2010 was not politically correct for 1940.'

Churchill is not the first figure to fall foul of such meddling.

A much-reproduced photograph of engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel posing against the backdrop of the huge launching chains of his ship the SS Great Eastern in 1857 shows him smoking a cigar.

However, in a copy which has been used on the front of a school textbook, the cigar was airbrushed out to avoid 'offence'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0qt7NXT1E

[The Hen]

It is ludicrous to erase the parts of history you wished upon reflection were different.

[The Hen]

The more I think about this, the more I get the shits.

Churchill was KNOWN for his love of a good cigar.

Here is an interesting story about Churchill when he came upon a smoking ban:

Churchill and the smoking ban

Hitler and Mussolini were both dedicated non-smokers while Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill were all keen smokers. Churchill famously did not like cigarettes, believing that "Too many of those will kill you. But no doubt he would disapprove of a smoking ban, even for cigarettes! With Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy and other nations gradually introducing smoking bans in public places the repercussions are affecting more people than Winston Churchill impersonators!

Churchill viewed his cigar smoking as an essential pleasure - via a translator, he informed the pious non-smoking, teetotal King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudia Arabia, "that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite; smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol". To his great credit King Ibn Sa'ud relented his normally strict rules at their luncheon for the great British Statesman!

Arseholes to the PC brigade.

Give that man a cigar!

[Crackpot]

shades of thank you for smoking

[Lord Jim]

This is yet another example of the relentless fanaticism of the Smoke Nazis....one really wonders if they recognize any limits at all...

Rewrite history? No problem. It's for the children.

[Big RR]

True, even Mr Potato Head and Santa Claus lost their pipes.

George Burns and Fidel Castro are next. I guess some people have nothing better to do.

[Lord Jim]

I can hardly wait for the re-release of the Marx Brothers movies with Groucho sucking on a lolipop.....

[The Hen]

If we don't accept where we have come from, we'll NEVER get to where we are going.

[Sue U]

If we don't accept where we have come from, we'll NEVER get to where we are going.

You came from a cigar?

[The Hen]

My mother just had a fleeting encounter with my father ....


: )

[Lord Jim]

You came from a cigar?

I understand that Monica Lewinsky did in fact come from a cigar.

[Sue U]

Ba-dump-tump crash!