BY KAREN BOSSICK

Lee Pollock, who offers an annual presentation on Winston Churchill every summer in Sun Valley, will talk about “Churchill in California” this year.

Pollock, director of the International Churchill Society, will make the presentation at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19, at The Community Library in Ketchum.

He will look at a little known but eventful visit that Churchill paid to the Golden State during the summer of 1929. Churchill travelled the width and breadth of the state from the Redwoods to Catalina Island, meeting such luminaries as William Randolph Hearst and Charlie Chaplin along the way.

The visit 7,000 miles from his home in England profoundly shaped his understanding of America and its people just as the world was able to spiral into a Depression, political turmoil and ultimately a world war that would test Churchill and find him emerging as the man of the hour.

Churchill was half-American and his 16 visits to what he called the “Great Republic” were of paramount importance to him as he collaborated with several Presidents and built a relationship that became the bedrock of 20th century British policy, said Pollock, who owns a home in Sun Valley.

His descriptions of the Golden State, which captivated readings in the United Kingdom, included a reference to California as “a spacious, delectable land,” to Los Angeles as a “gay and happy city” and to the new studios in Hollywood as “a strange and amusing world.”

To see the presentation in person, go to https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/16536617. The program will be livestreamed at  https://vimeo.com/event/6110364 and available to watch later on the Library Archive.