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Showing posts with label CHG meetings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CHG meetings. Show all posts
We have just been informed that copies of the new issue of the Conservative History Journal (our printed but friendly rival) is available at the Conservative Party Conference. More to the point, copies to existing subscribers are in the post and those interested in subscribing can do so on the Group's website: http://conservativehistory.wordpress.com/. You know it makes sense.
On the website you will also find information about the next event on November 25 in the House of Commons when Lord Hurd and Edward Young will speak about their new biography of Disraeli. There will be more information about the event nearer the time.
The next Conservative History Group event will take place on October 30 at 6.30 pm in Committee Room 2 in the House of Lords. That means having to go through St Stephen's Entrance so it may be as well to be prepared for a long queue.
Dr Caroline Shenton, Director of the Parliamentary Archives, will be talking about her book The Day Parliament Burned Down an account of the great fire of the building in October 1834, so memorably recorded by J. M. W. Turner, who set up his easel across the river and sketched furiously while firemen fought the blaze. This is the first book to give a full account of the event.
If you want to reserve a place at the event, click here and if you want to pre-order a copy of the book, in order to ask Dr Shenton to sign it on the night (Parliamentary rules say that they cannot be sold during the event) you can do so either through Amazon here or by e-mailing Dr Shenton directly on cshenton_AT_hotmail.co.uk.
For all those who are in or near London this Thursday evening: D. R. Thorpe will be speaking about "The Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan's infamous Cabinet reshuffle 50 years ago. Of course, he did not allow gossip on the subject to swirl round Westminster for months beforehand but struck suddenly. Here are the details. Hope to see some of you there.
The next event of the Conservative History Group will take place on July 5, when D. R. Thorpe, prize-winning biographer of Macmillan, Eden, Douglas-Home and Selwyn Lloyd, will talk about Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's infamous "night of the long knives", whose fiftieth anniversary falls on July 13, this year.
The notice sums up:
In July 1962, following a slew of disappointing by-election results, Harold Macmillan dramatically sacked seven members of his Cabinet. It was seen as a ruthless cull, and marked the beginning of the end of the Macmillan government. The Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe scathingly remarked: 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.'It will be interesting to hear Dr Thorpe's analysis of the event and whether it did, in fact, signal the beginning of the end or, alternatively, extended the life of the government.
The meeting will be held at 7 pm, July 5, in the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House. It might be a good idea to register here though, I imagine, it will be possible to get in without it. Please remember security in Parliament and allow time for that.
The Conservative History Group, which has a new Director in the person of Nigel Fletcher, will be holding its first post-election meeting.
Tuesday, 29th June at 6.30pm
Venue: The Grimond Room, Portcullis House
Our speaker will be Dr Tim Bale of Sussex University, whose book The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron was published earlier this year. With Mr Cameron now in Downing Street, it is an opportune moment to consider the recent history of the Party, and we will be joined in doing so by our Chairman, Keith Simpson MP, and by ConservativeHome’s Co-Editor Jonathan Isaby.
Something else that might interest readers of this blog is the forthcoming publication (on July 2) of a new book about one of the greatest Conservative politicians and statesmen, Sir Robert Peel.
The author is Richard A. Gaunt, a friend of the Conservative History Group and of the Conservative History Journal and the full title is: Sir Robert Peel - His Life and Legacy. It will be published by I. B. Tauris.
The next meeting will take place on November 3, at 6.30 in the Grimond Room, Portcullis House (that's the one that looks like a giant crematorium on the embankment). The speaker will be Ion Trewin, author of Alan Clark: the Biography. All are welcome but you may be encouraged to join the CHG.
Details of the next two CHG meetings have been confirmed.
MONDAY 21 APRIL 6.30pm
Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood Speech 40 Years On
Speakers: Simon Heffer & Nicholas Hillman
Venue: Thatcher Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons
TUESDAY 17 JUNE, 6.30pm
Lloyd George & His Women
Speaker: Ffion Hague
Venue: Thatcher Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons
As a special inducement, there will be a new edition of the Conservative History Journal available by the June meeting.
The next event hosted by the Conservative History Group will take place on April 21 in the House of Commons. The journalist and author Simon Heffer, Enoch Powell's biographer, will be speaking about Powell's "rivers of blood" speech and its consequences on the fortieth anniversary.
Further information about time and exact place to follow.
It is not often that I do more on this blog than make announcements, mostly about the Journal (and yes, I am looking for articles, preferably very soon and, if possible, about the Anglosphere) but I was present at Jonathan Aitken's talk and was greatly intrigued by one or two things he said.
Mr Aitken told a number of highly entertaining stories, including one about a dinner at which there were present former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, former President Richard Nixon, Marcia Falkender (Baroness Falkender or Forkbender as Private Eye used to call her) and Mr Aitken himself.
The highlight of the dinner was, apparently, the two politicians singing, as a duet, Sir Joseph Porter's song from HMS Pinafore, "When I was a lad..". Clearly a dinner to remember.
Mr Aitken spoke at length about being a speechwriter (that being one half of the advertised title) and how seriously he took his duties when he wrote speeches for John Selwyn Lloyd, Chancellor of the Exchequer, political fixer and, later, Foreign Secretary.
Being a speechwriter is not easy, as one has to produce speeches that sound as if the person who is saying them wrote them himself (or herself, Margaret Thatcher famously went over her speeches many times, changing them and honing them till they became her own). The young Mr Aitken consulted the man who was then and probably until now the greatest speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, who worked for JFK.
The point Mr Aitken was making is that a speechwriter has to get into the speech-maker's head and that is what Ted Sorensen maintained he did. In question time I asked whether the movement was only one way or whether the speechwriter also shaped the speech-maker.
Mr Aitken thought about it and agreed that there was a great deal of it. For instance, JFK was not a particularly eloquent personality though he had a dry wit, whose flavour his speech writers managed to capture. But the great orator with vision and ideas was largely created by Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger.
The whole concept is fascinating. I see it as something like the famous Escher drawing of one hand drawing the other, which is drawing the first, the two in slightly different positions.
