August 4, 2014

Churchill Archives Director Allen Packwood Writes on Jackie Kennedy & Winston Churchill

Churchill Archives Director Allen Packwood is the author of “The Lion and the Lioness”, a chapter in the recently published new edition of What Jackie Taught Us by Churchill Centre Trustee and writer/businesswoman Tina Santi Flaherty. The new edition commemorates the 20th anniversary of Mrs. Kennedy’s death in 1994.

Originally published in 2004, this expanded edition includes a new introduction by journalist Liz Smith and contributions by writers such as A. E. Hotchner, Malachy Court, Lynne Olson and Andrew Roberts as well as the full text of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s eulogy for his sister-in-law.

“If Churchill was a lion, then Jacqueline Kennedy was a lioness”, Packwood notes, going on to describe a deeper connection between the two historical figures: one rooted in bravery. The “different kinds of courage” shown by Kennedy and Churchill built the legacies they stand upon today.

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While Churchill and Jackie Kennedy are primarily connected through the Honorary United States Citizenship presented to the former Prime Minister in 1963, the widowed First Lady a few months later herself became a “symbol of human and moral courage” to a mourning United States. Mrs. Kennedy never shied away from the media, especially when her husband’s reputation and her children’s privacy were concerned, and Packwood suggests Churchill acted with similar bravery as a voice against Prime Minister Chamberlain’s appeasement policy in the 1930’s. Whether right or wrong, these two iconic figures fearlessly voiced their beliefs, voicing a lion’s, and a lioness’s, roar as the world watched.

To learn more about Winston Churchill, please visit www.winstonchurchill.org.