In his Daily Mail column, Peter Hitchens praises the new French film "De Gaulle: Resistance" for depicting Winston Churchill as a flawed, uncertain figure rather than the sanitised, heroic caricature common in modern British films. He argues that such honest portrayals better explain why Churchill was distrusted by King George VI, disliked by much of his own party, and voted out of office in 1945, since truly great men are often difficult, unlikeable and sometimes wrong rather than infallible.

Sir Simon Russell Beale plays Churchill as tricky, wavering and occasionally humiliated by the Americans, speaking deliberately poor French, while French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian portrays a 6ft 5in Charles de Gaulle. Hitchens notes the film, based on a biography by British historian Julian Jackson, is unusually sympathetic to de Gaulle, showing his difficult wartime relationship with Britain after he fled to London in June 1940, and argues de Gaulle may have been an even greater leader than Churchill given he started with nothing.