Shortly before Christmas 2006 the Nobel Museum opened an exhibition of Winston Churchill’s paintings. There were portraits, still lifes and landscapes: the artist with his palette in his hand, an arrangement of empty bottles and cigar boxes, his house at Chartwell in the snow. Everything is done with skill, but without personality in the draughtsmanship and colours. The style varies, changing from work to work. There is something laborious about the careful depictions

The opening was attended by the artist’s daughter, Mary Soames. She has been interested in her father’s painting and has even written a book about it, Winston Churchill: his life as a painter (1990). But when she spoke in Stockholm she promptly made a distinction. She stressed that her father was an amateur painter, but that he was a professional writer.

The remark immediately illuminates a widespread prejudice, namely that Church...