Young doctor goes west

Winston Churchill will come under renewed scrutiny from this year's occupant of the visiting chair in British history at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.

The Robertson chair, established in the town where Churchill made his 1946 speech predicting the creation of an "iron curtain" across Europe, was held three years ago by John Charmley of the University of East Anglia, author of a fiercely critical biography of the former premier.

The 1995/96 visiting professor will be John Ramsden of Queen Mary and Westfield College, who will be researching postwar images of the Second World War: "The reputation and status of Churchill are central to this, and Fulton has an excellent collection of Churchill material," he says.

Dr Ramsden says that Churchill's six-volume history of the war has been decisive in forming views of 1939 to 1945, and argues that it was not objective: "In 1952 he dropped criticisms of Eisenhower's performance as allied commander - not because his judgement had changed, but because Eisenhower had been elected president".