A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

Andrew is the author of 21 books, including the acclaimed biography of Winston Churchill and Napoleon, and a history of the English-speaking people since 1900, which continued the story begun by Churchill himself.

Andrew's work raises some of the biggest questions history can ask.

How much individuals matter, why some civilizations endure while others decline, and whether understanding the past can actually help us navigate the future.

Andrew Roberts, welcome to Afternoon Light.

In fact, when he started that book, he started writing – the concept of it in 1939, and he wrote a few chapters, even during the Second World War, in fact.

But when he wrote the majority of it, it was after his premiership, which ended in 1955.

But he'd also worked quite a lot of it in a period when he was leader of the opposition, and this was in the early 1950s.

And so, of course, by that stage, the British Empire had started to collapse because India had been handed back in 1947.

Who will the real reins of power go to? Nominally, it's his son Edward, but really, truly, where's the cockpit of power? Who is going to be setting policy? Who's going to be the brain at the top of government now? Well, let's get into the story.

As before, I should be reading from Professor Sir Charles Oman and Sir Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

So let me pick up the story with Sir Charles Omon who says this, quote, it remained to be seen who would now sway the sword and sceptre that the dead tyrant had gripped so firmly, Henry VIII, the dead tyrant.

In his last years, Henry had surrounded himself by ministers less notable and less capable than Wolsey or Cromwell, The chief place was held by his brother-in-law, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford.

Okay, let's read about that or that bit in Winston Churchill.

Let's see how he gives us a few different details and in fact even characterizes things slightly differently here or there.

Sir Winston Churchill wrote this in The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, quote, The English Reformation under Henry VIII had received its guiding impulse from the king's passions and his desire for power.

He still deemed himself a good Catholic.

What was the other one?

Or The History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

Or Gathering Storm, was that...?

Well, that was the, his history of the Second World War.

No, I think, I think the, well, they're not really histories, they're not really stories of Eng- of English foreign policy.

Well, I mean, he thinks The History of the English-Speaking Peoples is.

Um, I tell you what I was gonna say, they're great.

They're, they're not really a story of UK foreign policy, but if you read the Ben Macintyre books on Kim Philby, who's the Soviet spy in MI6, I think it's called, what is it called? A Traitor and a Spy or something like that.

There was a book of vicious Russian fairy tales with illustrations of Baba Yaga's hut roaming the woods on chicken legs.

There were sets of Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and the Second World War.

and obsessive, my father hand-laminated the covers of all his books himself.

Observing his careful stewardship, I learnt that books were to be not only read, but revered.