Members’ Lecture: An Address by The Rt. Hon. Lord Owen CH

13:00, 2 Sep 2008
RUSI, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET

Link to map: multimap

About the event:

Members’ Lecture

The Effect of Illness on the Decisions of Heads of Government in Times of War

Long fascinated with the inter-relationship between politics and medicine, Lord Owen will use his deep knowledge of both to look in detail at illness in heads of government.  He claims that some political leaders’ ill-conceived decisions are often connected to their own illnesses.  In his lecture, he will focus on Sir Anthony Eden’s cholangitis and drug taking at the time of Suez in 1956 and John F Kennedy’s Addison’s disease and drug taking in 1961 at the time of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and meeting with Khrushchev, in contrast to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when his medication was under much better control. 

He will also discuss the evidence from the failure to plan for the aftermath of the Iraq invasion that both President Bush and Tony Blair engaged in a pattern of reckless behaviour, bad judgement and operational incompetence symptomatic of an environmentally induced psychiatric order to which, Lord Owen maintains, modern Heads of State and CEOs are uniquely susceptible, which he calls ‘hubris syndrome’.  He will also touch on other leaders including Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, both of whom suffered with depression.

Lord Owen’s lecture will be based on a book due to be published in April 2008 by Methuen entitled ‘In Sickness and In Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years’.

The Rt. Hon. Lord Owen CH was a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 1992; Navy Minister from 1968 to 1970; Health Minister in 1974; and Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979.  He was Leader of the Social Democratic Party from 1983 to 1987 and from 1988 to 1990; and EU peace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995. 

An optional £6 sandwich lunch shall be available from 1215.

This event is open to RUSI members only. To become a member, visit http://www.rusi.org/membership/

To register for this event, please e-mail Jennifer Walker, Events Manager: jenniferw@rusi.org

For all other enquiries, please call +44 (0) 20 7747 2615.

www.rusi.org/events 

Event manager: Jennifer Walker, +44 (0)20 7747 2615

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