This figure recreates one of the most famous photographs of the war. On 31 July 1940, with France fallen and Britain braced for invasion, Winston Churchill toured the coastal defences near Hartlepool and was snapped grinning around a cigar with a Thompson submachine gun cradled in his arms. To the British it was pure defiance — the Prime Minister himself ready to fight on the beaches. Joseph Goebbels saw it differently and seized on it: because the tommy gun was the weapon of American gangsters, Nazi propaganda recast Churchill as a criminal, printing "WANTED — for incitement to MURDER" leaflets around the image and airdropping them over Britain during the Battle of Britain. The same picture, two nations, opposite meanings.

K&C's figure has Churchill exactly as the camera caught him — bowler hat, cigar clenched in his teeth, pinstripe trousers and the Thompson held across his double-breasted jacket — with a British bulldog planted at his side, the animal that had long stood for the nation's stubborn refusal to quit. Pose him with his most famous general, Monty; with "the Few" who won the battle raging overhead that summer, the RAF Fighter Pilot; and against the enemy he defied, the Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland. As the centerpiece of a Battle of Britain or home-front diorama, Churchill needs no introduction.

Model: DD371 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 2 piece set (Churchill and bulldog)