Centennial History of the Pilgrims of Great Britain
The Pilgrims of Great Britain – A Centennial History is a celebration of a great institution and a valuable record of 100 years of discreet influence on Anglo-American relations. The Pilgrims Society of Great Britain was founded in 1902 to promote goodwill, good-fellowship, abiding friendship, and everlasting peace between the United States and Great Britain.
Throughout the twentieth century the Pilgrims’ glittering dinners and receptions formed a focus for those who saw the abiding importance of an alliance of interests across the Atlantic. In the opening years of the twenty-first century, as the world faces threats and crises that would have been unimaginable to the founders of the Society a hundred years before, the “special relationship” between the USA and the UK is as valuable as it has ever been. The Pilgrims Society has its own special part to play in that relationship by cultivating mutual interest, understanding and friendship between the two countries.
The fascinating story of the Pilgrims is one of distinguished public figures and a no less remarkable array of those such as Sir Harry Brittain (the Society’s first and indefatigable secretary and later its chairman) and J. Wilson Taylor (secretary for an astonishing 24 years, from 1919 to 1943) who worked tirelessly to make the Pilgrims the success it has become.
More than 200 seldom-seen illustrations with detailed captions supplement this meticulous history, graphically evoking the personalities and special atmosphere of the Pilgrims. An introductory letter by HM The Queen, Patron of the Pilgrims, a foreword by Lord Carrington, President 1983-2002, and an introduction by Sir Robert Worcester, Chairman 1993-2010, together with details of past and present officers, the first official list of members in 1903 and a record of functions through the years complete this unique and authoritative chronicle.
Copies of the fully-illustrated The Pilgrims of Great Britain – A Centennial History by Anne Pimlott Baker (2002) are available on application to the Pilgrims’ office at a cost of £25.00 each.
The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895-1945
Explores the Pilgrims Society and its role in pioneering Anglo-American public diplomacy
Labelled by an Irish-American newspaper in 1906 as a ‘nondescript aggregation of degenerate Americans, Britishers and Jews’, the Pilgrims Society has long excited the imaginations of conspiracy theorists. Founded in London in 1902, this upper-class dining club acted to bring Britain and the USA closer together in political, diplomatic and cultural terms. Drawing on rich archival research, this book explores how this elite network – whose members included J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie – attempted to influence the Anglo-American relationship in the days before it became ‘special’.
A series of original case studies, focusing on the proceedings and wider diplomatic significance of lavish banquets held across the period at iconic New York and London hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria and the Savoy, provide unique insights into the Pilgrims Society’s activities. Bowman challenges existing orthodoxies about the origins of public diplomacy and shows that it was only through the earlier work of semi-official organisations operating within a state-private nexus that greater governmental involvement in public diplomacy was legitimised.