Good evening. I just realized im going to be the only person on the stage tonight who doesnt have a british accent. But i do have an accent. So you will have to see if you can detect it at some point. More pertinent to the city that were in. If you would ask him, lord dobbs would tell you that he never had a proper job. Yet, it was in his restless search, as he calls it, for this ideal job that he just happened, happened to stumble upon some of the most wonderful and rewarding experiences that anyone could ever hope to have in a lifetime. Ones that honored his presence, ones that called upon him as a crafty and skilled story teller, ones that demanded his inquisitive mind and others that reward his wondrous creativity and innovation. It all began in a pub where i met a complete stranger, lord dobbs says about his journey. I happened to mention to him that i was looking for a job in current affairs. He bought me a drink. A little later i discovered myself working for a rather exceptional lady called margaret thatcher. A modest lord dobbs may call it luck while the rest of us, particularly those working in the political and media worlds, painfully recognize this wonderful trait as perseverance. A job with market thatcher. And four years later, he would be the first person to tell her that she had become the Prime Minister. And the next day, he took her first steps with her across 10 downing street. It was in this self described state of joblessness that lord dobbs also served as deputy chairman of suchy and suchy, worked as a well regarded bbc anchor was hired as a newspaper columnist working at the boston globe. And that was throughout the watergate scandal. And recognized as a widely acclaimed global speaker. If only unemployment could be so fruitful for everyone. [ laughter ] a prolific author with many acclaimed novels. And of course, like any lazy mans profile would include, doctorates from harvard and tufts. And of course, i have saved the best for last. Whats lord dobbs known for . Sharing a girlfriend with bill clinton. [ applause ] this is while while they were both students at oxford. Lord dobbs was always confused as to why she never introduced the two of them, but then he admitted, it took me many years, and an entire president ial scandal to discover why. [ laughter ] but you guys are right. So 30 years ago, lord dobbs wrote house of cards, a political thriller based on the life and vices of a politician later adapted into bbcs highly Acclaimed Television series and most recently taken on by netflix as a webb based series telling the story of a House Majority whip trying to get himself in the place of power in the political world, starring kevin spacey, as you all know. Yes, thats amazing. [ applause ] to date, the series has earned 33 primetime emmy award nominations, and the series obviously underscored by prem e premises of deceit, manipulation, darkness, power, you know, all the ingredients of a successful politician, whether in washington or westminster. But all stemming from the genius of a man who is humble, talented, quick witted, and just plain brilliant. With that, ladies and gentlemen, i am blessed with this amazing honor tonight of presenting to you, lord michael dobbs. [ applause ] lisa, that was the most extraordinary lovely introductions i have ever had. Thank you so much. What an occasion. I thought i was coming here to a really serious intellectual evening. And now i hear that my girlfriend and bill clinton have been dragged in. [ laughter ]. Well but it is actually a very serious even. I cant tell you how honored and privileged i feel to be here in the company of so many people, particularly david petreus. Its an honor to be in the same room [ applause ] a great american. And i wanted to also thank the churchill family who do so much to keep winstons flame alive. Celia. Jenny i know is here. And edwina. And of course randle. Randle, of course, we owe you so much for all the work that you do and make our joy of winston so much fun. And we heard so many votes of thanks today from Michael Bishop and lawrence galahu, who thanks everybody. But one thing they havent thanked is themselves. And we owe them a huge debt of thanks. Michael and lawrence. [ applause ] for having made our society and our love of winston not only so much fun, but also so incredibly successful. And i cannot tell you how, you know, these things dont happen by accident. They happen through a great deal of work. And michael, lawrence, its largely been your work. So thank you very much indeed for that. And you were talking earlier, lawrence, about who is going to say no to a churchill. And i was delighted to discover you havent said no to a churchill. You and jenny are actually going to be a proper couple very soon. And i cant tell you how delighted i am about that. [ applause ] but, you know do you ever feel that you have arrived at the wrong party . I kind of feel like that. I am a writer of fiction. And i am surrounded by some of the finest historians of our age and the most eminent chi chians on the planet and i simply write works of fiction. Of course, writing novels is not a proper job. It was all the thought of margaret thatcher. You may remember her. She was the woman who president mitterrand of france when he first met her went back to paris. He said, ive met this woman. She has the lips of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of caligula. [ laughter ]. 30 years ago, i was her chief of staff. Chief of staff of the conservative party. Im sad to say we had a tremendous falling out. It happens. There is nothing auto neek about falling out with margaret. She rather insisted on it. Laugh will i remember just a few weeks later after the 1987 election when i was sitting besides a Swimming Pool on holiday thinking that perhaps i should find myself a new job. In fact, margaret rather insisted [ laughter ]. And i was sitting there beside the Swimming Pool wanting to fill time in the way that one does and i decided to write a book for no better reason than i had spare time. That book became house of cards. John major was kind enough to say that it had done for his job what dak la had done for babysitting. It spawned two great careers, the careers of francis ukard and frank underwood. Fu 1 and fu 2 as i call them. It was a hell of a row with margaret. But it doesnt stop me from saying she was probably the greatest peace time Prime Minister that britain ever had. Look, she led [ applause ]. She led. I bled. So what . But house of cards, the book that i wrote, it seems to have got around a bit. About 18 months ago i was privileged enough to have a meeting with president xi of china when he came to britain. And i thought how should i mark this occasion. I decided to mark it by handing him a signed copy of the original hard back. As i handed it across to him his face lit up and then he looked at what it was and a frown creased his face. He said what . You have house of cards in this country, too . [ laughter ] i have written 20 novels. Ive got kids. You know, i have written 20 novels over the years. But the novels that in all honesty i have most enjoyed writing have been those four novels that i have written about winston. My relationship with winston, i regarded as a relationship. I regard him as a friend, as a as somebody who is very much a part of my life. It began of course as so many of you heard about from lawrence with his funeral. I was sitting there watching it, those fuzzy black and white images we had on television. I was sitting there watching it with moo mother. I remember those images. The gun carriage. The barge. The train. And that extraordinary moment that we all remember when the cranes of london dock bowed their heads in respect. What an extraordinary moment. And my mother throughout the entire time was weeping silent tears. And i asked myself, why is my mother weeping so emotional about a man that she had never met . And her tears began a time of inquiry and questioning which led me to a fascination about Winston Churchill. Not particularly the statesman, the politician, but the man, the flesh and blood man. And eventually i decided that i wanted to write about him. I had to ask myself how dare i, a novelist, write about the greatest man in english history when he has been written about by so many eminent historians over all these years . And winston himself provided me with the answer. Claim better land, his rival and predecessor and colleague when he died, winston made a wonderful and beautiful eulogy for his old rival in which he said this. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past trying to reconstruct its scenes the revive its echos and kindle with kindle with pale gleams the passions of former days. In other words, no matter how hard they try, historians and history can never offer you the full picture. Which made me think that perhaps i as a novelist starting from a very different perspective, starting from the inside out, if you like, maybe a novelist can fill in at least some of the gaps, try and capture the flesh and blood man, the passions, the private moments, the for meant, the triumphs yes, and the fears too. So i i started to think of winston as real person, not just as a cardboard cutout, but as a real person. Winston as an old man. And i dived into something called it was an International Churchill society publication, a monograph called the dream. I dont know david whether we still publish it. It was an extraordinary expos igs of the hangups that winston had, even as an old man, about his father. I wanted to know about winston as a child. So i web to his first school, st. Georgess as cot and discovered the extraordinary and actually rather horrid story of his days at st. Georges with that appalling head master that he had, reverend herbert steed kinsley, a man who was intent on breaking winston. Winston at st. Georges was abused in so many ways. She is abused intellectually, he was abused physically, he was abused emotionally and quite probably he was abused in other ways, too. Winston, being a naughty boy and he was a naughty boy. He was a pain as a kid. Was discovered one day to have stolen a pocket full of sugar from the schools pantry. For that crime he was taken to the head masters study where he was held he was stripped naked. He was held down across a beating block, and he was thrashed. And he was thrashed. And he was thrashed. And he was thrashed. And he was thrashed. Not until he was black and blue, but until there were wooels and blood on that boor boys body. Winston i think came very close to being broken from that school. In fact he was removed from that school, thank goodness by his nanny, mrs. Everest when he came back on vacation, on holiday, from his school and she discovered all of the terrible wounds on his body and insisted to his parents that he be removed from that school. He did suffer terribly from that head master. But when you remember that winston was not like most of the rest of us if i had been treated like that, i would have held my hands up and said look just tell me what to do in order to stop this treatment. That wasnt winstons idea. The next time, the next occasion that he had after that beating when he was able to find the head master away from the school he crept in, broke into the head masters study, crept to the back of the door where the head master kept his prized straw boata, the boata, the hat he wore for official occasions his symbol of authority, and winston stole from the back of that door the head masters snead kinsleys prized straw boata. And he took it down to the woods in the school and he kicked the crap out of it. [ laughter ] not bad for an 8yearold boy who had just been so cruelly abused. Winston was an extraordinary individual even as a young boy. But then i wanted to know about winston the father. Now, imagine, imagine winston sitting at his dining table at checkers on the seventh of december, 1941. An awesome date. He was there with his daughter, sarah, mary, and his daughterinlaw, pamela. And he was also sitting around that dining table with avirile hairiman, the kpr ordinarily powerful president ial envoy, and an understated hero but a superb American Ambassador gill wine ant who is the American Ambassador filling so wonderfully filling the shows the departed joe kennedy. Now, around that table that evening were the elements in those american friends of britains salvation. But there were also the elements of extraordinary personal pain. Because during that dinner, the intrip i had valet, frank sawiers came into the room and brought with him a portable radio and put it on the table and said listen to the news. And that is when win sfon and the others first heard the news of pearl harbor, the japanese attack on america. Now, for win stans estatesman this was everything he had been hoping for. At last he was able to broaden out the war and get america involved. But can you imagine the collision of feelings that he must have had when he embraced his american friends hairiman and wine ant . Because they were great, great friends, and great allies. But the austere and sometimes arrogant hairiman was also the lover of pamela. And they, he was helping tear her marriage to randolph apart. And winant was in love with sarah and it was to be an unfulfilled love which caused them both great misery and i think eventually contributed to winants suicide a few years later. While winston was rejoicing at the good fortune, and it was good fortune, of the events of that day he must also, as a father, have wept. It was triumph wrapped up in torment. And that was the flesh and blood side of Winston Churchill. So much pain. And that man experienced so much private pain throughout his life. And thats one reason why i think he adopted that policy of kbo. Kbo. Just get on with it. But what i want to ask this evening is kbo, keep buggering on, as we heard from that wonderful film last night that i will get on to in a minute. Does it have continuing relevance . Well, of course it does. I mean, joe, you made this wonderful film, and it was a real privilege to be able to see an early sighting of it. To come and present that film in front of this audience, man, that took courage. [ laughter ] but it also brought home to me huge personal enjoyment because not only did i love the film as a work of art, it reminded me your historical consultant was jeanlucish who was my old professor at the Fletcher School almost 40 years ago. It reminded me of elizabeth layton, Elizabeth Nell as i knew her. What an extraordinary woman she was. She was very kind with the help she gave me. And it also got me thinking of how long it took to make one trip in the London Underground in those days. [ laughter ] but this is an era, today, of kbo. Just like it was then. How did winston respond . We saw that in your film, joe. We saw him making what was perhaps one of the goest speeches ever made in the english language. Im not going to do it all because we saw that last night. But what he said, we shall go on to the end, not to victory, not to success, but go on to the end. Because he did not know what the outcome would be. Chilling words in many respects. We shall fight, whatever the cost may be. We shall never is yosurrender. Its the ultimate expression at that time of kbo. Total uncertainty in a time of greatest danger. But it was not and this is the point that i want to make. It was not simply an expression of blind stubbornness. It was an example of winston never losing sight of the longer term, even at a time when he was surrounded by chaos. Never lost sight of the longer term or of the deeper game. I think some people call it the vision thing. Because he went on to say this, and we saw that last night, too, the closing words of that film. They are not so wellknown but i think its equally important as those early remarks. He went on to say that even if this island or large part of it were to were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas would carry on the struggle until, in gods good time, the new world w all its power and might, sets forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. He knew what it was about. He never lost sight of what he was fighting for. And what was he fighting for . He was futing for the survival of our values, of western values, values which we shared at that time, we as britain shared at that time with the new world. And you know noknow, even at th going through all those perils, winston of course won. And today were back in a world of uncertainty and confusion. Well, you know, politics. Politics, they say its the worlds second oldest profession. That takes most of its rules from the first. [ laughter ] but i think, you know, i really do think winston would be really distressed at what politics has become right at this moment, where it seems to be all about volume and venom and how distressed he would be at the lack of mag nam imity which we see in modern politics. You know we are rather like i think right now we are rather like a man bent over examining his shoe laces because they happen to be untied, and being obsessed by the fact that your shoe laces are untied. And yes of course we have problems. But while you are bending over you exposure vulnerable parts to the rest of the world. And that is exactly what we seem to be doing. Kbo does to the mean keep bending over. [ laughter ] now, winston, i suspect, probably couldnt have seen his shoe laces, and he would certainly never have bent down to tie them himself. What he would have done he would have raised himself to his full 55 1 2 and stood on the corpse was his political adversaries and he would have looked around him. He would have looked ahead. He would have looked to the future, as he always did, even during those dark days of 1941. And he would have seen, even today, a western world which still, at its full height when it stands up tall, towers above the rest. And i dont mean to be unkind to any other culture or part of the world, but i think its an objective fact that still here in the west we are well, let me put it this way. I am a realist. I have to be. Ive got four kids. But im also an optimist. And i have to be. I have got four kids. But i cannot think of any other part of the planet where i would have more wanted to have brought up my children and watched them bring up their children than in this part of the world. [ applause ] you know, for the last 300 years, this part of the word has been the western has had the most decisive innovations. We have the most worldchanging invention. We have done so much of the inspiration and produced so much of the culture that has marked the progress of humanity. And lets not say 300 years. Lets say 1,000 years. Why have we been so successful . Not because we have the best politicians. No. But because we have the finest universities. We have the most vibrant culture. We have the rule of law. We have freedom of association. We have freedom of ideas. We have tolerance even in this rather awkward age of social media which allows us to move forward together. Now of course we have in that time experienced some terrible setbacks. But the march of progress over all those centuries has been inexforible and we have to put those setbacks into context. We are right now in a kbo moment, i think. The way ahead seems to be lost in the mist around us. In america there is more Political Division than i think there has ever been in my lifetime. In germany, supposed to be the strongest part of europe, we have a chancellor who has been humbled recently and who now is much weaker and who face as very difficult time ahead. In britain we have mrs. May, who may not. [ laughter ]. And that gives me no pleasure to say so. And so much of the rest of europe is in free fall. I mean spain this week, greece last year, greece next year, italy every other year. It is a very difficult time. And brexit. Everybody look, everybody else today seems to have mentioned brexit. So i am not going to miss my chance. And im going the impose upon your patience. Winston said he only required three thing of an audience. That they be well educated, well intentioned, and well oiled. I hope i am a on to a winner this evening. Particularly with the well oiled. I mean, its so its been so often mentioned and so im going to im going to ask you to take a look beyond kbo and simply the shortterm and todays headlines. Now, what side would winston have been on . Every side in the debate always claims winston as they grab a quote, probably out of context, and say winston would have thought this and thought that. Well, winston had a political life of 65 years. 65 long years. And i think he probably said almost everything probably several times over. And the whole idea that we can be clear about what winston would have said or would have thought is nonsense. But i do believe he saw europe in its broadest sense. He saw its history. He valued its cultures, its values. Not just its institutions. Institutions come, they change, and they go. I think he would have enjoyed the diversity of europe. How can i put this to you, to a nice, polite audience . Let me tell you a little story. Imagine that you are in a Railway Carriage and a young couple come and sit opposite you. And as they are sitting there, they start making love. Now, as a frenchman, you would start applauding. [ applause ] as a german, you would sit and take detailed statistical analysis. As an italian, you would get up and join in. [ laughter ] as a greek you would sell tickets. And as an irishman you would dance a jig. But if you were an englishman, you would sit and stare stoically out of the window as if absolutely nothing was going on. [ laughter ] viv de la france. Except of course if you came from brussels you would get out a big manual of rules and regulations to make sure they were doing it properly. But thats another matter. Of course the differences that we have in europe, differences in cultures and differences in objective have caused much tension and torment over the centuries. But those differences have also been the source of an endless outpouring of wonderful culture, of music, of literature, of art, of science, of drama, of medicine, of architecture, and political thinking. And that was europes great role until, of course, Young America came along and showed that there were other ways to do things, too. Now, i want to leave a thought in your mind over the future of europe. And it may have you reaching for your glasses. I see allan, my Dear Colleague down there, allan, who we have different views on this matter. He will just have to indulge me this evening. But differences in europe, yes, have caused much tension and turmoil. But the greatest turmoil and tragedy, i suggest, has been caused not by competing nationalism in europe, but by the attempt of one authority or ideology or to bring about one system in europe. And that has been true ever since the days of napoleon. And they have all failed. Now the west has found such great strength in its diversity, not in its uniformity. So what side of the brexit issue would winston have taken . Well, according to joe, i watched it last night. I watched it very, very closely. I learned something. You talked about learning something from making your film. I learned something about watching your film. And i think winston would have said, as he did in your film last night, do not trust establishments. Do not trustee leets. Trust the people. Trust elites. Trust the people. Take a trip on the train. As he did. I dont expect you all to agree with that, but i would ask you to think about it, at least. You know, we have so many reasons to be optimistic if only we could raise our eyes from our shoe laces and remember just how good we are. Remember the berlin wall, how it was pulled down. It wasnt destroyed by military might. It was pulled down by the bare hands of millions of ordinary men and women who wanted to be part of us, to share with us what we have. And yes, economic advantages, but it was so much more than that. It was our freedoms, our values, our dreams. I started with winstons beautiful yule yulegy to his predecessor about the flickering lamp. But these words are as relevant today as they ever were, the only guide to a man is his conscience. The only shield to his memory is the recollect attitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without the shield because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations. But with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor. Winston was a man of honor, a man who never bothered to look at his shoe laces. He was a man of vision. He was a man of dreams, great dreams, dreams that inspired a world and went on to save it for us. So thank you for listening this evening. And may your dreams go with you. [ applause ] and a look at the floor of the house. Minority leader nancy pelosi speaking now. This is over on cspan live as the house debates the republican tax reform bill, a final vote on the measure in the house is scheduled in just a few minutes. 1 30 eastern time. Its likely a procedural vote will be held first, followed by the vote on final passage in just a few minutes. If approved in the house it will move on to the senate this afternoon for debate and votes with a late night possible vote in the senate if all ten hours of debate are used. You can watch over on cspan and the senates work later live on cspan2. Sunday on cspans q and a, Heritage Foundation distinguished fellow lee edwards chronicles his 60 year involvement in the conservative movement. I met joe mccarthy through my father who was something of a confident ant to him. And he was a hale fellow well met. He liked to party. He liked toa drink or two. And as long as you didnt talk about communism, you couldnt ask for a more fun guy to be with. But he was very serious about that. And he was also someone who did not take advice very well. And he consequently said things and even did things that hurt the cause of the anticommunism for some time. Q and a, sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. In 1953, Winston Churchill was awarded the nobel prize in literature for his sixvolume book, the second world war. Up next on american
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