Good afternoon everyone. Jane, my wife, and I are delighted to welcome you to our house, the home of successive deputy heads of mission at the British Embassy in Washington for nearly 20 years. Which means, of course, that successive cohorts of Marshall Scholars have stood where you stand today, physically and figuratively, on the brink of travelling across the Atlantic and starting the great adventure of studying in the United Kingdom.  

This lunch traditionally marks the end of the Marshalls scholars’ orientation programme. All that’s required of you after this is to return to your hotel, find your own luggage and get on the bus to the airport. So you can begin to relax.  

I had a friend who used to say the mark of a good party, by which he meant a party where the drink flowed freely, was whether he was able, at the end of it, correctly to identify his own coat. I hope this is going to be a good lunch party but I also hope you will all be able to identify your own luggage afterwards.

Before I go any further, there are a few people here whom I would like to thank on your behalves.  

Firstly, there is Harrell Smith, the Chair of the Association of Marshall Scholars (the Marshall alumni association) for his help in the orientation programme and his continued support of the Embassy's work on the Marshall Scholarship Programme.  

And I should also like to thank Kathy Culpin from the British Council, and Mao-Lin Shen and Jonathan Akman, from the Embassy, for their work in putting together such a great orientation programme for the scholars.  

I should also like to acknowledge the presence of Nick Hartman, Member of the Association of Marshall Scholars, and Jordan Goldman, the CEO of Unigo.com, a website that rates universities from a student perspective.

Thank you to all of them and to the many volunteers and officials across the US who have enabled you, the Marshalls of 2009, to reach the point of take off.

As I expect plenty of people have told you by now, you, the Marshall scholars, are the beneficiaries of an Act of Parliament passed in July 1953, the month after the coronation of our present Queen, Elizabeth the Second.  Our parliament wanted to offer the United States a living gift in the form of this scholarship programme in return for America’s generous assistance to Britain to help rebuild the country after the Second World War, the famous Marshall Plan.  

The early 1950s, with the coronation of Her Majesty the jewel in the crown, were the time when Britain began to believe that recovery after the war was firmly and assuredly on course. The Festival of Britain, designed to create a post-war feel good feeling in the country, was held in 1951.  In the same year as the coronation, 1953, sweet (or candy) rationing was ended.  The more general food rationing finished the following year.   There was a spirit of optimism in the country at the prospect of the dawn of new golden Elizabethan age.  The Marshall Scholarship programme emerged in those hopeful times.  

The Britain you will discover, these days, has indeed completed its physical recovery from the Second World War.  A few public health officials may lament the passing of sweet rationing, given the rise of obesity-related health problems in Britain, but most of us are delighted by the range of chocolates and confectionery into which we can sink our teeth – even if they are still British teeth.

We have also recovered our flair for entrepreneurship and innovation in business and the arts.  You’ll find Britain a vibrant, confident country with plenty going on.  

There is beautiful countryside to explore and places of historical interest on every corner.  Even our food is winning plaudits these days.  We have pretty efficient public transport.  And you won’t have to worry about whether or not you can afford health care – you will be able to enjoy the benefits of socialised medicine, safe in the bosom of the NHS that has kept Stephen Hawking alive all these years. And if you like soccer, public sector broadcasting, damp weather and warm beer, there’s nowhere better to be.

I hope you’ll also come across those classic British characteristics of self-deprecation and understatement – it would be a pity not to, though my views on these things are probably suspect.

You will also be in Britain when we have our next general election. So you will be exposed to a political system that does not allow paid, political advertising on television, maintains very strict limits on campaign expenditure (about $50,000 per party per constituency) and considers a transition, after an election, of longer than from Friday lunchtime to Monday evening, for the completion of all political appointments, to be unusually drawn out and protracted.  

As Dr Spock might have said to Captain Kirk, “It’s democracy, Jim, but not as we know it.”

Talking of politics, you will find that there is an enormous interest in Britain in the fortunes of President Obama. Without wanting to make a heavy party political point, the polling evidence shows that his election has been hugely beneficial for the standing and image of America in Britain, as well as in Europe and the wider world. You will be able to bask in the reflected glory of being from the country that elected President Obama, even if you didn’t actually vote for him.

We Brits hope your time at our universities will be the start of a long-term, lifelong friendship with the United Kingdom.  As you’ve heard over the past few days, your predecessors have valued the experience and generally look back on their time in the UK with some nostalgia and great warmth – we hope you will too.

Equally, we hope you will manage to get past the traditional British reserve and form lifelong friendships with the natives of those islands.  I should warn you, on the basis of statistically verified past trends, that at least one Marshall Scholar in any given year ends up marrying a British citizen.  Cupid may be getting ready to fire his dart into any one of you.  And long may this matchmaking role of the scholarship programme continue – it is certainly one way of cementing transatlantic relations.

As well as falling in love with the locals, we hope you will bring your talents, enthusiasm and energy to all other aspects of student life in the different academic institutions to which you are heading.  From past experience, we know just how much Marshall scholars contribute to the rich life of the universities and colleges that they join.

And we would like to encourage you to think of yourselves as a group of people, about to share a common experience, in a tradition of successful men and women who have trod in the same path over the last 50 years or so.  We hope you will feel a certain bond and will wish to stay in touch with one another – to plan thanksgiving dinners, to get to know one another better and as the British Council people say here “KIT” or keep in touch.  

You are going to universities in many different parts of the United Kingdom. One of you will be creatively writing in Cardiff, another will be philosophising at St Andrew’s and perhaps playing the odd round of golf. There’s an economist going to England’s second city, Birmingham – pronounced quite differently from its namesake in Alabama – and a human rights lawyer heading towards Essex, arguably the political equivalent in Britain of Montana (though that’s not an argument I’d expect to win).  

One of you is going to DH Lawrence’s county town of Nottingham, which still has a sheriff so be careful, and another to Cranfield. And, of course, many of you are heading towards colleges in the cosmopolitan metropolis of London, and amongst the dreaming spires of Oxford and Cambridge.

Wherever you are going and whatever you will be reading, I and my colleagues at the Embassy and the British Council wish you all the very best as you embrace the new challenges that will inevitably come with adapting and adjusting to life in Britain, your new home.  We hope you have a wonderful and enlightening time and that, despite the warm beer and the weather, you will come to consider the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to be your “home from home”.

Good luck, not least with finding your luggage, and thank you.

Back to newsroom

Back to top