Ditchley Foundation
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The Ditchley Foundation is a British organisation based at Ditchley House near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, which aims to promote international relations, especially Anglo-American relations, through a program of around fifteen annual conferences on matters of international interest. The foundation was incorporated in 1958 by Sir David Wills, descendant of the tobacco importing family, W.D. & H.O. Wills of Bristol.
At each conference, around forty invitees are drawn from senior levels of politics, business, the armed forces, media, and academia, with roughly a third of guests being American, a further third being British, with the remainder being of other nationalities. The director of the Foundation is usually a retired ambassador - the current director is Jeremy Greenstock, former British Ambassador to the United Nations.
Discussion begins with all members present, before participants divide into three sub-groups, each having its own chairman and rapporteur to summarise proceedings. Proceedings end with one more conference-wide session. Like the similar Bilderberg meetings, discussions are private and non-attributable.
A corresponding American Ditchley Foundation helps to shape the conference program as well as select American participants.
John Major, the former British Prime Minister, is the current chairman of the Ditchley Foundation. Its first chairman, in 1958, was the British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett.
[edit] References
- Our Good Conference Guide: Magic mountains for the mind - The Economist - 26th December 1987 - Volume 305
[edit] External links
- Official Web Site
- The Ditchley Foundation from the autobiography of Harry Hodson
