April 8, 2014

Paul Reid Delivers Annual Kemper Lecture On Churchill

Fulton, MO; 2 March 2014: The National Churchill Museum of the United States located on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, invited Paul Reid to deliver this year’s Enid & R. Crosby Kemper Lecture. Reid is the author of the third and final volume of The Last Lion, the highly acclaimed biography started by William Manchester over thirty years ago. This volume, subtitled Defender of the Realm, covers the years 1940-65 and is dominated by the events of the Second World War. To watch the discussion in its entirety, please CLICK HERE.

Instead of the traditional lecture-from-a-podium format, Reid chose to be interviewed in a conversational style by Rob Havers, Director of the National Churchill Museum of the United States. “Some have said that Churchill lived in the past,” Reid observed during the discussion, but the truth is “the past lived in Churchill.” Reid believes Churchill represented the classical foundations of western civilization, a culture he was responsible for saving from tyranny. “At the bottom there has to be a love of what is good in life that transcends the moment,” he concluded. “That’s what Churchill had.”

The Kemper lecture series features authorities in the field of British history and Winston Churchill in particular.  Official Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert delivered the first lecture in 1981.  The timing of the annual lecture commemorates Churchill’s delivery of his famous Iron Curtain speech in 1946.  The presentation takes place in the Church of St. Mary, a Christopher Wren designed building destroyed during the Blitz but reconstructed on the campus of Westminster College. This year’s ceremony was the first to be live-streamed on the internet.