The first US research centre focused on Winston Churchill is being created at George Washington University.

The Chicago-based Churchill Centre is pledging $55 million to establish a new National Churchill Library.

Churchill is widely admired in the US and elsewhere for leading Britain during World War II.

An agreement involves transferring rare books and research materials to the university’s library and creating the centre between 2013 and 2015.

The gift will create endowments to support a professor and a curator devoted to Churchill and to 20th century British history.

Part of the funding will be devoted to renovating space for the Churchill centre and part will fund exhibits and programmes.

George Washington University president Steven Knapp said the centre will become a destination for scholars and students of Churchill along with Washington’s many museums, archives and libraries.

“We’re going to be able to research the 20th century through the study of one of the towering figures of the 20th century, Winston Churchill,” he said.

“The idea here is to look at him not just in isolation but also setting him in his life and times.”

Born in 1874, Churchill’s career in politics spanned 60 years, and he served in Britain’s Parliament, numerous executive posts and as Prime Minister for 10 years. He died in 1965.

The Churchill Archives Centre at the University of Cambridge is the primary repository for his documents and personal papers with over a million items.

Other major Churchill institutions in the UK include the Churchill War Rooms and Museum and Chartwell, the Churchill family’s home.

Much of Churchill’s memorabilia has never been shown in the United States, so the new centre could borrow materials from the British institutions.

Members of the US-based Churchill Centre will build a collection to be housed in Washington, said Lee Pollock, the group’s executive director. Several members have personal collections they want to donate to a permanent library, rather than sell. The Washington collection could amass more than 1,000 volumes, he added.

“Americans are especially devoted Churchillians,” Mr Pollock said yesterday.

The British icon was probably the most collectible and collected statesman of at least the last century, having written over 15 million words and about 50 different books as a historian and writer.

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