Cometh the movie-going hour, cometh the greatest Englishman.

From next Friday, Winston Churchill once again strides across a multiplex screen near you. Darkest Hour, directed by Joe Wright, is set in May 1940 as Churchill, days after becoming prime minister, faces an existential crisis: fight on against impossible odds, or accept a humiliating peace with Nazi Germany.

In his bleakest moment down in the War Room bunker, Churchill sends word via the Italians that Britain would be interested in the Dane-geld question: how much would Herr Hitler require to leave Britain and the colonies alone?

Darkest Hour is an episode of House Of Cards, pimped with period 1940s detail and Hollywood money. 

Winston is surrounded by schemers, chiefly Neville Chamberlain and the faintly sinister Lord Halifax, an Establishment creature who wants him brought low.

Churchill, recalling his Anglo-Saxon history, strengthens his sinews and rejects the route of the ransom.

Or maybe Churchill simply remembered his Rudyard Kipling poetry: We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!’ Churchill was of course an eternal student of English Literature.

It’s certainly novel for a movie to point out that appeasement did not disappear the moment that Churchill entered the door of Number 10.

And who knew that Gary Oldman, Mr Vicious in Sid And Nancy and Sirius Black in Harry Potter, could do impish? 

Churchill’s favourite whisky was Johnnie Walker Red Label. I reach for a glass of something similar every time I sit down to another Churchill biopic, which seem to be made as quickly as I can watch them.

Last year alone gave us Dunkirk and Churchill. The props department at Elstree clearly has a trunk marked Churchill Dressing-Up Stuff and the latest actor cast for the part rummages through the latex padding, the Romeo y Julieta cigar, the bow tie, the adult romper suit, the Homburg hat, the Tommy gun, and the lispy voice tapes instructing the idiosyncratic pronunciation of Nazi as “Narzi”.

Screen portraits of Churchill tend to be a set of the clichés. Darkest Hour is a cut above most, principally because the script department realise that in 1940 the nation got two Churchills for the price of one. 

Churchill’s wife, the darling Clementine Hozier, trimmed his anti-Socialism, propped up his ego and smoothed his overbearing manner to staff. 

Clementine was a conscious collaborator in the Winston Churchill Project. She had “ambitions” for him.

So, there is plenty for Kristin Scott Thomas to do in Darkest Hour, managing Churchill (Oldman of course, giving it the impish).

The awards tittle-tattle, however, suggests it should be her male co-star clearing space on the mantelpiece for the Oscar.

As you would expect from a Method actor, Oldman puts in a shift of some authenticity. Almost every scene is wreathed in expensive cigar smoke (Oldman’s cigar bill for Darkest Hour was £150,000.) 

Whether Oldman, 59, a former alcoholic, imbibed champagne in Churchillian quantities is a moot point; certainly, he brings some welcome fizz to the part.

Churchill was a complex human dynamo. Alas, poor Gary, though!

All the smoke and prosthetics fail to mask the flaws in his portrayal of Britain’s wartime leader. Then again, every other thesp has flunked it too.

According to the Internet Movie Database the first record of a screen portrayal of Churchill was in 1914.

Since then Churchill has been played by, among others, Richard Burton, Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Albert Finney, Timothy Spall, Robert Hardy (a whopping nine times), Julian Fellowes, Christian Slater, John Lithgow in Netflix’s The Crown, and Brian Cox in Churchill.

Where do they go wrong? 

Firstly, actors – and London lad Oldman is the case in point – never quite capture the Churchillian sense of entitlement.

Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, a place so vast it makes Buck House look like an outhouse. His parents, Lord and Lady Randolph, alternately ignored him, then spoiled him rotten.

As Winston’s biographer Roy Jenkins quipped: if Churchill “had wanted a music lesson it would have been Sir Edward Elgar who would have been sent for”.

By the age of 17, at Harrow School, Churchill told his friend Murland Evans: “It will fall to me to save the Capital and save the Empire”.

His self-belief bordered on the psychotic: “We are all worms,” he said, “but I do believe I am a glow worm.” 

But it is not just the entitlement. It is the confidence that comes from being born into British history.

Churchill was the direct descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, Britain’s one 24-carat genius army commander.

His father, Lord Randolph, was a charismatic statesman, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for India, before decline and death from syphilis at 45.

Being at the political centre was Churchill’s natural state.

The other insuperable problem befalling actors wishing to quiver their jowls as Churchill is that Winston played Winston better than anyone.

His entire adult life was a performance. He rose to fame in a true Boy’s Own adventure, in which he escaped from captivity in the Boer War, then wrote it up. And how.

If Churchill was the main writer of Churchill: The Life, he was happy to work with others, so long as they were dead.

He plagiarised Shakespeare endlessly. Blood, toil, tears and sweat was stolen from John Donne, the Elizabethan Metaphysical poet.

Churchill was also an early master of the photo opportunity, stealing historic scenes as “good old Winnie” with poses and iconic props such as the cigar, the V for Victory sign, the giant romper suit, all of them conceits of his own making.

Then there was the wholly affected voice, as unmistakable as it was portentous.

Churchill was star of his own movie, and played his part, saviour of the Western world, to perfection.

Everyone else can only imitate.

Darkest Hour is released on Friday. John Lewis Stempel’s latest book is The Secret Life Of The Owl (Doubleday, £7.99).