The U.S. constituency of the ESU, which is administered from a National Office in New York City, is part of a vibrant worldwide network that operates through 72 branches on this side of the Atlantic, and through related components in the United Kingdom and in more than 50 other nations. Taken as a whole, the English-Speaking Union now girdles the planet, with a venerable London address at Dartmouth House near Berkeley Square, and those who belong to any of its local, regional, and national societies are nourished by a vital core of mutual interests, common values, and shared aspirations.

The branch of the ESU that serves America's capital is most visibly epitomized by an iconic monument on Massachusetts Avenue, a bronze statue of Sir Winston Churchill that was unveiled in front of the British Embassy in April of 1966. As a reminder of Sir Winston's trans-Atlantic heritage (his mother was born in the United States, and one of her ancestors was a Native American), this memorial has one foot on U.S. soil and the other on Embassy property.

Over the last few years audiences in the Nation's Capital area have enjoyed such events as a forum on The Globalization of English with television's Sir David Frost, a Salute to Actress Jean Stapleton with director Molly Smith and NPR correspondent Linda Wertheimer, and a Speaking of Shakespeare dialogue with stage and screen star Michael York. They've been treated to gatherings with such luminaries as Harvard historian Stephen Greenblatt, who had just published a bestselling biography and appreciation of William Shakespeare, with British statesman William Hague, a Conservative Party leader who introduced his elegant, book-length appraisal of William Pitt the Younger, and with CNN, MSNBC, Sirius, and Tribune Media journalist Bill Press, who has reminded us that all the world's a spin room and scrutinized the English that politicians and public-relations specialists impose upon the words we read and hear.

Since January 2002 our guests have included notables like actress Jane Alexander, who discussed her award-winning roles as a performer and her pivotal tenure as head of the National Endowment for the Arts, writer Shirley Hazzard, who was en route to a National Book Award for her novel The Great Fire, television host Robert MacNeil, who addressed a National Press Club gathering about his memoir, Looking For My Country, Renaissance scholar Gail Kern Paster, who talked about her duties as director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, psycholinguist Deborah Tannen, who delighted us with her comments about such volumes as You Just Don't Understand and I Only Say This Because I Love You, public servant Caspar W. Weinberger, who recalled some of his experiences as Secretary of Defense, and historian Garry Wills, who addressed us on topics that ranged from the Gettysburg Address to today's crisis in the Roman Catholic Church to the circumstances under which Thomas Jefferson became President in 1800.

Most ESU Washington programs are co-sponsored by other organizations, and among the institutions with which we've enjoyed cooperating are the American Institute of Architects, Arena Stage, the Arts Club of Washington, the British-American Business Association, the British Council, the Churchill Centre and its regional Society, the Cosmos Club, Dacor Bacon House, the Eisenhower Institute, the Harvard Club of Washington, the Historical Society of Washington DC, Maryland Public Television, the National Press Club, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Phi Beta Kappa Society, Politics & Prose, the Princeton Club of Washington, the Public Broadcasting Service, the Royal Oak Foundation, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, the University Club, Washington National Cathedral, WETA Radio and TV, and the Woman's National Democratic Club.

We collaborate on a regular basis with The Shakespeare Guild, and in that capacity we've co-sponsored engagements at such local venues as the British Embassy, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Washington Club, at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the Windy City, and at the Algonquin Hotel and the National Arts Club in New York. Our guests have included actors F. Murray Abraham, Simon Russell Beale, Zoe Caldwell, Richard Easton, Henry Goodman, Bill Irwin, Dana Ivey, and Roger Rees, directors Margot Harley and Robert Whitehead, and playwrights Michael Frayn, Ken Ludwig, and Peter Shaffer. We've also played an active part in Gielgud Award ceremonies such as a June 2002 revel at Lincoln Center, where stars such as John Cleese, Kitty Carlisle Hart, and Tony Randall paid tribute to Kevin Kline as the first American to receive a laurel that was created to perpetuate the legacy of a legendary actor, director, and producer. Meanwhile, in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, we've celebrated the centenary of Sir John's birth in a gala took place Monday night, April 19, 2004, at the London setting which became known as the Gielgud Theatre in 1994. BBC host Ned Sherrin oversaw a cast of presenters that included playwrights Alan Bennett and Sir David Hare, director Sir Peter Hall, and actors Dame Judi Dench, Rosemary Harris, Barbara Jefford, Sir Ian McKellen, Michael Pennington, Ian Richardson, Paul Scofield, and Sir Donald Sinden. For details about these and other Guild-related festivities, see our section on Shakespeare Programs.

Our November 2001 luncheon with statesman Roy Jenkins was covered by C-SPAN2. It was aired for the first time on Saturday, December 17, of that year, and it was repeated twice on Book TV's prime-time Public Lives showcase during the weekend of August 10-11, 2002; it appeared again a few months later in the aftermath of Lord Jenkins' death. Visit www.c-span.org for information about recordings of this and subsequent ESU features, among them a January 2002 address on Eco-Economy by environmentalist Lester R. Brown, a March 2002 discussion of Eisenhower and Churchill by historian James Humes, an April 2003 program about Shakespeare: For All Time with Stratford scholar Stanley Wells, a February 2004 luncheon about Elizabeth and Mary with biographer Jane Dunn, a May 2004 program about The First World War with Oxford historian Hew Strachan, and a January 2005 luncheon address with the title They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine by Sir Harold Evans. See the bottom of our Calendar page for a listing of more recent ESU attractions that have been recorded and telecast by C-SPAN2.

For several months those who logged onto www.bbc.co.uk could download the radio transcript of a special edition of Any Questions? On December 7, 2001, this popular British program originated in the United States for the first time in its 53-year-history. In association with BBC America and George Washington University, the ESU helped arrange the taping, which took place at GWU's Jack Morton Auditorium on the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Focusing upon the U.S. response to more recent acts of aggression (Al Qaeda's September 11 assaults upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon), host Jonathan Dimbleby presided over a discussion that included reflections by historian Amanda Foreman of London and New York, by writer Ted Halstead of the New American Foundation, by journalist Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, and by bureau chief Hafez al Mirazi of Arab television channel Al Jazeera. A follow-up Any Questions? program took place on Friday, January 16, 2009, in the same location, with such panelists as journalist Christopher Hitchens, Brookings scholar Thomas E. Mann, and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson discussing the implications of America's inauguration of a new President who promises to bring very different approaches to many of the policies that have dominated the last eight years. See our Calendar page for details about this fascinating event.

Those who visit BBC's Web address now can listen to two other ESU-hosted programs, an Alistair Cooke Lecture by Senator John McCain that was delivered on July 4, 2005, at Dartmouth House in London, and a more recent installment in the same series that was delivered on November 13, 2008, by American playwright David Mamet at the Broad Auditorium in Santa Monica. For more information about these events, and for links to transcripts and audio recordings of them, see our Calendar page.

In February 2002 the ESU repaired to GWU's Jack Morton Auditorium for an engaging analysis of American Education: Prospects and Challenges. Moderating a diverse panel was Graham Down, an eminent educator who also happened to be our branch president. His colleagues included Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, Laura Sessions Stepp, a Washington Post reporter who had won the Pulitzer Prize and who'd received enthusiastic reviews for her book, Our Last Best Shot: Guiding our Children through Early Adolescence, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president of George Washington University, and Michael Usdan, president of the Institute for Educational Leadership. In recent months we've sponsored edifying dialogues with such well-known educators as the honorable E. R. Braithwaite (author of To Sir, With Love), Rafe Esquith (a National Teacher of the Year who'd been featured in a PBS documentary on The Hobart Shakespeareans), and Thomas Payzant (a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who had won accolades as Superintendent of Schools in such metropolitan areas as Boston and San Diego).

For current ESU offerings, we invite you to visit our Calendar section, where you'll find information not only about our own events but about programs under other auspices that have been made available to members and friends of the English-Speaking Union. For guidance about our support for independent study in countries other than or in addition to the United States, we hope you'll consult our Fellowships page. For details about the volunteer opportunities we facilitate, among them tutoring responsibilities for those who would like to assist newcomers with a language whose nuances still pose difficulties for them, we urge you to take a look at our introduction to English in Action.

Once you've perused these materials, we hope you'll go to our Membership Benefits page and give some thought to affiliating with ESU Washington. We'd love to welcome you to any activities that might be of interest. And if by chance you have questions, or would like additional information, we encourage you to Contact Us.

IWe encourage you to join us and to return here frequently, not only for updates on our current offerings, but for information about special initiatives such as A Tale of Three Cities, a visionary effort, spearheaded by Lord Watson of Richmond, to establish closer links among ESU London, ESU Paris, and ESU Washington.

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