Icons for Sale

Among playwrights and screenwriters, the New Zealander Anthony McCarten is a sort of People magazine profiler. He writes respectfully about the interior lives of celebrities, although unlike People writers, he more or less fabricates everything he needs for high drama. Perhaps most notably, he suggested in his screenplay for the absurd Winston Churchill drama Darkest Hour that Churchill was a man of the people who took his cues from fellow riders of the London Underground. If there is anything less likely than Winston Churchill consulting hoi polloi for suggestions on crafting rhetoric, it is Winston Churchill riding the Tube.