♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: We're here today at the New York Historical Society at the Robert H. Smith Auditorium with Andrew Roberts, who is a distinguished author and biographer.

And we're gonna talk today about his new book on Winston Churchill, "“Walking with Destiny"”.

Thank you very much for coming today.

ROBERTS: Thank you.

It's a delight.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Winston Churchill has had at least 1,000 books written about him.

Did the world really need another book?

ROBERTS: Yes, there have been 1,009 biographies of Churchill.

Um, the reason that we need a 1,010th is because a huge cornucopia of new sources has been made available over the last six or seven years.

Um, the Queen allowed me to be the first Churchill biographer to use her father's diaries.

And Churchill met King George VI, um, every Tuesday of the Second World War and wrote down in his diary what Churchill was saying, um, to him.

There have been 41 new sets of papers that have been deposited at Churchill College Archives in Cambridge University.

The diaries of the Soviet ambassador, Ivan Maisky, from 1932 to '43 have finally been published in Moscow.

And also, there have been the, um, war cabinet verbatim accounts which I, myself, discovered six years ago.

So, we're now able, actually, to fill in a lot of gaps about Churchill.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, in the United States, uh, he is probably the most admired non-American.

In fact, he was the first person to be given, uh, American citizenship, honorary American citizenship.

Why do you think Americans have this fascination and love affair with Winston Churchill?

ROBERTS: I think partly it might be because he was, of course, half American, himself.

His mother was American.

Secondly, he came here an awful lot.

He, uh, he visited America 16 times in his life.

And-and he loved America.

He wanted a-a common citizenship between Britain and America at one point during the Second World War.

And, um, uh, underlying it all, of course, is the fact that he was a key element of the Alliance that destroyed Nazism.

People in the United States, uh, and in Britain and around the world are fascinated with his ability to speak so eloquently and with such great language.

Uh, for example, his humor, which many people often re-recount, uh, was that off the top of his head, or did he work on those jokes, those funny lines, and the oratory, that what he, way he used language, which was so skillful, was that practiced, or did he really struggle to do this, or just off the top of his head?

ROBERTS: It was a huge amount of practice.

Uh, he was a highly eloquent, um, uh, public speaker because he put hours and hours of practice into every page of the, uh, of the speeches.

He was very highly, um, eloquent, anyhow, in that he, uh, read an enormous amount, especially as a young man.

And he had a phonographic memory, which is like a photographic memory, but something for sounds.

And so, he could remember certain phrases from poetry or from even the old Victorian musical, that, uh, that went back 40, 50 years.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's go through his life.

Um, who were his parents?

ROBERTS: His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, the son of the first Duke of Marlborough, a tremendously important Victorian, um, politician.

He became Chancellor of the Exchequer, could have become Prime Minister under different circumstances.

His mother was Jennie Jerome, uh, who was born in Brooklyn, the daughter of an American financier.

RUBENSTEIN: As a young boy, was Winston Churchill coddled by his parents?

Uh, what-what was he... Was he precocious in anything?

Did people say, "This boy is gonna be Prime Minister someday?"

ROBERTS: The exact opposite.

The only person who thought he was gonna be Prime Minister someday was Churchill, himself.

Uh, his father thought that he was a ne'er-do-well, he was a social wastrel, as he called him in one of the cruel letters that he wrote to, uh, to Winston.

He wrote many, um, crushing letters.

And, uh, and he never spotted any kind of genius in his son.

RUBENSTEIN: As a student, did he do well in school?

ROBERTS: He did an awful lot better than he claims to have done.

In his autobiography, "My Early Life", he claims to have been a-a-a near dunce.

Uh, and this isn't true.

When you actually look at his school reports, which are all at Cur-Churchill College in Cambridge, you realize that, in fact, he was in the top third of his class for every subject.

RUBENSTEIN: So, where did he actually go to school?

ROBERTS: Uh, he went to Harrow School, uh, which is one of the great public schools of England.

It was set up in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. RUBENSTEIN: All right.

Goes from Harrow to Cambridge?

ROBERTS: No, no, he went straight into the army.

RUBENSTEIN: And did he volunteer, or did... Was he drafted, or?

ROBERTS: Oh, yes, he very much volunteered.

His, um, he wanted to go into the infantry, which was considered the grand...

But he-he wa-he didn't pass the exams for the infantry, so he had to go into the cavalry.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, and where was he assigned?

ROBERTS: He was assigned to India.

And, um, it was in Bangalore, in, uh, the part of the Indian Empire that he could have wasted a couple of his years doing nothing, but in fact, he spent his entire time reading, and then volunteering for every expedition that he could possibly go on to.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, later in his career, he's accused of being an imperialist, that he loved the-the Empire and didn't wanna, uh, give it up.

In fact, later, when he's, uh, a senior government official, he was resistant to Mahatma Gandhi's efforts to break away from England.

Is that correct?

ROBERTS: Absolutely correct.

Yes, he-he loved the British empire in many ways, um, because he didn't have a faith, a religious faith, a spiritual faith.

Uh, he resided that faith in the British Empire, which he thought to be a very good thing for humanity.

RUBENSTEIN: When he comes back to England, does he go to a university then?

ROBERTS: Nope, never sets foot in a university.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when did he get involved with journalism?

ROBERTS: Uh, as a war correspondent, and he became the most highly paid war correspondent in the world, uh, at one point, when he was covering the Boer War, the South African war in 1899.

RUBENSTEIN: What made him such a great journalist?

Was he a good...

Uh, good with words at that time, even, or did he just take risks that other journalists didn't take?

ROBERTS: It was three things, really.

First, he had a famous name.

Of course, Churchill is a tremendously famous name because of the Dukes of Marlborough and his father being a-a famous politician.

The second thing, as you say, was that he took risks, amazing risks.

Uh, had he not been a war correspondent, he'd have probably got a gallantry medal for the kind of risk that he took.

And the third thing was that he was an absolutely superb writer.

And this became quite clear to him early on.

People loved reading his, uh, his journalism because it did manage to get you right into the thick of the fighting.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, did his fame go to his head a little bit, or was he so modest and self-effacing that he didn't let people tell him how great he was?

ROBERTS: He was one of the great egotists of the 20th century.

There's absolutely no doubt.

He had a very and he actually, in a kind of mock modest way sometimes, he would he would refer to, uh, his own egotism.

He-he believed that you never got anywhere in life unless you had some kind of ego.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he ultimately comes back to England, and he runs for Parliament?

ROBERTS: That's right, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: As a member of the Conservative Party?

ROBERTS: As a member of the Conservative Party, which, of course, his father had been a-a leading light of... RUBENSTEIN: Right, so he's in the Conservative Party.

Does he rise up within the, uh, Parliament?

ROBERTS: Not at all, no.

Instead, he rebels against the Conservatives because he believes in free trade.

And this was at a time that the rest of the Conservative Party was moving towards protectionism.

And so, he clashed with the leadership of the Conservative Party, even though the actual leader, Arthur Balfour, was a great friend of his mother's.

And, um, uh, within four years, it was clear that he couldn't continue in the Conservative Party any longer.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he moved to the-the-Liberal Party?

ROBERTS: He-he crossed the floor of the House to join the Liberal Party, which was still in favor of free trade, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Was that uncommon then to switch parties?

ROBERTS: Almost unknown.

Yes, absolutely.

Though, some of it had happened in the 1840s, but that was 60 years before.

RUBENSTEIN: And does he rise up as a member of the Liberal Party?

ROBERTS: Very much, yes, absolutely.

He became the youngest cabinet minister for many years, and then the youngest home secretary, um, since Robert Peel in the 1840s.

RUBENSTEIN: At some point, he becomes the First Lord of the Admiralty?

ROBERTS: He'd done great things as First Lord of the Admiralty, uh, in the years before the outbreak of the war.

He built up the British fleet and got it ready for the war against Germany.

But in 1915, he came up with the idea of moving the British fleet, the Royal Navy, in the eastern Mediterranean through the Dardanelles Straits and then to anchor it off Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, and threaten, uh, Istanbul.

And if it had come off, it would have been one of the great coups of the history of warfare because it would have knocked the Turks out of the First World War.

RUBENSTEIN: And it didn't work for what reason?

ROBERTS: It, um, no.

It was a disaster, unfortunately.

On the 18th of March, 1915.

The Allies lost six ships trying to get through the straits, um, both by shelling, but-but largely by mines.

RUBENSTEIN: So, did he have to step down as the First Lord of Admiralty because of this?

ROBERTS: Well, actually, uh, it went on for a little bit longer, because he then, um, suggested that we should have a huge amphibious assault on the western side of the Dardanelles in the Gallipoli peninsula.

And in the course of the next eight months, that was to cost 147,000 killed and wounded.

And it was really that that forced him to resign.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Gallipoli was where Australians and Brits and other people from... Who were in the Allies lost enormous amount of lives.

ROBERTS: The French.

Yes, yeah... RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so, he resigns ultimately from that position.

ROBERTS: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And does he stay in the Parliament?

ROBERTS: No, no.

He decides to go off to the, um, Western Front to fight in the trenches as a lieutenant colonel in charge of the 6th Battalion of the, uh, Royal Scots Fusiliers.

RUBENSTEIN: So, kind of, uh, to atone for his sin, he felt he had to go be a combat person?

ROBERTS: He didn't see it as a sin.

He always thought that, actually, it was a brilliant idea, the, uh, Gallipoli, uh, adventure.

But he very much... uh, it has to be seen in a redemptive sense.

Yes, you're absolutely right.

He wanted to put his own life on the line.

He didn't need to.

He was 40 years old, and we didn't... We weren't calling up married 40-year-olds at that stage at all, or indeed at any stage of the First World War.

But he decided that that was the best place for him.

RUBENSTEIN: Did he ultimately, uh, get injured in that...

In the fighting, or?

ROBERTS: Astonishingly not.

He went into no-man's land no fewer than 30 times during the First World War.

And on one occasion, he left his dugout in the front, uh, trench, and, uh, 15 minutes later, it was, um, it had scored a direct hit and, uh, from a German high explosive shell, and everybody inside was decapitated.

But he, himself, got through the, uh, the war without being touched.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, the pictures that we see of Churchill later in life, he's a little rotund... To some extent.

ROBERTS: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, he didn't seem like an exercise fanatic.

But was he in good shape those days?

ROBERTS: Oh, he certainly was, yes.

He was a...

He was the fencing champion of England, uh, when he was at school.

He was a huge polo player.

He was a very fit and healthy young man, especially, of course, as a war correspondent.

It wasn't really until his, um, uh, late 50s, early 60s that he started to put on weight.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, ultimately, uh, after World War I, World War II comes forward.

Uh, Hitler rises up.

Was, uh, Churchill warning people about Hitler?

ROBERTS: He was the first person to warn.

He was the most serious and significant figure to warn about Hitler, and he warned throughout the 1930s, um, that Hitler and the Nazis posed an existential threat to, uh, to the West.

Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And did anybody listen?

ROBERTS: Nobody listened, no.

This is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.

However eloquent he was, he could make people listen, but he-he wasn't able to persuade enough people to do what needed to be done to stop Hitler in his tracks.

RUBENSTEIN: And what point does he, um, switch parties again?

ROBERTS: In 1924, he, uh, after the Liberal Party had imploded, um, at the time of the fall of David Lloyd George, he realized that, um, that there was no, uh, reason for him to stay in that party, and he became a Conservative again.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so, um, he's warning against Hitler, people are not listening.

The Prime Minister of, uh, England, it becomes Neville Chamberlain, and Neville Chamberlain said, "We can work out a deal with Hitler."

ROBERTS: The Munich Agreement very much at the time of Hitler's threats against Czechoslovakia, uh, in 1938, uh, was supposed to stave off war forever.

And, uh, when, uh, Neville Chamberlain came back from, uh, signing the agreement, he said it was peace in our time.

Churchill didn't believe this for a moment.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Neville Chamberlain's party said, "We need a new prime minister."

ROBERTS: That's right, yes.

In May 1940, they looked around for a new prime minister, but there was...

It was not certain by any means that it was going to be Winston Churchill.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, did Churchill want the position?

ROBERTS: Yeah, oh, he wanted to be Prime Minister from pretty much the day he stepped inside the House of Commons, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And ultimately, they decide there's nobody better, and he got the position?

ROBERTS: No, uh, there was somebody who a lot of people would have put up with, Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, whose biography I wrote 30 years ago, in fact.

And, um, it was really Lord Halifax who refused to fight for the position, and also Churchill who insisted on getting it.

And that was the reason that, uh, that ultimately Churchill became prime minister.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, Churchill became prime minister at the young age of?

ROBERTS: 65.

RUBENSTEIN: So, in other words, until he's 65, an age that some people say is in a retirement age, he becomes prime minister at 65 for the first time?

ROBERTS: And he wrote, uh, in his war memoirs about this.

"I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial."

RUBENSTEIN: Now, one of his main missions is to try to get the United States to come into the war.

And he spent a lot of time with Franklin Roosevelt.

Uh, how successful were those efforts, actually?

ROBERTS: Completely unsuccessful.

Um, there were successful efforts with regard to getting the staffs to talk to one another and to plan, uh, what might happen were America to be drawn into the war.

But such was the isolationist, uh, sentiment in the United States that, ultimately, of course, it took Adolf Hitler to declare war against America on the 11th of December, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor.

RUBENSTEIN: So, ultimately, after Pearl Harbor, the United States does come into the war, and Churchill, um, is still being besieged by the Nazis, and the Battle of Britain occurs.

And Britain is being bombed by the Nazis relentlessly.

Does Churchill go hide in the suburbs to avoid this?

ROBERTS: No, no, no.

He, uh, absolutely not.

He-he had finally to be persuaded to leave Number 10 Downing Street, uh, and, uh, he instead went to a bunker, um, just a few yards away.

Now you can visit it, the Cabinet War Rooms, now known as the Churchill War Rooms.

Um, but he only spent a very few, um, days there.

He, otherwise, uh, tried to, uh, to stay up above ground as much as possible.

RUBENSTEIN: So, it was his rhetoric that time that captured the attention of the world when he made famous speeches about, uh, the need to fight on.

What was his most famous speech?

ROBERTS: His most famous speech was that of the 4th of June, 1940, in which he told the British people what they were going to do when the German invader landed in southern England.

And he said that we were going to fight on the beaches and in the landing grounds and in the streets, in the fields, and, uh, of course, ending up with that-that great line, "We shall never surrender."

RUBENSTEIN: And did he work on that language a long time, or did this come to him at the spur of the moment?

ROBERTS: He had been, um, thinking of great phrases to use, all the way through his life.

And suddenly, the-the danger equated with the rhetoric.

And so, he was able to produce these, uh, these immensely moving, um, speeches and morale-boosting speeches.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, at this time, the United States is coming in, and they're buttressing, uh, the efforts of the British, but in the end, it's concluded that the British and-and the United States will have to invade France across the British Channel.

Um, so, is Churchill involved heavily in the D-Day effort?

ROBERTS: Massively, yes.

He's involved, really, um, from, uh, from day one.

He, uh, in fact, before day one, even at the time in May, 1940 when we were flung off the beaches of Dunkirk, he ordered, um, the War Office to look into places where we could re-invade and to come up with inventions such as the Mulberry harbors, which we used ultimately for the D-Day invasion.

And all of the great debates and arguments, um, between the British and the Americans, and between the politicians and the servicemen, uh, were about when and where this attack was going to take place.

RUBENSTEIN: And did Churchill want the attack to occur much sooner than Roosevelt did?

ROBERTS: No, um, Roosevelt and Churchill, in June 1943, came up with the date for the invasion.

Uh, if anything, actually, Churchill was more keen to put off the date until he was absolutely certain... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

ROBERTS: That, uh, that it would meet with victory.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, the D-Day invasion occurs June 6, 1944.

Uh, does it work as well as they thought it was gonna work?

ROBERTS: Yes, much better, in fact.

Churchill was nerve-wracked and told his wife, Clementine, the night before that he feared that there could be up to 20,000 men, um, dead.

And, he said, the, um, seas would go red with the blood of the... Of the, uh, of the killed.

In fact, as we know, it was around 3,000 people who were killed on that D, D-Day, itself, and it went an awful lot better than was feared.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, had it not succeeded, would Churchill have had to resign, do you think?

ROBERTS: Um, there had been many defeats before, frankly.

We'd, uh, we'd lost... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

ROBERTS: Uh, Brook, we'd lost Singapore.

Uh, we'd had some terrible sinking's of our, uh, major capital ships.

So, I don't think necessarily that his government would have fallen as a result of a defeat at D-Day, no.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, D-Day invasion wasn't, by itself, enough to end the war.

The war didn't end, really, until around April of 1945, or so.

So, this is June of 1944.

So, while the Americans are moving forward, and the Allies, uh, towards Germany, um, is, uh, Churchill working still on the strategy with-with, uh, Roosevelt?

How and deeply involved is he in the in the military effort?

ROBERTS: He became less deeply, um, and primarily involved than he had been.

Once the Americans had got ashore, uh, it was very much up to Eisenhower to adopt the broad front strategy as opposed to the narrow thrust strategy.

And I think it's also very important to remember that, uh, of course, for every five Germans killed in... On battlefields in the Second World War, uh, four of them died in the Eastern Front.

And so, one-one-one mustn't over-exaggerate what we were doing on the Western Front.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, the Allies, uh, bomb Germany relentlessly, just as the Germans had bombed Britain.

And the bombing of Dresden was thought to be the most intense bombing the world had ever seen.

Some people criticized Churchill for having authorized and approved it and being insensitive to the civilians being killed.

Is that a fair criticism, or not?

ROBERTS: It's not a fair criticism to say that he was insensitive.

Actually, the following month, he, um, he wrote to, uh, his entourage, "Are we beasts?"

Um, and-and wondered about what would happen after the war when it came to the morality of the combined bomber offensive.

Um, and, uh, and he failed to honor the, uh, commander of the British, um, bomber command.

And, uh, so, no, that isn't fair.

Um, actually, it was the Russians who asked us to bomb Dresden.

It was a railway nodal point that was preventing the, um, uh, the Germans from getting their troops back, uh, westwards.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when the war is ended, um, Churchill is now the hero of England.

He's, uh, prevailed, they've won the war.

Uh, England was still poor, though, because they'd used so much of their money, so they were really not in a very prosperous situation.

But presumably, the British people were grateful.

RUBENSTEIN: How did the British people show their gratitude in the next election?

ROBERTS: Uh, well, they flung Churchill out of office.

Uh, they...

He was, uh, the Labor Party, the opposition, won a landslide victory and Winston Churchill's Conservative Party were, uh, trounced.

RUBENSTEIN: Can you explain that to Americans, how somebody could win a war and be thrown out of office?

ROBERTS: Yes, because we have a parliamentary rather than the presidential system.

Had we had, uh, a system like yours, uh, Churchill would undoubtedly have won.

But he was only one name on 650 ballots.

And so, although he won his own constituency, throughout the rest of the country, people wanted to punish the Conservative Party, not least, of course, for the policy of appeasement.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he becomes the leader of the opposition?

ROBERTS: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And stays in the Parliament, and he stays in the Parliament as the leader of opposition for about six years, or so?

ROBERTS: That's right, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, beginning of that period of time, he goes to Fulton, Missouri, to make a speech.

Why did he go all the way to Fulton, Missouri to make a speech that later became so famous?

ROBERTS: Because he was invited to by President Truman, and he very much wanted to, uh, get to know President Truman.

And so, on the 5th of March, 1946, he made this, uh, this extraordinary, uh, warning in, uh, Fulton, Missouri and he warned the world about the dangers of Stalin's imperialism and what the Soviet Union were trying to do in, uh, eastern Europe.

RUBENSTEIN: So, it-it turns out that this speech was very controversial because Churchill said, um, there's gonna be an iron curtain, but many people said, "What are you talking about, because Stalin is our ally.

What are we worried about?"

Is that right?

ROBERTS: It was a classic example, a bit like, uh, before the Second World War, uh, when he was warning against Hitler and the Nazis.

And also, before the First World War, when he warned against Prussian militarism.

Of Churchill getting something really right, really an important thing about the 20th century right, but actually being the first person to say it.

And therefore, getting the most extraordinary amount of criticism, he was denounced in your Congress, in my Parliament, uh, in the press, and so on, for being a warmonger and trying to start, uh, the Cold War.

When in fact, what he was doing was warning that Stalin had already started the Cold War.

RUBENSTEIN: So, ultimately, the British people changed their mind about the... at least the party that Churchill's in, and Churchill becomes prime minister again, in 1951?

ROBERTS: Yes, he becomes prime minister for about three and a half years.

RUBENSTEIN: And how old is he at that time?

ROBERTS: Uh, well, he was actually... Celebrated his 80th birthday as prime minister.

RUBENSTEIN: He ultimately stays as prime minister until 1955?

ROBERTS: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And then he steps down for health and other reasons, would you say?

ROBERTS: Um, that and also, yes, he'd gone pretty deaf by then.

Um, and, uh, people also recognized that, in order for Antony Eden, his, uh, heir apparent, who had been his heir apparent for 15 years, to really get his foot under the table at, uh, Downing Street, um, in time for the next general election.

He really needed to-to go.

RUBENSTEIN: So, does he stay in the Parliament?

ROBERTS: Yes, he stayed in Parliament, actually, until 1964, until he was 90 years old, just about jus-just before he died.

RUBENSTEIN: So, what did he do in the latter years while he's in Parliament?

Was he a well-known figure around the world?

Did he make speeches?

Did he write more books?

ROBERTS: Oh, yes.

Uh, he, uh, continued to write books.

He, after his retirement, he wrote his History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

And, uh, that was, um, in four volumes.

It was a huge, uh, huge best-seller.

And, um, and so, he spent time doing that.

And he also had lots of other interests in life.

This was the great thing about Churchill.

He wasn't one of those politicians who could only think about politics.

He-he painted pictures, uh, he traveled, as you say, and, uh, and he-he never had a, uh, a dull moment.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, Churchill was also seen as somebody that liked to drink alcohol.

Is that a fair?

ROBERTS: Yes-yes, he did drink an enormous amount of alcohol.

However, he was not an alcoholic.

Uh, he was able to process, um, alcohol with his iron constitution for alcohol.

And in the whole of the Second World War, there was only one day in which he got drunk.

RUBENSTEIN: And he was a good smoker?

Cigars?

ROBERTS: He smoked 160,000 cigars in his life.

Yes, absolutely.

RUBENSTEIN: So, ultimately, he dies at the age of 90, and he is celebrated all over the world.

Is that right?

ROBERTS: Oh, absolutely, yes.

I think, uh, apart from Red China, Communist China, uh, every country in the world, um, broadcasted his funeral.

RUBENSTEIN: And today, uh, what would you say is the most important legacy he's left behind?

ROBERTS: Well, I think the destruction of-of Hitlerism, uh, has to be that.

The way in which he, uh, warned against the Nazis, he told the world what was going to happen, and then when it did happen, he led, uh, along with Franklin Roosevelt, uh, the Western Alliance in extricating the most evil, um, dictatorship that the world's ever seen.

RUBENSTEIN: Do you admire him more than before you started the research on this book, or admire him less?

ROBERTS: More, in fact.

Um, I was expecting not that to be surprised, uh, in that way particularly.

I had always admired him.

Um, as an Englishman, I do feel that I owe my liberty to him in a great degree.

But actually, by the end of the four years of this work, having read so many of his articles and speeches and-and his 37 books, I, um, I wound up, uh, actually loving him, I think.

Not-not to the point that I can't see the huge mistakes he made, the blunders in his life, the big mistakes and flaws he had, but nonetheless, he-he really is a tremendously great man.

RUBENSTEIN: Who can possibly excite you to write another book?

What person is gonna be as exciting as Churchill?

What is your next book on?

ROBERTS: My next book is on, uh, King George III, your last king.

I'm going to try to persuade Americans that he was not the, um, the tyrant of the declaration or the, um, villain of, uh, Hamilton's, the-the-the musical, "“Hamilton"”.

Um, but instead actually was a enlightened monarch and something of a renaissance prince.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, good luck with that.

Uh... ROBERTS: Thank you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: But, uh, I've read this book.

It's terrific.

Anybody that cares about Churchill should read this book, and people who don't care about Churchill should read this book.

It's a great history of a great man.

Thank you very much for doing this and this conversation.

ROBERTS: It's been great fun.

Thank you.

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