Seminars
Participants are taught in small seminar groups of up to 10 students, and receive two one-on-one tutorials with their tutor.
Sunday
Seminar 1: How Churchill’s family upbringing, including the influence of his father, his character, and adventures as a soldier and journalist contributed to his political outlook. The wider background of the ‘Liberal State’ ideology on which Britain’s prosperity and prestige as a global power in the nineteenth century were based
Seminar 2: Churchill entered politics in 1901 as Conservative. He then crossed the floor of the House of Commons to became a Liberal in 1903, through clinging to ‘Liberal State’ when the Conservative Party, pursuing Joseph Chamberlain’s alternative vision of Britain as a federated empire-state, had abandoned it. We will look at Churchill’s rapid rise in British politics before the First World War as a ‘New Liberal’, laying the foundations of social security within the ‘Liberal State’
Monday
Seminar 3: At the Admiralty at the start of the First World War, Churchill sought to minimise the effect of the European war on Britain’s economy. As Minister of Munitions, he wrestled with the beginnings of industrial corporatism. And at the Colonial Office, he sought to contain the rising challenges from mass nationalism, in Ireland, the Middle East and East Africa.
Seminar 4: After the war Churchill became an advocate for the ‘Liberal State’ as a Conservative in Stanley Baldwin’s government from 1923-28. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he held protectionism at bay, restored Britain to the Gold Standard and tried to rejuvenate Britain’s export industries, while enhancing social provision. But the world depression and high unemployment in 1929 forced him to accept that the basic economic mechanisms sustaining the ‘Liberal State’ were no longer working, and the political world had fundamentally change.
Tuesday
Seminar 5: Out of office in the 1930s, Churchill put his Wilderness Years to good use, creating Chartwell in Kent as his meeting centre and a ‘writing factory’, reconsidering his Liberalism, which he reworked in historical studies, Marlborough and The History of the English Speaking Peoples, into a series of broadly based defensive ideas addressing the rise of the dictators. He identified Communism and Fascism as equally deadly opponents of Liberal democracy long before most others did so. He then returned to politics it was to challenge the appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini.
Seminar 6: As wartime leader, he became liberalism’s armed champion. The Labour Party played a key part in his wartime coalition government, and he built a global coalition opposed to fascism which included the Soviet Union. We will also explore some of the important myths surrounding his wartime leadership, often created by Churchill himself, and the influence they have exercised.
Wednesday
Seminar 7: We consider Churchill’s ideas on the British Empire, the contributions he made to its development, and the part imperialism played in his political life. He had a unique array of talents for dealing with its complexities, and a sense of its possibilities which made imperialism a core feature of his political outlook.
Seminar 8: We will focus particularly on his thinking on India, and the part he played in the debate on Dominion Status in the 1920s and 1930s. Students will be invited to explore particular problems in Imperial policy, and the contributions Churchill made to addressing them.
Thursday
Seminar 9: At the end of Second World War, Churchill turned again to the defence of the ‘open society’, on a global scale addressing Stalinist totalitarianism emerging in the Cold War, and in British politics. The Labour Party were his peacetime antagonists following the General Election in 1945; and despite Churchill’s best efforts, ideas of economic planning and social welfare developed not just there but within his own Conservative Party in opposition.
Seminar 10: Churchill attempted to stem the tide with a magisterial chronicle of recent events, The Second World War, published in the late 1940s. and then by returning as Prime Minister at the age of 77 in 1951. He pushed forward ideas of détente between East and West, peace in industrial relations at home, and opposition to dismantling of the British Empire. This finally came about with the shock of the Suez Crisis in 1956, a year after he had finally retired from politics.
Friday
Seminar 11: We will identify questions and conclusions about Churchill’s contribution to liberal thinking across his life, and look at how his reputation has developed since he left politics up to the present day.
Seminar 12: Students will be invited to make brief presentations, in conclusion, on topics they have prepared, outlined and agree earlier in the week.
Programme timetable
The daily timetable will normally be as follows:
Saturday
14.00–16.30 - Registration
16.30–17.00 - Orientation meeting
17.00–17.30 - Classroom orientation for tutor and students
17.30–18.00 - Drinks reception
18.00–20.00 - Welcome dinner
Sunday – Friday
09.00–10.30 - Seminar
10.30–11.00 - Tea/coffee break
11.00–12.30 - Seminar
12.30–13.30 - Lunch
13.30–18.00 - Afternoons are free for tutorials, individual study, course-related field trips or exploring the many places of interest in and around Oxford.
18.00–19.00 - Dinner (there is a formal gala dinner every Friday to close each week of the programme).
A range of optional social events will be offered throughout the summer school. These are likely to include: a quiz night, visit to historic pubs in Oxford, visit to Christ Church for Evensong and after-dinner talks and discussions.
