Of all the postwar Prime Ministers, Winston Churchill was the most natural contemporary historian. For him past, present and future were in constant and living symbiosis one with another. He lived, acted, thought and dreamt historically, As Paul Addison put it: 'To Churchill the past was alive and Whig history was true.'
This is a lecture on the post-war premiership of Winston Churchill by Peter Hennessy, in his role as Gresham Professor of Rhetoric.
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary, University of London, and was recently elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Before joining the Department in 1992, he was a journalist for twenty years with spells on The Times as a leader writer and Whitehall Correspondent, The Financial Times as its Lobby Correspondent at Westminster and The Economist. He was a regular presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme from 1987 to 1992. In 1986 he was a co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary British History. Professor Hennessey was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric between 1994 and 1997.
