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'Churchill and the Press' and the re-launch of the Harmsworth Room at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms
20/03/2008
The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms launches Churchill and the Press a temporary display examining Churchill’s complex relationship with the press, on view from 8 February to 11 May 2008. The exhibition coincides with the re-launch of our Corporate Hospitality suite, The Harmsworth Room, sponsored by the Harmsworth Family.
The Harmsworth Room, formerly known as Plant Room 7 was, as the name implies, an area occupied (during WWII) by electrical equipment for handling the air in the Cabinet War Rooms. It was re-modelled when taken over from HM Treasury in 2000, to be used as small conference and dining area.
As a result of investment and support from the Rothermere Foundation and the Daily Mail, it has now been thoroughly up-graded to provide modern conference facilities, comforts and ambience, as well as a character more suited to the museum and the historic setting in which it is situated. The CMCWR - the scene of Churchill's 'Finest Hour' and home to the only major museum of Churchill's life anywhere in the world - now boasts a conference facility second to none, enabling the War Rooms and its clients to meet, eat and drink in a level of comfort that the Great man himself would have endorsed.......and in a location still heavily redolent of his presence.
Everybody is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.
Winston Churchill
Aristocrat, war correspondent, politician, celebrity, Winston Churchill was all of these things and more and the way in which he used the power of the media to influence and persuade others to achieve his aims and ideals was unprecedented.
Churchill understood the power of the Press. Even at a young age, he sought to keep on good terms with the newspaper proprietors, becoming close friends with Oliver Borthwick, editor of the Morning Post, and Alfred Harmsworth, proprietor of the Daily Mail in the late 1890s.
His escapades as a war correspondent, chronicling his own capture and escape during the Boer war, guaranteed his ‘celebrity’ status. His society marriage was the first pictorial to be featured on the cover of The Times, which gave rise to a demand for personality related news. In a time before mass media, Churchill carved a unique relationship with the press that has influenced our culture today.
Churchill and the Press is accompanied by an impressive array of original newspapers courtesy of John Frost Newspapers, as well as images from Associated Newspapers and the Imperial War Museum collection and original documents from the Churchill Archive Centre, including a letter written by Churchill from the States School Prison in Pretoria.
Click here to download the full release.
