Applications are now being taken for the 2011 Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship. The Trust was formed in 1965 as a lasting memorial to Sir Winston Churchill and has awarded 4450 Fellowships in that time. It now makes grants to as many as 100 British citizens annually, so that they can widen their experience through overseas projects of topical or personal interest which are of benefit to their profession, community and the UK as a whole.
Celebrated travel writer and photographer Nick Danziger was one such Fellow, using his WCMT grant in the early 1980s to travel from Europe to China, passing through major factions of the Islamic world, including Turkey, Pakistan, Iran and war-torn Afghanistan – where he travelled alongside the Mujahideen, who were in conflict with the Soviet Union at the time. He was also the first westerner in decades to cross from Pakistan into the closed western province of China since the revolution on 1949. His incredible 18-month journey was recounted vividly in his book Danziger’s Travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers, published in 1987. But he couldn’t have made the trip without the grant he received from the WCMT, which he applied for in 1982. He has since written a number of other travel-related books, and is also as an award-winning professional photographer and documentary maker. A selection of his photographs from the Afghan city of Herat feature in the latest issue of Traveller.
To apply for a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust grant, visit www.wcmt.org.uk. Applications can be made online.