evidence: It’s ironic. We’re told by government and media that "cancel culture" is an imposition of the academic left. Yet here it is in reality, the actual "cancel culture" that prevents a truthful engagement with British history. Churchill was an admired wartime leader who recognised the threat of Hitler in time and played a pivotal role in the allied victory. It should be possible to recognise this without glossing over his less benign side. The scholars at the Cambridge event – Madhusree Mukerjee, Onyeka Nubia and Kehinde Andrews – drew attention to Churchill’s dogged advocacy of British colonial rule; his contributing role in the disastrous 1943 Bengal famine, in which millions of people died unnecessarily; his interest in eugenics; and his views, deeply retrograde even for his time, on race. Churchill is on record as praising "Aryan stock" and insisting it was right for "a stronger race, a higher-grade race" to take the place of indigenous peoples. He reportedly did not think "black people were as capable or as efficient as white people". In 1911, Churchill banned interracial boxing matches so white fighters would not be seen losing to black ones. He insisted that Britain and the US shared "Anglo-Saxon superiority". He described anticolonial campaigners as "savages armed with ideas".