My great-grandfather, Winston Churchill, had an extraordinary ability to reach out to people. But the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, in a program next week about Churchill’s funeral, believes he would not thrive as a politician today. According to Paxman, he was “a parliamentary one-off who’d be suffocated by the spinning and posturing. Would he be electable now? I fear not.”

This is a bit rich. How many elections has Paxman run in? None. Winston Churchill stood in 19. When Winston fought his political campaigns, huge numbers of people attended public meetings, and you had to debate them, in a way that Paxman should understand. Of course the world has changed. But if he were around today, Winston would have a new set of skills. I have no doubt that he would be tweeting and making mincemeat of Paxman.

Through the written word, my great-grandfather mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. He provided the leadership that others could not. Being authentic — writing your own speeches — is something he did that people would find hugely attractive today. What people want to know is where you stand, and people always knew where Winston stood.

He was also motivated by an extraordinary self-belief, and that can be a double-edged sword. But you get to points in history when you need to have that singular strength of mind. This week I visited again the cabinet war rooms, and you can practically still smell the cigar smoke in that cramped space under Whitehall where the flame of democracy was kept flickering.

Winston was certainly not perfect. People talk about how much he drank, or the hours he worked. And we should not forget that 2015 is not just the 50th anniversary of his death, but the centenary of the Gallipoli and the Dardanelles campaign. We must be mindful of the fact that things did not always work out as he intended, and particularly honour the sacrifice that Australian and New Zealand soldiers made.

So the Churchill family is keen for people to judge for themselves — especially young people who do not know much about Winston. All the documentation is in the archives at Churchill college, Cambridge. People can look at those records dispassionately and then build their own cases; there is even a Think Like Churchill app for mobile phones, and a website, Churchillcentral.com, that draws on all those documents.

I was born two days before Winston’s death, which was 50 years ago today. A half a century after his passing, the nation will bow its head in remembrance of him, just as the dockyard cranes bowed as his funeral barge passed up the Thames.

I am lucky enough to know what the truth is — that to this day, the Churchill name carries with it a lustre that makes everyone’s eyes light up. You can see the image that his very name paints for people. It brings a smile to their faces. In times of difficulty people delve deep and reach out to his story and remind themselves that things are by no means as hard as the crises that he faced.

He was undoubtedly a great communicator. Whatever Mr. Paxman says, the public continue to love Churchill, warts and all. He has a place in the nation’s heart precisely because he was not perfect. People are very suspicious of things when they seem perfect. What they want is for politicians to have the courage of their own convictions. And when this country needed it most of all, my great-grandfather certainly had that.