MAGNIFICENT Chatham House in St James’s, London SW1, is much more than a building, being the nom de guerre of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. This remarkable body—learned, but not part of a university; devoted to the study of international relations, but proudly independent of the Foreign Office—was founded 100 years ago in response to the failures of diplomacy that led to the First World War.
International relations were too important to leave to the diplomatic corps; secrecy and amateurism should be replaced by openness and science. According to its current director, Robin Niblett, the organisation remains almost alarmingly relevant today, with conditions eerily echoing those after 1918, in the aftermath of a pandemic.
Chatham House was the brainchild of Lionel Curtis, one of the elite band of administrators who joined Lord Milner in the reconstruction of South Africa after the Boer War—Milner’s Kindergarten, as they were known. Curtis had briefly fought in the war as part of the cyclists’ section of the City Imperial Volunteers; his brother, Arthur, died there, from typhoid, after the siege of Ladysmith.
The son of an evangelical vicar, Curtis inherited his father’s earnestness. After the Boer War, he was invited to join Lord Robert Cecil’s League of Nations section at the Versailles Peace Conference, where he developed the idea for the Institute of International Affairs.
This would be a membership organisation, not beholden to government for funds. Its aim, as Foreign Secretary Robert Henderson told the 10th-anniversary dinner in 1930, was ‘to promote discussion of international affairs and to sift and disseminate knowledge of the facts which bear on relationships between nations in the conditions of modern life’.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin August 12, 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin August 12, 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.