Some historical context is appropriate.

The Nazi hordes had swept Western Europe before them. Only Britain alone was holding out, having grimly fought back the air invasion during the Battle of Britain during the fall of 1940.

America remained staunchly isolationist, egged on by Nazi sympathizers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both sporting Iron Crosses awarded by Hitler. Roosevelt, anything but an isolationist saw the threat and had enacted the Lend-Lease legislation which provided a lifeline of essential supplies and materiel to Britain, braving the perilous Atlantic route. His hands, however, were tied by a reluctant Congress.

British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, saw early on that the Nazi terror could only be crushed with America’s involvement, and had set about a long courtship of Roosevelt shortly after the epic air battle over the fields of South East England had been won.

On one of his many visits to the United States in 1941, Churchill made a side trip to address the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on December 30, 1941, famously intoning: “When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone, whatever they did, their Generals told their Prime Minister and his divided cabinet that in three weeks, England would have her neck wrung like a chicken – Some chicken! Some neck!” The brilliant use of American vernacular (Churchill’s mother was American) produced loud applause and laughter from the assembled House of Commons.

It was appropriate that the speech should be in Ottawa, for that fair city was home to a refugee who would soon make his name as the most famous photographic portraitist of his time, Yousuf Karsh.

Churchill had not been forewarned that his portrait was to be taken after the speech and was suitably irritated on being led into the antechamber where Karsh had set up his camera and lights, puffing mightily on his cigar. Karsh asked him to remove the cigar and, when Churchill refused, snatched it from his mouth to take the Greatest Photographic Portrait ever made.

In this magnificent picture you see a statesman at the peak of his power, defiant, belligerent, determined.

After the first picture was taken – the whole sitting was all of four minutes in duration – Churchill permitted Karsh to take still another, jokingly commenting “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed.”

The picture made Karsh’s reputation, and deservedly so.