Victor Bailey, Professor of History at the University of Kansas and Director of the Hall Center for the Humanities, will present a lecture on the political rise of Winston Churchill. In "Winston Churchill: The Greatest Adventurer of Modern Political History" Bailey will answer the question of how Churchill was able to become the trusted and beloved political figure remembered today when, as late at 1939, he was reviled by the British as a fanatical, fickle egotist and distrusted by the Roosevelts as an alcoholic imperialist.

Bailey is a scholar of British history, primarily the history of Victorian British society, the environment in which Churchill was raised and began his political career. Bailey has published one article on ?Churchill as Home Secretary: Prison Reform? (1985), and numerous articles and books about Victorian society and crime in Victorian Britain. Among these are: ?The Shadow of the Gallows: The Death Penalty and the British Labour Government? (2000); This Rash Act: Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (1998); and ?English Prisons, Penal Culture, and the Abatement of Imprisonment, 1895-1922? (1997).

Bailey received his Ph.D. in History from the Centre for the Study of Social History at the University of Warwick in 1975 and has taught at KU since 1988. During that time he has taught courses on British history and established a reputation as a respected lecturer. In 1999 he won two teaching awards: a W.T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence and an award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, awarded by History Department graduate students.

Bailey has also received numerous research grants and awards including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers (1999-2000), a Walter D. Love Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies for his work on English prisons (1998), and a National Science Foundation (Law and Social Science Panel) Research Grant (1999).


This event is free and open to the public.

October 2, 2003
7:30 p.m.
Spencer Museum of Art Auditorium