October 18, 2009

Rarely seen television footage of Sir Winston Churchill has been uncovered to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the college in his name at Cambridge University.

The colour footage of Sir Winston’s first and only visit to the college, along with an audio recording of his speech, has been uncovered from the university archive.

Lady Soames, the only surviving child of Sir Winston and Clementine Churchill, will plant a weeping mulberry tree in the grounds of Churchill College – in the shadow of the oak planted by her father on October 17, 1959 when he was 84. Some of the schoolchildren who were there 50-years-ago have been invited back to the ceremony.

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In the recording of his remarkably prescient speech at the college the wartime Prime Minister declared his wish for Britain to continue as a world leader in the fields of science and technology.

 

He said: “More than any other country in the world, Britain must rely on the enterprise and trained ingenuity of her people. Since we have neither the massive population, nor the raw materials, nor yet adequate agricultural land to enable us to make our way in the world with ease, we must depend for survival on our brains, on skilled minds that are at least proportionately equal to those in the United States and Soviet Russia.

 

“Let no one believe that the lunar rockets, of which we read in the press, are merely ingenious bids for prestige. They are manifestations of a formidable advance in technology. As with many vehicles of pure research, their immediate uses may not be apparent. But I do not doubt that they will ultimately reap a rich harvest for those who have the imagination and power to develop them, and to probe ever more deeply into the mysteries of the universe in which we live.”

 

Lady Soames, 87, said: “It makes me very happy and proud that I shall be literally following in my father’s footsteps in planting a tree in the grounds of Churchill College. I find it moving that as an elder statesman in the 1950s my father grasped the realities of the atomic age and was the founder of this major institution devoted to the advancement of science and technology.”

 

Churchill College, the national and Commonwealth memorial to the wartime leader, houses the archive of his papers as well as those of Margaret Thatcher and almost 600 eminent politicians, diplomats, military figures, scientists and engineers.The seed from which the idea of a Churchill College grew was planted by Sir John Colville, who was a private secretary in Downing Street during the war, and Lord Cherwell, a scientific adviser to Sir Winston while on holiday in Sicily in 1955. In the last half century 24 of Churchill’s members have won Nobel Prizes more than countries such as Russia, Sweden and China.

 

©UK Telegraph

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