Allen Packwood OBE, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge is visiting Sydney and has offered to address CamSoc NSW members and guests. His talk, How Churchill Waged War, draws on the private papers of Sir Winston Churchill to explore how one of history's most remarkable leaders made decisions under pressure - and what those decisions cost.

From the catastrophe of the Dardanelles to the fall of Singapore, the archive reveals a Churchill far more complex than the legend. Given the world we find ourselves in right now, we suspect the evening will feel rather timely.

Allen is not just a keeper of these papers -- he has spent his career interpreting them. His book How Churchill Waged War was published in 2018, and his most recent work, Churchill's D-Day, co-authored with General Lord Dannatt, was published for the eightieth anniversary of Operation Overlord in 2024. He was awarded an OBE for services to archives and scholarship in 2016.

The Churchill Archives Centre holds the papers of Churchill, Thatcher, Major and almost 700 of their contemporaries. Allen likes to point out that it is the equivalent of four American Presidential Libraries. Expect some remarkable material.