THE old cigar-chomper is back, no doubt making a V-sign to the crowds as he stomps down the corridors of power, ready to demand “action this day” of some poor functionary or sack a hapless general or three.

The latest incarnation of Winston Churchill stepped on to our TV screens last night, but really he’s hardly been away, for all that he died nearly half a century ago. Many distinguished actors have sought to portray this most distinctive of public figures on stage and screen; he even turned up in the latest Quentin Tarantino movie.

But why does Churchill still have this fascination? After all, wasn’t he a product of a bygone age, a spoilt child of privilege who graduated straight to being a self-indulgent old man, an unrepentant imperialist imbued with all the prejudices of his time, and a rampaging egotist with a dangerously overblown notion of his own political and strategic genius, whose interference frustrated the efforts of his long-suffering subordinates?

There’s some truth to all these accusations. Churchill could be incredibly self-centred and intolerant of dissent; the western world can be grateful some of his wilder ideas were kept in check by his own colleagues and the Americans. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to work for him, but goodness, wouldn’t meeting him have been a remarkable experience? That, perhaps, gives one clue to his enduring legacy.

However, the most obvious point is that Churchill was surely the most important British political figure of modern times. The argument here is really quite simple; he led his country through its greatest and most immediate crisis, the threat of defeat and even possibly invasion by one of the most vicious powers in the history of the world.

Churchill didn’t only rally the British people and beat off attempts to make peace with Hitler; he devised the most effective strategy he could to win the war, relying primarily on the eventual involvement of the USA, but also dropping years of anti-communism to forge an alliance with Stalin. He got many things wrong, but most of the big decisions he got right.

His pivotal role is unrivalled; other Prime Ministers could be said to have had left greater legacies in terms of civil achievement – Thatcher, Attlee and Asquith come to mind – but none of that would have mattered much if either world war had resulted in defeat.

In that respect Churchill’s only challenger is his old political partner, Lloyd George. But such are the bitter memories of the First World War that the Welshman’s undoubted achievements in leading Britain through it are inevitably tarnished for posterity (infighting with his own generals, serial adultery and selling peerages also don’t help Lloyd George’s cause).

In addition, Churchill’s life story reads like a thoroughly unlikely novel – charging with the cavalry at Omdurman, escaping from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp, becoming a reforming politician and head of the Royal Navy at the First World War’s start.

Then came the Gallipoli fall from grace and penance in the trenches, a partial political revival followed by the “wilderness years” before the war effectively rescued him. When he talked about a “finest hour” he was addressing the British people, but he might easily have meant himself.

Such were the contrasts and contradictions in his character, mixing ruthlessness and humanity, insight and intolerance, that he inspired devotion even from those he abused. And, despite his wild aberrations over Indian independence, he was never quite the raving reactionary his detractors claim; such a man could not have negotiated with Michael Collins on Irish independence, or made defusing the great power nuclear stand-off his last great diplomatic aim, as Churchill did.

One final thing – Churchill was the last British PM who really counted as a world leader in his own right, and not as America’s number one buddy (though he was that too). That’s another reason why, for all his faults, he fascinates us still.