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Programme of events

Members' Lecture: Summits - Some 'Lessons' from History

PLACES AVAILABLE: Members only

About the event:

In his latest book, Summits: Six Meetings Which Shaped the Twentieth Century, Professor David Reynolds draws on material gleaned from newly opened archives. He reconstructs six case studies of modern summitry and explores the dynamics of how world leaders faced off against their opponents.

Using the records of the meetings, Professor Reynolds explores how modern summitry was pioneered by Neville Chamberlain’s dramatic flights to meet Hitler in September 1938 and how this set patterns for subsequent summits. There is an assessment of two defining meetings involving a trio of leaders- Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in 1945; Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1978- but the crux of the narrative is three superpower contests that defined the Cold War: the calamitous encounter between Kennedy and Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, which was a catalyst in triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis and America’s fateful involvement in Vietnam; Nixon and Brezhnev in Moscow in 1972; and the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting at Geneva in 1985 which helped to initiate a series of summits that helped to bring the Cold War to a peaceful resolution. From all of these episodes, Professor Reynolds draws insights for successful and effective summitry.  

David Reynolds is Professor of International History at Cambridge University.  His most recent books are In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (Penguin, 2004), From World War to Cold War (Oxford, 2006) and Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (Penguin, 2007).

This event is open to RUSI members only. To become a member please click here.

Refreshments shall be available from 1800.

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