Join the Mile End Institute for Prof Patrick Porter's lecture marking 80 years since Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri!

5 March 2026 marks the eightieth anniversary of Winston Churchill's landmark address in Fulton, Missouri. We remember it as the "Iron Curtain" speech, in which Churchill called the United States and the West to the barricades against Soviet communism. Today's Atlanticists might be tempted to see it as a monument to greater days, of transatlantic cooperation, moral clarity and solidarity between democracies. But the title of the speech was "The Sinews of Peace."

Churchill used it not just to sound a note of alarm about Moscow, but to appeal for something constructive, urging America to accept the baton of leadership over the Old World. He spoke to an America he feared was erratic, ruthless and unreliable. His speech divided Americans, for whom the very notion of an alliance with Britain was still contentious.

In this lecture, Professor Patrick Porter (Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham, and the author of Blunder: Britain's War in Iraq) and Sophia Gaston will mark 80 years since Churchill’s momentous address. Can his speech help Europe and the United States renegotiate their ‘special’ relationship under today's darkening sky?