The White House Bronze:

For more than fifty-five years a bust of Winston Churchill has been part of the permanent collection of the White House. An identical bust owned by the British Embassy in Washington has twice been loaned in the present century to American presidents for display in the Oval Office, resulting in a minor stir each time the bust was properly returned following the terms of the loan. Lost amid the roar has been the story of the bust that always remains, a story told here by a promising young scholar and recipient of the 2020 National Churchill Leadership Center Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

One October evening in 1965, a gathering at the White House brought about the reunion of several wartime figures, or “wartime friends,” to honor Sir Winston Churchill. Though the former prime minister had died the previous January, this assembly of the great and the good, all famed in their own right, were set to celebrate Churchill’s legacy and the bonds he helped to shape between the nations represented by those in attendance.¹

The purpose of the event was the presentation to the White House permanent collection of a bust of Churchill, which had been donated by some of these same wartime friends now present. The bust is one of several bronze castings made by Jacob Epstein in 1947. This generous gift was a symbol of the bonds between the United Kingdom and the United States and the man