‘Winston Churchill took credit for it in 1946, but the phrase ‘iron curtain’ was first adapted from the stage by a pacifist and feminist in 1914.’ Published in the Guardian Review on 3 November 2007, this article describes how the iron curtain was taken from the theatre and converted into a political metaphor by Vernon Lee and others in the early twentieth century.
On March 5 1946, Winston Churchill and President Truman drove into the small Missouri town of Fulton. Having enjoyed a lunch of hickory-smoked country ham, they and their grateful hosts proceeded to the college gymnasium, where Churchill delivered a lecture entitled ‘The Sinews of Peace’. Though he used to occasion to advocate a ’special relationship’ between Britain and America, his widely broadcast Fulton ‘oration’ would be remembered for a different coinage. It was here that Churchill launched one of his century’s most powerful political metaphors, declaiming ‘From Stetting in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. . .’
Post a Comment
*