Edwina Sandys, artist and granddaughter of Clementine and Winston Churchill, celebrated her 85th birthday on December 22, 2023. Upon seeing his first granddaughter, Winston wrote to his wife: “She was perfectly well in the afternoon, sitting up and could see me. The baby is tiny but perfect…” We couldn’t agree more.

The Hon. Edwina Sandys, MBE, was awarded the English-Speaking Union’s Founder’s Award a few years ago. ESU’s Founder’s Award celebrates prominent individuals who exemplify the primary interests of the organization’s founder, Sir Evelyn Wrench, to foster US-British relations, cultivate international understanding and good will and promote the mastery and use of English as a language of opportunity.

Ms. Sandys was part of a distinguished group of individuals who attended the dedication ceremony of the Winston and Clementine Churchill statue here in Kansas City, Missouri on May 12, 1984, on the Country Club Plaza. The ESU Kansas City Branch was a major benefactor to the funding for the statue. The statue, titled, “Married Love,” was designed by the famous sculptor Oscar Nemon.

Sandys is also a well-known artist who designed a sculpture titled, “Breakthrough” consisting of eight concrete sections of the Berlin Wall. Sandys made her personal statement by cutting two large openings in two of the walls in the abstract shapes of a man and woman.

“Once I decided to try to get some of the wall and before I got to East Berlin, I started to think how I would portray the concept of freedom,” she said. “I decided to keep the wall as a barrier, then to cut two openings in it in the shape of a man and a woman because it was people who made the breakthrough.”

The “Breakthrough” artwork is located on the Westminster College campus next to America’s National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri.