The National Churchill Library and Center (NCLC) has announced an extensive lineup of speakers for this autumn. All events are free to attend. Located on the ground floor of the Gelman Library at the George Washington University in Washington, D. C., the NCLC opened in October 2016. It is the headquarters of the International Churchill Society and the premier center in North America for research into the life and times of Sir Winston Churchill.
Ambassador Mathew Barzun will discuss the “Special Relationship.” Mr. Barzun is a former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Barack Obama. He will be discussing his experiences at the Court of St. James as well as Brexit and its potential impact on US-UK relations.
Sally Bedell Smith discusses her bestselling biography Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life and the future of the British Monarchy. Ms. Smith is a journalist and contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She is the author of many books, including Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House, and Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Modern Princess. She received her B.A. from Wheaton College and her M.S. from the Columbia School of Journalism.
Mike Wallace will discuss the second volume of his epic history of New York City Greater Gotham. The first volume, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, cowritten with Edwin G. Burrows, was published to great acclaim in 2000 and won the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Wallace is a Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and founder of the Gotham Center for New York City History at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was educated at Columbia University.
Mark Helprin will discuss his new novel Paris in the Present Tense and the current state of US foreign and defense policy. Mr. Helprin is a novelist and commentator, and the author of the acclaimed Winter’s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, In Sunlight and In Shadow, and many other novels and stories. Of Winter’s Tale, critic Benjamin De Mott wrote in the New York Times, “I find myself nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance.” Mr. Helprin is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. He served as an advisor and speechwiter for Robert Dole during his 1996 presidential campaign. Born in New York, he served in the Israeli infantry and air force and holds degrees from Harvard University.
Maya Jasanoff will lecture and discussiont her new book The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. This event is cosponsored by The George Washington University History and English departments. Ms. Jasanoff is professor of history at Harvard University. She won both the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction and 2012 George Washington Book Prize for her most recent monograph Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. Her first book, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850, won the Duff Cooper Prize in 2009. Professor Jasanoff has also taught at the University of Virginia, and was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale.
Robert Costa will discuss the current political scene and the lessons of history. Mr. Costa is a national political reporter for The Washington Post, a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and the moderator of Washington Week on PBS. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and raised in Pennsylvania. He holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, where the focus of his study was Winston Churchill.
Felix Klos will discuss his new book Churchill’s Last Stand: The Struggle to Unite Europe. Mr. Klos is an American/Dutch historian and the author of Churchill on Europe: The Untold Story of Churchill’s European Project. He has worked as an intern in the United States Senate and for the Dutch Liberal Democratic Party D66.
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