One in five Britons do not recognise Winston Churchill (but 98% recognise Margaret Thatcher)

Comments

[Patsy Sergeant]

The reason that Mrs. Thatcher is so recognisable is that she has become the default 'hate figure' representing the Tories, as encouraged by Labour. Her policies may not all, appear to have been 'people-friendly', but only die-hard socialist/communists, could say that ALL Labour policies over the last 13 years have been 'people-friendly' i.e. resulting in the poor being less disadvantaged etc:

Winston Churchill has such an iconic image due to his leadership in WWII, that Labour would not dare to try and reduce his 'image'!

If any research was done into the History curriculum of State schools, with regard to modern history, it would not surprise me at all to find that the same default position is taken with regard to Mrs. Thatcher and her policies, in the modern history segment!

[Andrew S]

Well, the statue isn't that great...maybe that's why.

[corporeal]

Patsy, as a fairly recent school leaver my experience was that Thatcher wasn't covered. Tended to stop at WWII or a bit later.

I'd say the simple reason is this, Churchill died what, 40-50 years ago, and in an era where there was much less media etc around.

Compared to Thatcher who is still alive, was Prime Minister until 20 years ago (in an era of mass media coverage) and still turns up on the news now and again. Occam's razor and all that.

[Jack Stone]

You can`t compare Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill as they were so different Prime Minsters. Churchill had a social conscience and always tried to unite the country and Margaret Thacher had no social conscience and didn`t care about trying to unite the country around her government.One Chrchill represented all that is good about Britain and one represented all that was bad. Personally I will never forgive Thatcher for her attitude to apartheid which brought great shame on this country even more so than Blair`s illegal Irag war and is still the reason why this country is not trusted in Africa today.

[michael mcgough]

The appeaser Cameron will long be remembered.