In The Blood

Yesterday a new exhibition In The Blood opened at Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill’s former home in Kent (CLICK). The exhibition explores Churchill's transatlantic ancestry, bringing together 50 objects, half of which have never been on public display before. For me, the star of the show is this sublime charcoal sketch of Jennie Jerome, Sir Winston's American mom, by John Singer Sargent, one of the finest artists ever to have worked in Britain. BBC News has posted a slide show of some of the items on display: CLICK. Ignore the daft title of the exhibition; it reflects the old nature/nurture debate in Psychology and implies that Sir Winston's leadership skills were genetically inherited. Clearly this case is nurture at its most blatant.