Churchill Archives Centre

Archives Centre Open Day
2025-09-17 11:30 - 15:30 (Europe/London) | Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Churchill College, Cambridge, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
Home to over 600 collections on the history of modern Britain, Churchill Archives Centre opens its doors for an open day, as part of Open Cambridge. The Archives Centre looks after the papers of politicians, civil servants, social scientists, campaigners, journalists, military leaders, and scientists.

Visit our reading rooms to see archival treasures from across our collections, including some of our most popular items and those showcasing the incredible history of modern architecture.

Find out how architectural blueprints are made as we demonstrate the creation of photographic blueprints (cyanotypes). Learn more about this historic photographic process and the conservation and preservation of our architectural plans and other papers. See demonstrations of the processes of cleaning, flattening, repairs and housing of historic papers.

Meet our friendly team to learn more about both our collections and all the work that goes into sharing them.

And if you’re interested in learning more about Churchill College, then book onto a tour of College’s grounds and gardens, taking place at 1pm.

For a map of the College site, indicating the location of the Archives Centre and parking, please click here.

Please note we have a Changing Places toilet in the adjacent main Churchill College building.

Bob Edwards centenary: His life, work and legacy
2025-09-26 17:45 - 19:30 | Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
Join us for this panel session on Robert Edwards’ Life and Legacy chaired by Roger Highfield (Director of the Science Museum Group).

The panel will feature Emma Barnett (British Broadcaster and Journalist with a young IVF child), Fiona Bennett (former Executive Editor of Reproductive BioMedicine Online journal which Bob started), Louise Brown (the first IVF baby), Professor Sir Richard Gardner (Bob’s PhD student and Oxford University Lecturer), Dr Jenny Joy (Bob’s daughter and creator of his archive), and Dr Mike Macnamee (former CEO of Bourn Hall Clinic who knew Bob well)

A display of copies from archives relating to the history of IVF will be available to view before and after the panel session. There will also be a drinks reception for all attendees following the panel session.

The Life and Legacy panel session at Churchill College is part of a two-part conference, and an earlier session on Science and clinical practice organised by the Loke Centre for Trophoblast Research will take part earlier in the day. For more information and to register for either, or both, sessions see our event registration page.

The Bob Edwards centenary conference is supported by Cambridge Reproduction.

Biography compiled by Dr Jenny Joy (one of Bob’s five daughters and creator of his archive)A Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge from 1979, having been a Senior Member from 1974, Sir Robert (Bob) Edwards stands as one of the most influential scientific figures of the 20th century. Alongside Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy, he carried out basic and clinical research that led to the successful implementation of in vitro fertilisation as a treatment of infertility in 1978. The three established Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge in 1980, the world’s first IVF clinic. Bob Edwards was born in Batley, West Yorkshire, in 1925 to a working-class family. He stands as one of the most influential scientific figures of the 20th century. A charismatic and engaging Yorkshireman, his unwavering determination, farsightedness, and intellectual rigour brought about a revolution in infertility treatment, earning him the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2010. After serving in the army and completing a degree in zoology at the University of Bangor in 1951, he moved to the Institute of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained a doctorate in genetics under Alan Beatty in 1955. His research work here was focussed on understanding chromosomal errors in egg maturation, leading him to collaborate with his future wife, Ruth Fowler, who would also become his lifelong scientific collaborator. Ruth was a geneticist and was descended from a line of distinguished scientists and her highly significant research work in the field spanned more than three decades. After spells of working in California, London, and Glasgow, Bob accepted a fellowship in Cambridge in 1963. It was during these early days in Cambridge that human egg maturation and its anomalies, and achieving human fertilisation in vitro, came to dominate his interests. He was a prolific writer during this time, with his publications including a 1965 paper in The Lancet that laid out the course of IVF studies for the next two decades and a 1969 paper in Nature with Barry Bavister and Patrick Steptoe describing the first fertilisation of a human egg in vitro. Bob was also a strong advocate for public understanding of science, particularly its role in addressing infertility and genetic disorders. His insights on reproductive bioethics and his key role in founding the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology and running its journals solidified his reputation as a key figure in reproductive medicine. In 2000, at the age of 75, he launched Reproductive BioMedicine Online, a journal that emphasised rapid publication and the exploration of controversial topics. His tireless energy and indefatigable interest in scientific advances meant he was still attending conferences, promoting his journal and giving lectures into his early eighties. He died in 2013 aged 87 after a long illness.

Roger Highfield is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group, where he worked on the exhibition IVF: 6 Million Babies Later, and a visiting professor at the Dunn School, Oxford, and UCL. Before, he joined the Group, he was the editor of New Scientist and Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph, where he interviewed Bob Edwards several times. A member of the UKRI-Medical Research Council, Roger has written ten popular science books, including After Dolly (with Ian Wilmut) and The Dance of Life (with Magda Zernicka-Goetz). www.rogerhighfield.com

Roger Highfield

Emma Barnett is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist and author. She joined the Today programme, the BBC’s flagship breakfast news show, in May 2024 – as she assumed a wider role across BBC TV and News, fronting documentaries and exclusive interviews.

Until April 2024, Emma was the presenter of Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, the longest running women’s programme in the world – a show she took to become the BBC’s most downloaded podcast. She has twice been named the UK’s best speech radio presenter by the ARIAS. Known for her agenda-setting interviews and scoops delivered in her warm but forensic manner, Emma has welcomed queens and prime ministers, pop stars and political prisoners to talk with her on the microphone – with many others along the way.

She previously presented BBC’s Newsnight and her eponymous daily, three hour BBC 5 Live radio programme.

She wrote the books ‘Period. It’s About Bloody Time’ and ‘Maternity Service’, as well as writing a bi-weekly newspaper column for The iPaper.

Emma also presented a global interviews programme on Bloomberg TV – with high profile one-to-one interviews with international figures from across the world of politics, sport, culture, entertainment and technology.

Emma Barnett

Fiona Bennett was one of the small team which founded Reproductive BioMedicine Online in 2000. She arrived at this point via a B.Sc. degree with Honours in Genetics from Edinburgh University, a Commonwealth Scholarship to the University of British Columbia, an M.Sc. degree in plant host–parasite relationships and jobs as a plant pathologist at both the Scottish Plant Breeding Station near Edinburgh and the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge. Following a 6-year career break for her three children, she took on a part-time editorial role working with Bob Edwards on the journal Human Reproduction at Bourn Hall. Ten years later in 2000, by now almost full-time, Bob asked her to join him as Executive Editor of RBMOnline – his new, revolutionary publishing venture. Her role involved setting up all office systems, quality control of content, timely publication of papers online and in print, as well as travelling widely with Bob to conferences and meetings. Fiona retired from active involvement in RBMOnline in 2010.

Fiona Bennett

Louise Brown was born on 25 July 1978 amid a media frenzy around the world and called “the test tube baby”. Her birth was the result of the pioneering work of Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe and their team, including research assistant and embryologist Jean Purdy. It also marked the conclusion of a 10 years trying to conceive by her parents John and Lesley Brown.

Today Louise works in a bakery as well as travelling the world meeting people in the ever-growing fertility sector.

Louise Brown

Professor Sir Richard Gardner studied Natural Sciences at St Catharine’s Cambridge before doing a PhD in the Physiological Laboratory with Bob Edwards. In 1973 he was appointed to a University Lectureship in Zoology at Oxford where, from 1978 until his retirement in 2008, he held a Royal Society Research Professorship. His research interests include investigating the lineage and patterning of cells in early mammalian development and the biology and properties of the various types of stem cells derived from early embryos.

Gardner was awarded the Zoological Society’s Scientific Medal in 1977 and elected to the Royal Society in 1979. He received the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology in 1999, the Royal Society’s Royal Medal in 2001, and a Knighthood in 2005. Gardner gave the British Fertility Society’s Patrick Steptoe Memorial Lecture in 2015 and was awarded the British Society for Developmental Biology’s Waddington Medal in 2018. For many years he chaired the Royal Society’s working group on ‘human embryo research’, and in 2006-8 served as President of the Institute of Biology (now the Royal Society of Biology).

Richard Gardner

Dr Jenny Joy is the second of Bob Edwards’ five daughters. She was involved in his working life from a young age, first by helping with the references for his landmark book Conception in the Human Female, and then by two periods of work at Bourn Hall (first as an auxiliary nurse when it first opened, and later helping in the labs during the first attempts at micro-manipulation). Following his death in 2013, she spent many months cataloguing all the working papers that he had stored at his home at Duck End Farm, and these today form the bulk of his archive.

Jenny was instrumental in getting one of Edwards’ Oldham incubators to the Science Museum, and was a Trustee of the Edwards and Steptoe Research Trust. She also takes any opportunity to promote her father’s work to ensure he is not forgotten. More recently she has focussed on her mother’s huge contribution to this work which has not previously been widely recognised.

Jenny Joy

Dr Mike Macnamee joined the Bourn Hall team as an endocrinologist in 1985. He became the Vice President of pre-clinical development for Serono after its acquisition of Bourn Hall and led the successful management buyout in 2005 regaining Bourn Hall’s independence.

Mike worked with Bob Edwards and Patrick Steptoe throughout the 1980s to help develop IVF into a robust clinical therapy.

Mike Macnamee

‘De Gaulle is France. Not a bastard.’ Churchill in the shadow of de Gaulle.
2025-10-21 17:30 | Sixties Room, Churchill College, Cambridge, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
Free lecture by Richard Vinen, Professor of History at King’s College London.

British history is often seen as being, as David Cannadine once put it, ‘In Churchill’s Shadow.’ It is, therefore, revealing to put Churchill alongside de Gaulle because de Gaulle is the one politician in a democratic country to have enjoyed a stature comparable to Churchill. The fact that the two men are comparable, though, does not mean that they are identical. On the contrary, it is the asymmetries between them and their careers which are most revealing. Churchill was, above all, a war leader and, especially, the man of 1940. De Gaulle was almost unknown when he came to London in 1940 and later looked back on the mythologization of his role in that year with exasperation. De Gaulle was a supremely successful peacetime politician, who sought to ‘marry France to her century’ and who succeeded in this enterprise at the very moment when the British became painfully conscious of their country’s relative decline and, sometimes, of the way in which the cult of their own war leader illustrated that decline. Comparing Churchill and de Gaulle also highlights qualities in de Gaulle that may seem surprising – his modesty, flexibility. Both men were, as de Gaulle said of Churchill, ‘artists of history’ who crafted their own myth but, at least in the later part of their careers, de Gaulle understood, better than Churchill, the differences between myth and reality.

Richard Vinen teaches history at King’s College London. He was an Archives by-fellow at Churchill College Cambridge in 2024. His most recent book – The Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle – was published by Bloomsbury in August. He has written about his research amongst the Archives Centre’s collections in De Gaulle and Churchill: archival encounters with the two titans.

The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement in historical perspective
2025-11-13 13:00 - 2025-11-14 16:30 | Churchill College, Storey's Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
On 15 November 1985 the governments of the United Kingdom and of Ireland signed an Agreement – with the status of an international treaty – which stipulated that Dublin would have a consultative role in the administration of Northern Ireland. This marked the most important constitutional and diplomatic development in Anglo-Irish relations since Partition in 1920. Opposed by both the Unionists and the Republicans, enthusiastically endorsed by both the US and the EEC, the Agreement was pursued by Dublin and London as a step to improve security and cooperation in Ireland. However, it had wider, partly unintended, consequences which contributed to the starting of the Peace Process in the 1990s, in particular by fostering a bi-partisan approach to the Troubles.

On the fortieth anniversary of the signing of this momentous document, the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College Cambridge and the Faculty of History, with the generous support of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, organise a major conference. Historians, in dialogue with some of the policy-makers, civil servants, and diplomats who crafted the treaty or were involved in the subsequent Peace Process, will reassess the making, immediate impact and long-term legacy of the Agreement.

Click here for a detailed programme and information about the speakers

Day one on Thursday 13th November will run 13:00 – 18:30

Day two on Friday 14th November will run 09:00 – 16:30

Geopolitical Risk: Learning from the Past – Shaping the Future.
2026-03-09 12:30 - 2026-03-11 12:00 | Møller Institute, Storey's Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
A Churchill Archives Conference

Churchill delivering the ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946

“Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and the world, but no one paid any attention.”

In Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946, Winston Churchill gave an address entitled ‘The Sinews of Peace’, in which he warned of an ‘iron curtain’ descending across the European continent and called for a strengthening of the Western alliance against Soviet expansionism. His remarks were delivered at a time of heightened international tension, in the aftermath of the Second World War and in the shadow of the atomic bomb.

Eighty years on, the global outlook seems equally challenging as the leaders of today grapple with the rise of totalitarianism, the resurgence of nationalism, the pace of new technology, and the risks posed by a rapidly changing world.

What can we learn from the past and how? What are the main geopolitical risks facing the world today, where do they come from and how are they best identified, prioritized and managed? This conference will be of interest to aspiring leaders. It will bring together historians with practitioners and analysts. It aims to provide context and to create a better framework for understanding and harnessing the complex links between past, present and future.

There will be an opportunity to tour the Churchill Archives Centre and view some of our most celebrated documents and artefacts, and the conference includes a dinner in the Dining Hall of Churchill College, hosted by the Master of Churchill College, Professor Sharon Peacock.

Our outstanding lineup of speakers and panelists includes: Michael Chertoff; Admiral Michael McConnell; General Lord Dannatt; Sir David Spiegelhalter; Dame Diane Coyle; Professor David Reynolds; and Professor Sharon Peacock. Lord (Andrew) Roberts will give the closing address. Lord (Nicholas) Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, who will open the conference, commented:

“It is now 80 years since my grandfather’s ‘iron curtain’ speech in which he warned of the dangers confronting the post war world and outlined the need for ‘sinews of peace’. I am delighted that his words will form the starting point for this conference, looking at global risk today.”

Lord Soames

A detailed programme, including biographies of speakers and panellists, can be downloaded here.

Hosted by the Churchill Archives Centre and held at the Møller Institute.

If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Samuel Venn.

How to preserve your past: Workshop on caring for your own photographs and archives at home
2026-03-21 13:00 - 16:00 | Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Churchill College, Cambridge, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
Free event, registration essential

The event is fully booked but you can join the waiting list

Join Churchill Archives Centre and independent community archivist and artist educator Cassia Clarke for a practical, hands-on session designed to equip you with mindful and practical approaches to handle, store and preserve your personal photographs and ephemera at home. The session will blend compassionate conservation principles with practical and sustainable methodologies.

The workshop will include sessions on the purpose, handling, documentation and storage of your own archives. There will also be a display of example archival materials from Churchill Archives Centre collections such as personal journals, scrapbooks and photograph albums.

This workshop is supported by Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination and is part of the Cambridge Festival

Breaking Barriers: Women in Politics panel discussion with clips from 'Groundbreakers' documentary
2026-03-23 17:30 - 19:00 | Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB3 0DS, United Kingdom
Free event in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College. No need to book.

Baroness Hilary Armstrong, Baroness Gillian Shephard, Deborah McGurran, Anne Campbell, Dame Athene Donald, Baroness Anne Jenkin, and Boni Sones OBE at Churchill College in 2024

The 2024 general election marked a historic milestone: a record 263 women were elected as MPs. Women make up 40% of all MPs sitting in the House of Commons. In the months leading up to this election, the founder of Women’s Parliamentary Radio, Boni Sones OBE, along with associates Jackie Ashley and Deborah McGurran, launched a new initiative: Groundbreakers. In partnership with the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, their aim was to capture the voices and stories of some of the most influential women in British parliamentary history.

Join us at Churchill College for the culmination of this project: the screening of the documentary ‘Groundbreakers’, where some of the most influential women in Parliament share their stories about their personal and political journeys, in the early years of women’s representation in the House. The event will include a panel discussion with founder of Women’s Parliamentary Radio, Boni Sones OBE and associate Jackie Ashley in conversation with Anne Campbell (former Labour MP for Cambridge) and Baroness (Gillian) Shephard (former Conservative Minister) who were interviewed for the documentary. This event offers a unique opportunity to hear first hand stories and insights from leading female politicians from across the political spectrum as they reflect on their journeys, challenges, and greatest achievements in Westminster and beyond.

This event is part of the Cambridge Festival

You can find out more about the Groundbreakers project in our online exhibition and in this history of the project.
