Churchill’s grandson questions link with college after ‘trashing’
SIR WINSTON Churchill’s grandson has questioned whether a Cambridge University college should continue to benefit from the association with the former Prime Minister after hosting an event “trashing” his reputation.
Ex-Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames said an academic event hosted online by Churchill College was “idiotically sloppy”.
The former Minister said the event last month, entitled the Racial Consequences of Churchill, marked a “new low in the current vogue for the denigration in general of British history and of Sir Winston Churchill’s memory in particular”.
Sir Nicholas, who stood down from the House of Commons in 2019, accused those who participated of “trashing” the war leader’s reputation and questioned whether the college, home to Churchill’s personal papers and archive, should continue to benefit from the link with his family.
He said: “The college benefits enormously from Churchill’s
name. If they traduce it, should they be able to have their cake and eat it?”
He added: “It really seems to me that Churchill College should be defending his remarkable legacy, not allowing pseudo-academic detractors to smear him unchallenged.”
According to the college’s website, the event which was staged on February 11 promised a “critical reassessment of Churchill’s life and legacy in light of his views on empire and race”.
It has sparked an academic row, with Sir Nicholas penning a foreword to a Policy Exchange think tank paper co-authored by Andrew Roberts, a Churchillian scholar.
It is alleged one of the academics given a platform during the 90-minute debate said the British Empire “was far worse than the Nazis”, a statement Prof Roberts called “little more than puerile invective, more befitting the playground than the seminar hall”.
Churchill College said the series of events examining Churchill were launched after the defacing of the former leader’s statue in Parliament Square sparked a debate about his views on imperialism and race.
A recent statement said the event was intended to be “challenging” and to provide a “counterpoint to the many more celebratory events that the college stages, but, by its very nature, it was never going to be easy or definitive”.