Seminar Explores Churchill’s Relationship with Cinema

On Tuesday 22^nd October, the School of Arts and Humanities at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham is hosting a research seminar that explores the relationship Winston Churchill had with British and American Cinema. Delivered by leading academic Prof Charles Barr, Professorial Research Fellow at the University College, the seminar will explore Churchill’s extensive film-viewing including extracts from a range of the wartime films, both British and American, which Churchill viewed most often and shared with others in his immediate circle. Prof Barr said, “The major biographers of Churchill, like the politician Roy Jenkins, understandably focus on broad political and military issues at the expense of other crucial things that kept him going from day to day, in wartime especially. “Churchill’s reliance on alcohol is now well-known, but film viewing was at least equally important to him. Most weekends, in between crucial strategic conferences, he saw several feature films, for purposes of both inspiration and relaxation. “New research makes it possible to chart his extensive film-viewing from week to week, and to assess just how much the films meant to him.” Prof Barr is an internationally recognised authority on Alfred Hitchcock and also specialises in British film history, with many published works on the subject including ‘Much Pleasure and Relaxation in these Hard Times: Churchill and Cinema in the Second World War’, The Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television v 31 n 4 (2011). The seminar is being held on Tuesday 22^nd October from 1-2pm at St Mary’s Strawberry Hill campus. It is free and open to the public without registration. For more information please contact Dr Michelle Paull on michelle.paull@stmarys.ac.uk Churchill alongside Chaplin in Hollywood in the 20s