University of Virginia Professor C. Brian Kelly and Ingrid Smyer-Kelly are co-authors of the recently published “Best Little Stories from the Life and Times of Winston Churchill.” The Kellys’ book won an honorable mention in the London Festival of Books last December and was praised by a reviewer for the international Churchill Centre’s quarterly publication “Finest Hour.” On Friday, October 9, 2009, the Kellys spoke to the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society on “Anecdotally Speaking: The Life and Times of Winston Churchill” as part of the Jefferson Society’s Fall Speaker Series.
The Churchill book is the ninth in the Best Little Stories series of historical books produced by the husband-and-wife writing team. They began in 1989 by self-publishing Best Little Stories from World War II. Two more self-published anecdotal histories soon followed, one on the history of the White House and one on the Civil War. Each book features a section by Mrs. Smyer-Kelly on the women of the historical period.
Mr. Kelly was a newspaper reporter for 20 years and now teaches news writing at the University of Virginia. Mrs. Smyer-Kelly is a former freelance writer for newspapers. In recent years she has served on the board of the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center of Virginia in Charlottesville and as a member of the city’s Historical Resources Committee