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British Conservatives Eye Stately Homes, Universities as Culture Wars Rage

Jamie Dettmer

   Britain's Conservatives say the left and liberals dominate the arts,
   museums, broadcasting and the universities, turning them into political
   echo chambers. They mean to reverse that, fearing they are being
   outflanked in a broader cultural war roiling the country, one that has
   only been inflamed by rancorous divisions over Brexit and the rise of
   the Black Lives Matter movement.

   The latest furious skirmish has focused on an unlikely target -- the
   country's National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural
   Beauty. The storied charity manages around 300 stately homes and
   castles as well as other places of historic interest acquired over the
   years from impoverished aristocratic families.

   Among them Chartwell in Kent, the country home of Winston Churchill for
   four decades, Cliveden, the home to a Prince of Wales, two dukes, an
   Earl, and finally the Astor family, and the water-meadow along the
   River Thames at Runnymede, west of London, the site of the signing in
   1215 of the Magna Carta, which an assembly of rebellious English barons
   forced on King John.

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