April « 2013 « Churchill Archives Centre Blog

Old posts for April, 2013

The Director’s Secret

Monday, April 29th, 2013

The unveiling of the new Churchill £5 note, already being dubbed ‘The Winston’ by some, which was announced at Chartwell on Friday came as a huge personal relief to me. For many months I have been carrying around the secret that this was to happen, being one of a small group who were informed and consulted, and was terrified that I might inadvertently let it slip. Now the news is finally out in the open, and the overriding response from the press seems to have been not why, but why has it taken so long. In fact, as the Governor explained at the opening, this is actually fast going for the Bank, and Churchill is only the second figure from the twentieth century to find his way on to a British note, the first being the composer Elgar.

My reward for keeping my secret was to attend the unveiling ceremony at Chartwell, Churchill’s house in Kent. The Churchill family were there in strength, including Lady Soames, his daughter, who described it as a proud day for her, her family – and the country. The note will not come into circulation until 2016, and security considerations meant that I could not get a prototype for the Archives Centre, but at the lunch afterwards Lady Soames was presented with an image of the design. It depicts the famous Karsh image of Churchill, taken in 1941, alongside images of the Houses of Parliament and the Nobel Medal for Literature, thereby representing Churchill as both a politician and a writer. It also features the quotation from May 1940, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Perhaps this is the new mission statement for the British economy?

The new Churchill banknote, shown by the Governor of the Bank of England, Lady Soames and Randolph Churchill

Photograph taken by Churchill’s great granddaughter, Mrs Jennie Repard, depicting the Governor of the Bank of England, Lady Soames and Randolph Churchill.

Allen Packwood

Tags:Churchill family, Winston Churchill
Posted in Archives Centre, News and events | Add a comment »

Memories of Maggie

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Lady Thatcher first visited the Churchill Archives Centre, with Sir Denis, on a Sunday early in 1994. Typically, she wrote an immediate thank-you letter to our then Keeper, the historian Correlli Barnett, recording her gratitude for the archives staff “who preserve the lessons of history for us” and for seeing a display of wartime papers which recorded “Churchill’s genius” in inspiring confidence in wartime victory.

Letter from Margaret Thatcher to Churchill Archives Centre

In 1997 Lady Thatcher generously donated the bulk of her personal and political papers to the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust on behalf of the nation. Since then, the Trust has supported their cataloguing and preservation at the Centre, alongside the papers of Sir Winston.

After 1997 Lady Thatcher continued to chair and support the work of the Archive Trust and was a regular visitor to College. With her help, funding was raised for a new wing to house her papers and provide expansion space for the Archives Centre. At an early meeting to report progress on the design her eyes focused intently on me as she queried the direction of air flow movements in the extension. Of course, she had alighted on the one ambiguity in the design proposal and I had a few awkward moments under her gaze.

The extension building was eventually opened in 2002 by Lady Thatcher who reached towards the somewhat alarmed Director of the Archives, Allen Packwood, to relieve him of a large pair of scissors to cut the ceremonial ribbon. She asked him, perhaps unnecessarily, “shall I go to the left or the right?”

The Thatcher archive contains over three thousand boxes of papers, memos, photographs and correspondence. And one of the famous handbags, which I collected from her aide “Crawfie” back in 2002. It felt very odd leaving her office with such an iconic and historical artefact. The bag dates from the mid-1980s, with a helpful handwritten note from Lady Thatcher recording its provenance.

In 2006 the Centre co-curated an exhibition at Parliament which was opened by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. I stood beside Lady Thatcher as Mr Blair recounted how he had asked her at Question Time in 1984 about her familiarity with the famous 1944 Employment White Paper. To his horror, she had stood in Parliament and, without warning, had answered him by pulling out her own copy of the document from her handbag. The White paper, heavily annotated and headed “Margaret H. Roberts” is now safely in her archive.

We were privileged to work so closely with Lady Thatcher who was always generous with her time in talking to our donors and supporters. In 2009 we hosted a luncheon in London to mark the start of a conference examining the legacy of the cold war. The then US Ambassador to London was booked to give an opening address to start the lunch but was caught up in terrible traffic near the Embassy. Our guests were disappointed but had a very welcome 45 minutes to talk to Lady Thatcher, pay their tributes and take photographs before the Ambassador arrived. It was a reminder of her influence on the world stage, even in retirement.

This piece will be included in “Memories of Margaret Thatcher” by Iain Dale, published in early May by Biteback in hardback at £20.

Key selections from the Thatcher papers are made available online at http://www.margaretthatcher.org after release.

Andrew Riley

Tags:Margaret Thatcher
Posted in Archives Centre, Our collections | Add a comment »

Baroness Thatcher and the prayer card

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

There has been a huge volume of media coverage of the death of Baroness Thatcher. A short interview with Andrew Riley, our Archivist of Lady Thatcher’s personal and political papers, was featured in a programme broadcast yesterday by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, “Maggie and me”.

The interview focuses on the discovery by Andrew of a small card in the Thatcher papers which Margaret Thatcher took with her to No 10 Downing Street on winning the 1979 General Election. The card summarises the key elements of the prayer of St Francis of Assisi which she read to the watching crowds and to the world’s media, reciting “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

Andrew looked for the card in the Thatcher papers after seeing it mentioned in Snow’s memoir, “Shooting history”. Snow had stood behind Mrs Thatcher when she read the Prayer outside No 10. Luckily, Jon is 6 foot 5 tall and was able to see over her shoulder to help identify the card.

Tags:Margaret Thatcher
Posted in Archives Centre, News and events, Our collections | Add a comment »

An obituary for Baroness Thatcher, 1993

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

Just this morning, I have finally opened part of a 1993 file which has been closed since I catalogued it ten years ago: Enoch Powell’s contribution to a BBC obituary programme for Margaret Thatcher.

There are no great revelations in the file, I’m afraid – it was kept closed for reasons of general confidentiality, and is very unlikely to be used by the BBC now – but it is interesting to see just how far in advance these things are planned, twenty years early in this case.

Powell greatly respected Thatcher, and they shared similar views, on the economy and Europe in particular. In describing her for this programme, he is perhaps most interesting on the Falklands, remarking that she showed a ruthlessness "not untypical of the female."

Powell goes on to say that like everyone else in government, Thatcher knew very well that Britain had been engaged in getting rid of the Falkland Islands for years, "but she saw that the moment had come … when that would not wash and, ruthlessly and absolutely, she ditched everybody who had been in any way involved in that course of action, even though she had been herself a consenting party to it." Clearly, in Powell’s mind, a great virtue in a politician.

Katharine Thomson

Tags:Enoch Powell, Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher
Posted in Archives Centre, Our collections | Add a comment »

A Strange Week of Churchill Events (11-15 March 2013)

Monday, April 8th, 2013

It began, suitably enough, as Churchill was born there, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The second annual Churchill Public Speaking Competition took place on a chilly Tuesday morning in March. Coaches arrived from around the region, and one from the Lancashire border town of Barnoldswick, disgorging hordes of nervous primary and secondary children and their equally anxious teachers. Once safely inside the Orangery, and with the First Duke of Marlborough looking down on proceedings from his canvas on the wall, each team proceeded to debate a motion inspired by a Churchill quotation. The standard was very high, and you could not help but be impressed by the bravery of the primary school groups. I had my fingers crossed for the secondary team from Westcraven School in Barnoldswick, as I had spent an afternoon coaching them in January. They were brilliant, and reminded everyone that it was Oldham and Manchester that launched Sir Winston’s career, but they did not win this time.

From Oxford to Cambridge, and I drove back to Churchill College in time to attend the Commonwealth Dinner, a wonderful occasion attended by a number of High Commissioners (I am guessing that the collective noun should be “a diplomacy”). The aim was to raise awareness of Churchill College’s foundation as the Commonwealth Memorial to Sir Winston, which Lord Watson certainly did, even if he was forced to concede that Churchill would have preferred the term Empire.

Thursday took me to London to address the Franco-British Society on the subject of Churchill and France. There was much discussion of Churchill’s complex relationship with De Gaulle and his admiration for Napoleon. From there it was a short hop to the residence of the Israeli Ambassador and a reception to honour Sir Winston Churchill’s connections with the State of Israel.

It is over 48 years since Churchill’s death, but he clearly remains as active as ever.

Mr Smith Benson (far left) and Allen Packwood (far right) with the Westcraven Technology College team at the school, Jan 2013. The first school from the north of England to compete in the Churchill Public Speaking Competition.

Posted in Archives Centre, News and events | Add a comment »

Image of the Month

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

April’s Image of the Month is a bit of a cheat, as it actually comes from another Cambridge college, but it is a slightly different and rather beautiful way of celebrating the 60th anniversary of the discovery of DNA.

Posted in Archives Centre | Add a comment »