A prominent display at the National Portrait Gallery claims Sir Winston Churchill deliberately allowed Indians to starve to death.

The video installation suggests the wartime leader 'wilfully' inflicted the punishment on the then-colonial nation. 

Bengal was in the grip of a famine in 1943 due to natural disasters combined with wartime supply issues. 

Attempts have been made by activists and authors to blame Churchill, but records show he tried to help by insisting 'something must be done' and arranging to send urgent supplies. 

The exhibit by Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Helen Cammock, which is called Persistence and suggests the then-prime minister used mass starvation as a weapon of war, is understood to have attracted formal complaints.

Narrated by Cammock, it opens with Oliver Cromwell and his 'campaigns in Ireland': 'He starved people, en masse, a little like the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill.'

Empire builders Benjamin Disraeli and Cecil Rhodes are described as 'purveyors of violence', too.

Other figures, including landscape painter John Constable, are branded 'privileged' as Cammock expounds on 'how we understand Britishness'.

Only figures such as these are rewarded by being immortalised in paintings, she adds, effectively criticising the whole purpose of the taxpayer-funded London-based gallery.

Benjamin Netanyahu is also attacked, with a claim that the mass starvation 'of the Palestinian population' was enacted by the Israeli prime minister.

The Venice Biennale, an international cultural exhibition hosted in the city every two years, banned Cammock after she wrote online that Israel had committed 'genocide' in Gaza during its '78-year occupation of Palestine'.

She also said culture must not 'provide cover for genocide and the brutal imperial aggression being unleashed on Iran and Lebanon'.

The installation, which is supported by the Chanel Culture fund, is open until August and includes footage of trans Pride marches, pro-Palestinian demonstrations and Malcolm X speeches.

The gallery, which has started providing trigger alerts for material in its collection it considers to be culturally sensitive, such as portraits of Lawrence of Arabia and Lord Byron in Albanian dress, was asked to comment.

But Churchill biographer Lord Roberts of Belgravia called the claim a 'barefaced lie'. 

In a letter to Professor Shearer West, the interim chairman of the gallery's board, Lord Roberts defended Churchill, saying he directed that 'every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to alleviate local shortages'.  

A National Portrait Gallery spokeswoman said: 'At the NPG, in addition to our own permanent collection displays, we also give opportunities to artists to create works of art in response to our collection.

'This work by Helen Cammock, which was commissioned in 2023 and has been on temporary display at the NPG since September 2025, is created and narrated by the artist and includes her personal reflections on historical and current events.

'We support freedom of artistic expression, while not necessarily endorsing the opinions expressed by any of the artists shown at the Gallery.'