2025 marked the 80th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) and VJ Day (Victory over Japan Day). From the commemorative events that were held, it appears our fascination with anniversaries is far from being satisfied. With this point in mind, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Winston Spencer Churchill on 30 November 2024, the 60th anniversary of his death on 24 January 2025 and the 80th anniversary of Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech on 5 March 2026, it seemed a propitious time to reflect on Churchill from the less trodden, international perspective. In this special issue, as an overarching framework, Allen Packwood and Richard Toye adopt Churchill’s world view that ‘Britain derived her status from its position at the focal point of three intersecting circles: Europe, the British Empire and the wider English-speaking world’: ‘Three Circles’: Winston Churchill's Approach to International Relations - Packwood and Toye. These circles expanded and contracted over the course of Churchill’s lifetime and by examining Churchill’s worldview through the lens of different countries, we are able to discern a ‘shifting, nuanced, pragmatic and political picture, with Churchill’s views and actions evolving over time in response to Britain’s relative position within the wider “three circles” paradigm’.

Churchill’s engagement with South Africa was one of long standing and began from his time as a newspaper correspondent during the Second Anglo-Boer War. A central feature of Churchill’s association with South Africa was his relationship with Jan Smuts who served as prime minister between 1920 to 1924 and, importantly, between 1939 and 1948. As Luvuyo Wotshela argues Smuts’ ‘unwavering support for, and defence of, the British Empire’ during the Second World War underscored Churchill’s steadfast belief in the British Empire: Winston Churchill and South Africa: An Enduring, yet Debatable Connection, 1899–1955 - Wotshela.

Indeed, it is perhaps the relationship between Churchill and political figures of the twentieth century that come to the fore when pushing at the boundaries of Churchill’s ‘three circles’ framework. In the case of Australia during the Second World War, Churchill’s relations with three Australian prime ministers, Robert Menzies, Arthur Fadden and John Curtin, were pushed to their limits. The fear of invasion by Japan compelled its leaders to demand it be treated as an equal with ‘a greater say in allied strategy and the disposition of its military forces’. David Lee states that Menzies, Fadden and Curtin were ‘at odds with Churchill, whom they resented as treating Australia like a colony’: Churchill and Australia: The Anxious Dominion - Lee.

This focus on Churchill’s relationship with leading political figures provides a bridge to the European circle through Churchill’s ‘alternating currents of respect and exasperation’ that punctuated his connection with Charles de Gaulle during the Second World War. More broadly, Richard Vinen outlines Churchill’s longstanding interest in France which ‘informed, but did not always dictate, his policy’. Of note is Vinen’s exploration of Churchill’s politics through the lens of French democracy. Churchill ‘understood the intricacies of Third Republic parliamentarianism. He appreciated French republicanism more generally and admired politicians who were deeply rooted in anti-clericalism and in the celebration of the legacy of the French Revolution’. This appreciation of French democracy underlines the degree to which ‘Churchill remained distant from conventional English Toryism’: Winston Churchill and France: A Certain Ideal - Vinen.

Much like France, Churchill’s relationship with Spain ‘reveals a series of diverse, and at times contradictory, aspects of his political character’. Emilio Sáenz-Francés acutely observes that Churchill’s behaviour towards Spain ‘oscillated between deep sentimentality and sharp political judgement’. We observe that Churchill’s analysis of the Spanish Civil War was ‘curiously erratic’ and perhaps a result of Churchill’s tendency towards a sentimental, quixotic, view of Spanish history. The Second World War, however, marked a much ‘more pragmatic, Sancho-Panza-like realism’ dictated by the geo-strategic realities of the Atlantic and Mediterranean lines that dominated Britain’s global imperial defence. Churchill’s relationship with Spain is complex: from observations of Spanish imperial decline in Cuba to a pragmatic approach with General Franco’s regime during the Second World War – it is perhaps ‘more Sancho than Quixote?’: Churchill and Spain: More Sancho than Quixote? - Sáenz-Francés.

Churchill’s vision of political systems cannot be better illustrated than in his tortured relationship with Russia. For Churchill, Russia occupied a position of geopolitical importance both in European and imperial terms for a ‘peaceful international order’. His ideological opposition to communism, however, complicated this picture. The Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil War forced Churchill to ‘consider the possibility of a Russia which was radical and unpredictable, or, equally worrisome, a tool of German ambitions’: Churchill and Russia: ‘A Resolve to Persevere Through Many Differences’ - Stickland.

Of course, as T. G. Otte deftly points out, it was Germany that ‘defined the trajectory of Churchill’s political career’ and the irony should not be lost since it was a country of which ‘he had little direct knowledge, whose language he did not speak and whose cultural heritage was largely unfamiliar to him’. Despite these cultural lacunae, however, Churchill was acutely aware of the necessity for Germany to be ‘firmly integrated into Europe’s security architecture’, for without this foundation ‘there could be no peace’: Churchill and Germany: A ‘Special’ Relationship - Otte.

A crucial element in Churchill’s cultivation of his international contacts through informal diplomacy was, of course, Chartwell, his country house. The critical importance of Churchill’s international contacts are woven throughout the articles within this Special Issue and, from 1922, Chartwell served as an informal diplomatic hub that proved vital to Churchill, particularly during his ‘wilderness years’. Katherine Carter argues that Churchill utilised Chartwell as a resource to strengthen his informal diplomatic and international elite networks that provided invaluable political and military information that shaped his thinking. Although Chartwell was mothballed during the Second World War itself, ‘Churchill took the lessons that he had learned into his war premiership and continued to deploy his unique brand of intense and targeted social and political diplomacy at Chequers and Ditchley Park’: Churchill and Chartwell: Private Space, Political Influence and Diplomacy in the 1930s - Carter.

These articles have demonstrated the extent of Churchill’s multifaceted reach from the late nineteenth century up to present day as his words are often evoked in many a national debate. They have demonstrated that the ‘three circles’ framework is a useful tool to understand, to explore and to push at the outer boundaries of this concept.

My deepest thanks go to Professor Daniel Laqua and Dr Jennifer Aston of Northumbria University for their unwavering support, keen eye and dedication to the completion of this Special Issue. I am indebted to both Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, and Professor Richard Toye from the University of Exeter, for indulging my idea and steering the Special Issue to final publication with unending professionalism, good humour and, hopefully, a glass of Pol Roger when schedules allow.

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