Bulletin #75 – Sep 2014

Blenheim Palace, Service at Bladon, Dinner at Ditchley and More!

Blenheim PalaceThe Churchill Centre’s 32nd International Conference will take place in Oxfordshire May 26-29, 2015. Blenheim Palace, Churchill’s birthplace and ancestral home will host many of the events. An impressive array of speakers has already been lined up including Sir David Cannadine, Celia Sandys, Jonathan Dimbleby, Robert Hardy and Lord (Michael) Dobbs. The nearby Heythrop Park Hotel will serve as conference headquarters and co-host of events. Read More >

Churchill Centre and George Washington University join with Sulgrave Manor and Mount Vernon in Bicentennial Commemoration

Mount VernonThe Churchill Centre and George Washington University will participate in a series of special programs on October 10 and 11 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent which ended the War of 1812 and set the stage for the peaceful association of the world’s two great English-speaking nations. The events also mark the 100th anniversary of the purchase and restoration of Sulgrave Manor, the British ancestral home of Pres. George Washington, which has been open to the public since 1921. Read More >

British Pathé Website Releases Rare Informal Footage

British Pathé has released fifteen minutes of rarely seen film footage from January 1950 showing Winston Churchill preparing a newsreel message for the British general election held the following month. The film includes a sequence of camera takes in which Churchill experiments with different vocal inflections and word emphases. He also interacts with the cameraman and crew, sharing his musings about different speaking techniques, and chuckling at himself when losing his train of thought. At one point he even tries “an experiment with my voice” by reciting – from memory – lines from Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a work Churchill had first read some 50 years before. To view the film, please CLICK HERE. Read More >

75th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Second World War

Albert Finney as Churchill“Poland was attacked by Germany at dawn on September 1 [1939.]” So wrote Churchill in the first volume of his war memoirs The Gathering Storm. “The Prime Minister asked me to visit him in the afternoon at Downing Street,” Churchill continued, and “invited me to become a member of the War Cabinet.” Two days later Churchill met Prime Minister Chamberlain again, and was asked to become First Lord of the Admiralty. Read More >

The Churchill Centre Connects With American Political Scientists.

The recent American Political Science Association annual meeting for the tenth consecutive year featured two informative educational sessions hosted by The Churchill Centre. 

Guests filled the Army and Navy club in Washington, DC on August 28 to hear Professor Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason University speak on “Coping with Decline: Contemporary Lessons from Churchill’s Postwar Strategy.” The dinner was moderated by Churchill Centre member Michael F. Bishop.
 

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Latest Edition of the Churchill Quiz Now Available

As announced in Chartwell Bulletin in June, the popular Churchill Quiz is now published exclusively online. Each new edition of the quarterly feature is uploaded to The Churchill Centre website. The latest installment is now available. To view the Autumn edition of the quiz, please CLICK HERE. Read More >