Truman Visits Chartwell

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) was the thirty-third President of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. He and Churchill met several times over the course of eleven years. Truman also has the distinction of being the only American president to have visited Churchill at Chartwell. Chartwell Curator Katherine Carter looks at the Churchill-Truman relationship by examining some of the artefacts in the house's collection.

When former President Harry S. Truman visited Winston Churchill at his home at Chartwell, he became the most powerful politician ever to walk through the magnificent oak doors of the Churchills’ country home. Despite the family having welcomed the great and the good of the mid-twentieth century, from royalty to film stars and from artists to military leaders, Chartwell gatherings were usually small-scale, intimate affairs. You had to be someone either very close to the Churchills or very much admired by them in order to receive an invitation to Chartwell. For this reason Truman’s visit offers a unique prism through which we can view the relationship between two major figures in history.

Writing this as I am from my desk at Chartwell, I often find myself making connections between those whom the Churchills entertained here and the collection for which it is our privilege to care and share its stories with the quarter-of-a-million visitors who come here every year. The “special relationship”—and Churchill’s own relationship with America and Americans—is a constant thread throughout the rooms of