[radicaledward]

I'm not sure if your counter example holds up. Wikipedia indicates that Edward Gibbon wrote way more than just The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1]. And those are the works we know about that he didn't just burn immediately (or whatever). The successful stuff sticks around and holds up, but that can create inaccurate views for how many failures came before (and after) the success.

As a side note, I also find it amusing that you expect Churchill's "aura" to fade. If current trends are any indication, he's moving toward folk tale hero status rather than the slow march toward obscurity (with multiple appearances in Doctor Who and other fictional media). In my opinion, the only thing that potentially stands in the way is a possible upheaval of the Western power base or an Alexandria style purge of knowledge. I say this as a US citizen who is much too young to remember the fall out of the war, much less the war itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon