When historians gather together, one of the central debates concerns the degree to which ?great men? and nowadays, women, influence their times, or if great times tend to throw up great leader as a matter of necessity.

For professional historians, it is a fascinating issue and a divisive one. In more modern terms, what effect would a Nelson Mandela have had on South Africa and the world if he had been born 50 years earlier, or 50 years later?

And where would South Africa be today without his extraordinary combination of high principles and willingness to forgive the sins of the past?

Then too, if Dr. E.F. Gordon had chosen to practise medicine in the Bahamas instead of Bermuda, or if Sir Henry Tucker had chosen to continue to work in the United States rather than return to Bermuda, what shape would Bermuda?s history have taken?

It is possible that others would have come forward to seize their mantles, or it is possible that no one would have.

To some degree the question is moot. The Gordons, Mandelas and Tuckers were present and did what they thought was best at the time and history judges the individuals and their times as a whole.

But it never fails to intrigue, and there are few 20th Century figures who make it more compelling than Winston Churchill, the legendary British Prime Minister who guided Britain through the Second World War.

This week, several hundred Churchill experts are gathering in Bermuda to discuss his influence on the world, both during the Second World War and afterwards.

Even little Bermuda was touched by this remarkable man, whose life is an object lesson in courage and political principle.

It can be argued that without Churchill and his efforts to create the ?special relationship? between Britain and the United States, that there would be no airport in St. David?s, and no question that Bermuda would be a very different place today.

More broadly, with Remembrance Day looming, it is worth recalling that were it not for Churchill?s pugnacity and spirit, that the course of the Second World War could have been very different.

Hundreds of Bermudians served in the Allied forces in that war, and many of them will parade on Front Street again on Tuesday. How many would have volunteered to serve overseas if it was not for the example set by Churchill?

Churchill, who coined the phrase ?Iron Curtain? was Prime Minister for a second time in the first half of the 1950s and was a key figure in the Cold War as well. It is this era that will be the focus of the Churchill seminar this week, because Bermuda was the site for the ?Big Three? conference with US President Dwight Eisenhower and French Prime Minister Joseph Laniel that helped to lay the groundwork for how democracies would counter the spread of communism.

Here too, Bermuda owes a debt of gratitude to Churchill and the other leaders who fought, mainly through peaceful means, the spread of a dictatorship that was as vicious and pernicious as Nazism.

Today most of the world accepts that parliamentary democracy and free markets are a better alternative than anything else going. That the world has reached that consensus is due in large part to Winston Churchill, the definitive ?great man? of the 20th Century.