In a mystery worthy of a Hollywood film, a famous photograph of Winston Churchill snapped in 1941 has gone missing from an Ottawa hotel and replaced with a fake.
The photo – known as “the Roaring Lion” – was taken by Yousuf Karsh shortly after Churchill gave a wartime speech to Canada’s parliament.
A staff member at the Château Laurier hotel first noticed the photograph had been replaced on 19 August.
Police are investigating the incident.
The photograph is one of the most iconic ever taken of Churchill, and shows the leader on Parliament Hill moments after Karsh famously took a cigar out of Churchill’s mouth.
“I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it…I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited,” Karsh later recalled. “Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever respectfully, I said ‘forgive me sir’ and plucked the cigar from his mouth.”
By the time Karsh returned to his camera, he wrote, Churchill looked “so belligerent he could have devoured me”.
“It was in that instant that I took the photograph,” he added.
The Château Laurier first realised something was amiss on Friday, when staff members noticed that the photograph’s frame didn’t match that of other images by Karsh in the same room.
After investigating and conferring with Karsh’s estate, the hotel determined that the photograph had been “replaced with a copy of the original”, the hotel said in a statement to local media. It is unclear how long it has been since the original image was taken. (BBC)