'Transatlantic Thoughts: Winston Churchill, Anglo-America and the 'Special Relationship' Revisited'
An Address by the 168th President of The Birmingham & Midland Institute, Professor Sir David Cannadine
About Sir David
Professor Sir David Cannadine was elected to be the 168th President of The Birmingham & Midland Institute in 2020 and has played an active role in the governance of the Institute. He will stand down as President in 2024 and will be succeeded by Sir Paul Nurse, as 169th President.
He was born and grew up in Quinton in Birmingham and attended King Edward VI Five Ways School. He was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in history, at St John's College, Oxford, where he completed his DPhil, and at Princeton University where he was a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow. After completing his graduate work, he returned to Cambridge, where he was a research fellow at St John's College, and was then elected a Fellow of Christ's College and appointed to a university lectureship in history.
Sir David is a renowned author and historian who specialises in modern history, Britain and the history of business and philanthropy. He is currently the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a visiting professor of history at Oxford University, and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was the president of the British Academy 2017-21 and also serves as the chairman of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London and vice-chair of the editorial board of Past & Present.
He has served as a vice-president of the Royal Historical Society (1998–2002) and as a member of the advisory council, Public Record Office, subsequently National Archives (1999–2004); as a trustee and vice-chairman of the Kennedy Memorial Trust (1999–2010); as a trustee, vice-chair and chair of the National Portrait Gallery (2000–12); as a commissioner of English Heritage (2001–09) and as Chairman of its Blue Plaques Panel (2006–13); as a member of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee (2004–14); and as chair of Churchill 2015 (2013–15).
Sir David is also widely known as a commentator on current events, in newspapers, on the radio and on television; he has been a long-standing contributor to A Point of View, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, as the successor to Alastair Cooke's Letter from America; and he has also written and presented a series of programmes on Churchill's Other Lives. He also often contributes to contemporary discussions on the present-day British Monarch. More recently he has served on King Charles III's coronation committee.
He serves as a member of the Bank of England Banknote Character Advisory Committee; he is a trustee of the Rothschild Archive, the Gordon Brown Archive and Gladstone's Library; and of the Library of Birmingham Development Trust, the Royal Academy Trust, Historic Royal Palaces and the Wolfson Foundation. He is a vice-president of the Victorian Society, vice-chairman of the Westminster Abbey Fabric Commission, and of the editorial board of Past & Present and president of the Friends of the Imperial War Museum.
He was knighted for "services to scholarship" in 2009.
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