Dominic Sandbrook

You know, to the Persian sensibility, what is it?

It's a rogue state, a terrorist state that is way out there on the fringe.

I suppose you might say, why bother?

But then on the other hand, why not?

If it's a little rogue state, why not punish it?

So two cities are standing against the Persians, and these are Athens and Sparta.

And it is pretty clear now to everybody in Greece, isn't it, that the Persians are, they're not going to, you know, take this line down.

They're bound to come.

And sure enough, the next year, Darius says, let's go for this.

You know, we're going to punish these rogue states.

We're going to impose...

We're going to reimpose the law of heaven, order, harmony, stability.

You know, we are on the side of, we're fighting this axis of evil, which are these current terrorist states.

Everyone's a winner.

I think he is the greatest Briton, and I don't mean that he's the best, or I don't mean he's the one who always made the most considered decisions, and I don't mean by that that Churchill is perfect.

So the poll that was done, the Greatest Britons poll in 2002, when you look at the names in that kind of top 10, so you mentioned Brunel that Clarkson was promoting, Horatio Nelson, Elizabeth I, and so on,

They're all complicated characters with dark as well as light.

That's certainly true of Churchill.

But I think Churchill does a couple of things.

Clearly, Churchill stands for something bigger than himself, which is the story of British resistance in the World Wars.