The Eric Metaxas Show - #172 - Andrew Roberts

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

An excerpt from a Socrates in the City conversation.

Hey there, folks. As you may know or may not know, I am this week in Oxford, England. I don't look like I'm in Oxford, England, because as I say this to you, I'm actually not in Oxford, England. I'm still in New York recording this, telling you that when you hear me say this, I will be in Oxford, England. I say that by faith. Should the Lord Terry, I will be in Oxford, England, and evidently, I'm there right now, even though I'm in New York. But the reason I'm telling you this is because this week we're going to be airing on this program right now, Socrates and the city programs that we've done in the past. So this week, while I'm in Oxford, England, I'm going to be interviewing John O'Lennox and a lot of these intellectual heavy hitters

that I love to talk to. But I have done 13 episodes for Socrates in the city on the American Revolution to go along with my book on the American Revolution. If you want more on the American Revolution, perhaps you've already read my book, or perhaps you need to have your appetite wedded to read my book. And as I say over and over, I don't care if you read the book, but it wouldn't kill you to buy two or three copies, okay, and do it at Amazon. But I did a lot of wonderful interviews about the revolution with the authors, most of them authors of books that I used in my research on the American Revolution. So this week, we're going to be playing some of those for you. We've got one of those coming up right now. If you don't know all the work that I do with Socrates

in the City, and if you listen to this program, maybe you don't, go to Socratesin the city.com, go to our YouTube page, subscribe to the YouTube page, and definitely sign up for the newsletter for Socrates and the city.com. We've got so much going on. We're starting book clubs all over the country. We've started book clubs all over the country. Is there one in your Would you like to start one? Socrates in the city.com. Make your inquiries there. And right now, we return to our regular programming. Welcome to Socrates in the city. In fact, welcome to Socrates in the studio. But since Socrates and Studio falls under the aegis of Socrates in the city, I have to mention

the city in which we find ourselves is London, England. I'm very happy to be here. I'm here today to speak with Andrew Roberts, now Lord Roberts of Belgravia, Baron Roberts. He is one of the most celebrated narrative historians and biographers writing in English. He's a Cambridge-trained historian, elevated to the House of Lords in 2022, and the author of Acclaimed Lives of many celebrated figures, The Marcus of Salisbury, Napoleon, and perhaps you've heard of Winston Churchill. many other books, fellow of the Hoover Institution

at Stanford visiting professor in the War Studies Department at King's College, London. It's my privilege to have him as my guest today. Andrew Roberts, welcome. Well, thank you very much. I think it's my privilege to come on your show, Eric.

And although you have insisted that I call you Baron, I simply cannot. I cannot. I will call you Andrew. I really, it's, I've interviewed you on my podcast, but I've wanted to meet you and wanted to speak with you in the context of Socrates in the city because of what you do, which is similar to what I have done.

I am not principally known as a biographer, but I've written three fairly long biographies, not quite as scholarly as yours, but scholarly enough for me. And it's the art of biography is something that I've, It fascinates me. So to speak with someone who's written the books that you've written is for me a privilege. So again, thank you for being with us. Because my most recent book is not a biography, it's a book on The American Revolution. I've become fascinated with many of the figures of that time and thought it would be fun

to speak with you about the book that came out, I guess, five years ago now, about King George III. I'm holding in my hands the British version of the book, George III, the life and reign of Britain's most misunderstood monarch, although we have to see about Charles in time. But the American version, the one that I have, is very different from this. It looks very different, I should say. It's not different. It's the same book. but it has that beautiful painting of George. I guess he's wearing red. Is that the one I'm imagining? Yes, that's right.

Yes, he's in his sort of military uniform as opposed to his coronation robes, which are the yellow ones that you usually see. Yes, yeah. The ones that are worn in Hamilton, the musical. Right. Well, okay, so Hamilton Musical. I, the part of what you do deliberately, I guess, is you try to show us the human side of these figures that are often turned into caricatures and no one more than George III in Hamilton. Anybody familiar with Hamilton, I'm slightly familiar, but that, I guess the thing is though that's done mostly for fun, for entertainment.

but truly George III, for many reasons, which we can touch on, has been turned into a caricature for very serious reasons. And in my own research, it's fascinating to see who he really was, in part by dint of having read your book. But let's just start with, I want to touch on Churchill and Napoleon eventually, but let's start with George the 3rd. The title of the book, the American version is the last king of America, the misunderstood reign of George the 3rd. So in a nutshell, let's start with the nutshell version. Why do you say he's misunderstood? Well, as you say, he's been caricatured, both, as you also say, for entertainment, but much more seriously during his own lifetime for very serious political purposes.

He was caricatured, of course, in actual cartoons. He was literally caricatured. Literally caricatured by some of the greatest cartoonists, political cartoonists of any era, but certainly the 18th century, men like Gil Ray and Rowlandson and others. So they presented him as a sort of idiotic figure quite a lot. lot of the time. Then he was cartooned, then he was caricatured also for much more serious purposes by the American revolutionaries, including of course in the Declaration of Independence where there were no fewer than 28 accusations made against him, many of which I argue in

this book were a caricature of the truth because he wasn't the tyrant that he was made out to be. And also the wigs back in Britain, his political opponents caricatured his beliefs and his opinions. And so this is a man who I do believe was wildly misunderstood. It's complicated, the subject is complicated because monarchy itself is complicated. Monarchy itself is something that is at least partially intentionally symbolic. And so when one is a living symbol, which neither of us is that I'm aware of, it comes with a certain weight. It's on some level impossible to ferret out who is the real man versus the symbol because that's the idea.

one is meant to embody something, and different monarchs have done it in different ways and have really apprehended that role differently. It seems that he started out at the tender age of whatever it was, 22, meaning to be very much a kingly king that he had set out that way, in part because of his mother's advice, is it Lord Boot? Yes, the head of Butte. I never know whether it's pronounced.

I've read it both ways that it's pronounced boot or Butte. How do you say it? Butte in English. But there's a Scottish title. I've been misinformed. I've been misinformed in print. But that somehow he was schooled,

that he ought to be, as I put it, a kingly king, somebody who really seizes the reins of the monarchy in a way that others hadn't. Yes, that's right. And also, of course, a tremendously important influence on him as well as the Earl of Butte and his mother, Princess Augusta, was his father, Frederick Prince of Wales, who died when he was only 14. But in that time, in those 14 years, he wrote to him and he schooled him in what he saw as the kingly virtues. And a very important politician of the day, Viscount Bollingbroke, wrote a book called The Idea of the Patriot King, which was actually about his father, Frederick Prince of Wales, but which he took very much as a sort of manual for kingship, which argued that the duty of the king was to rise above the politics of the day,

represent the nation, be patriotic, and behave in a way that was dignified but also responsible. And actually in a way, I think, it's the kind, those are the kind of precepts, which, of course, several kings have fallen below them since George the Third. But nonetheless, they are seen, certainly in fact, you mentioned the present king, Charles III. He sees George the Third very much as a exemplar of what monarchy should all be about. Well, then he'll lose the colonies again. Just kidding. Just kidding. It is interesting because I think that as an American, one is trained rightly to think of George III as this symbolic figure of tyranny, but it doesn't take long to look past that and to realize that that's, that there's a reason for it, but it has its limits. It's wartime propaganda.

It's perfectly understandable. I mean, every war, every country. does that. They try to portray the enemy as evil as well as as somebody that they need to fight for other reasons. Although, I mean, coming to the issue of the colonies, we don't have to stay there, but it struck me in writing my own book that George was ill-advised in how to handle the situation we can call it. And that because of the corruption that was inherent in the politics of the time that he could disperse huge amounts of money almost to protect himself from maybe advice that would have been good that he ought not

he didn't need to go down the path that he did and it's strange how it happened I guess yes I mean the whole of we would see it as corruption today the use of money in politics, but, although of course there's still huge amounts of money in politics. Nonetheless, in the 18th century, it was all about money pretty much. And the trouble is that the, seeing it through the modern lens that it was corrupt, as in a negative thing, pejorative sense, isn't really to understand 18th century politics. That was what 18th century politics was all about. It was intended, the House of Commons was intended to represent the interests of the nation.

And there would be land-owning interests, there would be trading interests, there would be people who have money through other reasons and so on, Indian cash that was coming in from the empire and so on. And so people expected rich people to be able to buy seats in Parliament. I don't think you're right to say that he surrounded himself with people who didn't disagree with him. because quite a lot of the time the majority of the House of Commons did disagree with him. It's just that he had a series of the most terrible advisors.

I mean, he had two, out of his 14 prime ministers, only two of them were really impressive politicians. Pitt the elder, who didn't come to power during the period of the American Revolution. He'd lost power by then. And of course his son, Pitt the younger, who only came to power in 17. 84 after the American Revolution had been victorious.

And so the poor old Georgia Third had a series of prime ministers who were appallingly bad, including, of course, Lord North, who we'd see as, along with Neville Chamberlain, the worst prime minister in British history. Hey there, folks. I've been saying that 2026 must be the year of accountability, whether talking about government spending or the way we steward our own families, we have a moral duty to seek the truth. But let's be honest, in the world of Medicare, truth is often the first casualty.

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That's Chapter at 571-4-21-1253. Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you deserve. I actually wasn't aware of that, not being much of a student of British history, but I didn't realize that North was thought of in those terms. That's interesting to think of. I can't help but feel sorry for Lord North in a way. But it does seem one of the tragedies of history that William Pitt, the elder, was or chattel. as he sometimes called, that he was ill and unable to step in. Yes, it is a great tragedy because he was very sympathetic towards the American patriot movement.

He was highly intelligence, of course. He'd won what you call the French and Indian Wars, what we call the Seven Years' War, and he was beloved by the people. But not by George III. but had he been anything other than absolutely paralysed by gout of the worst form to the point that it actually drove him mad, he locked himself up in his house, wouldn't see anybody at all, didn't visit Parliament for over a year, as Prime Minister, it's the most extraordinary thing, and finally he had to give up and never came back

and then had a stroke and died in the House of Lords. It was a, we've got a statue there actually where he had his stroke. So it's a tragic story and I think history would have been very different one way or the other. I mean, of course you'd have had your independence ultimately, but you wouldn't have necessarily had to fight a war for it. I guess I don't know about that. We don't need to talk about that now, but I don't know that we would have had our independence. I think there are so many on the American side,

who weren't even thinking about independence until the bitter end, until... Yeah, until the 1770s at least. Yeah, I mean, even 1773 or four or five. I mean, but in any event, we kind of know what happened in the way it went, which accounts, of course, for many Americans' view of George III, that he was the tyrant.

But it even seems to me in the Declaration of Independence that the whole thing is, it's almost like a literary conceit to think of it as we have this figure who will represent tyranny. But really it was parliament. It was the whole system. I think most of the Americans thought of it that way. They didn't think of George the third as the troublemaker. No, I think Tom Payne was a key figure in this, of course, when he brought out his pamphlet common sense,

which turned out to be the biggest selling pamphlet, political pamphlet of the century. And he made a very vicious ad hominem attack on George III, calling him the Royal Brute of Britain, treating him as though he was a brute, whereas in fact, of course, this man was a highly sophisticated enlightenment monarch, a great Christian, a really serious and substantial philosophical thinker, as a farmer as well as a man who loved his people. He was very interested in science and architecture and so on, art.

The idea that he was a brute is completely absurd. And it seems to me a loving husband and father. Yes, very eugsorious to his beloved wife, Charlotte, after whom, of course, the town in North Carolina is mentioned, is named. And she was a philanthropist and interested in music and literature and so on. These people were not brutes. They were absolutely amongst the best of the monarchs that we've ever had, really. Well, you use the term eukesorious, and I have to say,

Georgian England was not famous for euxoriousness among its elites. And I note that in my book, that it was an important. many ways, I've also written a book on Wilberforce, in many ways a very decadent culture among the elites. So George the third stands out even more when you think of that context. He's the only one of the Hanoverian monarchs who was faithful to his wife. And I mean, he had a lot of problems with his children. The eldest two were pretty males, at least, were ghastly. Yes, George the fourth was ghastly, is ghastly. almost unbelievably so.

He seems to me to be a living caricature, an apt caricature of the decadence of the Georgian era. Exactly. He has all of the vices and none of the virtues of the era. And everybody recognized it, and actually when he finally died in 1830, there were widespread celebrations and no mornings whatsoever, which at the Times newspaper says,

never has a monarch died to so little mourning, which is a pretty horrible thing to have to say, especially the Times newspaper, but it was true. And so George III had problems, not just with that child, but with a couple of the others as well. Nonetheless, he was, as we say, a very cultured man.

But Tompane had to attack him personally, you have to, you're fighting a war. And you mentioned the Declaration of Independence. That is such a beautiful document. That first third of it is amongst the most, those Shakespearean phrases, those biblical phrases, those phrases that sum up all that's best in being a human in politics. And then you've got the second half of it, or the second two-thirds of it at least, which is a series of 28 charges, ad hominem charges, which just six.

simply 24 of them just don't add up. A few of them do, the key ones, about no taxation without representation essentially, that kind of argument about government and about taxation. But all of the rest of them, just either they had, it was the system that had been around since Elizabeth I first, since the beginning of the colonies, you know, 150 years earlier, or they weren't anything to do with George the 3rd at all? Well, the, I guess, gravamen of the thing really has to do, as I understand it, with what many of the Americans thought of as the hypocrisy,

that they were in fact arguing for British ideas, that it was in the previous century that Great Britain had established, you know, that our rights come from God. and on and on and on and of course the wigs in parliament saw it that way but yes the list the litany of however 26 some of them are strange but I guess so that's how many Americans think of George and then of course next we move on you know and we forget all about George but there's so much more to his life I do want to touch on the his abdication I write about it, or I quote his letter of abdication in my book, because I was astonished that I had never heard of this before, that he decided, well, I'll let you describe it, because it's just, most Americans know nothing of it.

No, well, this was a key moment when the Prime Minister, Lord North, was insisting essentially that the king had to bow to the will of the House. of Commons and Church and, sorry Churchill there, George the 3rd, did not see that as part of his kingly duties. He very much thought that he had the right to veto acts of Parliament, which he never did, but he thought he had the right to. No act of Parliament has been vetoed since 1709 by Queen Anne, but he didn't think that this vestigial right should be given up. and he also thought that he had the right to appoint prime ministers, which of course he was able to do, and indeed the royals did until his granddaughter, Queen Victoria, essentially gave up that right too. And so you're on a very interesting sort of constitutional nexus during his reign.

The glorious revolution of 1688 had established that Parliament ultimately did have the power in the land, but the king still had some powers that he didn't want to give up, but he also didn't want to exercise. So he got to the point where he thought, well, the game's not worth the candle, I will abdicate. And he must have been serious about it because he wrote out several versions of the letter of abdication of the instrument.

And of course, finally, he never actually presented it, stayed in his papers, and it was in his papers till the 1950s when it was first discovered. When it was first discovered. Yeah, it was there for 180 years. Is this why most of us haven't heard of it? Yes, I think so, yes. And there have been two biographies which have mentioned it, including mine, and then, you know, it isn't a sort of thing that's, I mean, I'm glad you're surprised by it, because I was surprised by it. I wasn't taught it at school either.

I'm sure I learned it from reading your book, which I'm holding in my hand, and I was absolutely astonished, but the fact that the letter was not discovered, a letter of application wasn't discovered until the 50s makes some sense, because, you know, it takes time for common knowledge to catch up with. Well, and also the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle have an interesting history. A lot of his papers were given, were essentially inherited by George the 4th, who wasn't at all. interested in them and rather despised his father and hated his father. And they were boxed up in Windsor Castle and left there until historians, many years later, were sort of came across them and King George I first said that historians could have a look at them. And there were so many of them, hundreds and hundreds of boxes, but it wasn't until the 1950s that this was found. What a trove for scholars like you.

Well, it still is a wonderful trove. And the good thing is that largely down to American money and also King's College London, which I'm very proud to be a visiting fellow, together these have managed to get everything put online. And so the... Everything. Yes, George III's papers.

I mean, there are a few sort of household bills and things that aren't online, but every important letter and, document and piece of correspondence and so on, has now been put online as a result of this wonderful Georgian papers archive. I was talking to someone in Colorado some months ago who I thought said that there were letters between Benjamin Franklin and George III. Is that likely? He didn't write, Franklin wrote to him. He didn't write back. Not that he was cutting him or anything but he uh Franklin wasn't considered at the time to have been of a

importance enough this is in the very early period of course when Franklin was living in London yeah and so he was replied to but he wasn't replied to directly by the king but interesting nonetheless that Franklin living here would have written George the third and Franklin to me is a an interesting figure at least in some large part, just because he was the greatest advocate of unity between Great Britain and America until the horrible scene in the cockpit where everything changed. Actually, the letters aren't really about, interestingly, they're not really about big constitutional issues.

No, yeah. They're much more about things like electricity, actually. there's one point where the king decides not to go down some experimental route that Franklin suggested with regard to science. And that's an interesting aspect of both of their interests in, obviously, in science. You said that George VIII hated his father. Why do you suppose that was the case? Because he had none of his father's virtues, knew it. his father was beloved by many people

and many Britons in all social classes and he himself was hated his father even though he bailed him out and bought his mistress's letters so that they weren't published nonetheless he betrayed his father

which mistress one of George the fourths I mean there's so many there's so many that's why I think it was I think it might have been Mrs. Arbuthnot, but I'm not certain about that. Or maybe Mrs. Fitzherbert, more likely to be Mrs. Fitzherbert, I would have thought. The actress. The actress. And so even though he helped his son in scandal after scandal at vast

costs, it must be said, his son in no way changed his behaviour, in no way acted in any way better and he also took when I'm sure we're going to be getting on to this when the king his father went mad he took his friends and his brother to sort of watch his father in his straitjacket and point at him and laugh at him and and mock him that's how that's how unpleasant this man was it really I don't think it could get more unpleasant than that to be honest It's an unbelievably cruel thing to have done, isn't that? Yeah, I just, it seems demonic, actually, really, to do that to one's father. Well, that, unfortunately, I'm not surprised knowing what I know about George the 4th.

George III has, you know, been turning to this caricature who is the mad king. But of course, for most of his reign, he was not mad. and how long, was there a long period where he began to display signs of difficulty? Well, he came to the throne in 1760, and it's not until 1789 that there are, sorry, 1788, that there are public moments where it's clear that something has gone horribly wrong with his mind. There was an attack in 1764, which only lasted a couple of months, which was hushed up. And when you say attack, what do you mean attack? He started to ramble.

He didn't make sense. He kept repeating himself. And it went on for a couple of months. But the establishment, essentially, his wife and his family and the Prime Minister of the day, just hushed it up. He didn't go to his morning levies, which was where he would meet people. He was sent off essentially to Q rather than to Windsor, and he got better. And so, although it must have been very worrying as far as he was concerned,

nothing then happened for another 24 years until a really serious outbreak, which brought us almost to the point where the prince, his son, George the 4th, we've been talking about, was about to become regents of England, at which point he would have been able to have been able to sack the government and do all sorts of things, not at least pay off his own debts, which were at that stage running to the same level as the amount of money we were spending on the Royal Navy. Now there's some corruption.

There's some corruption. So when the king did go mad, and this was not, Porphyria. This has been, it's always, I was just going to ask. Every historian, up until me, essentially, has taken it for granted that it was porphyria because of a series of articles that were written in the 1960s, but it turns out that the people who wrote them were tremendously unscholarly about it. They ignored symptoms that they should have presented to the doctors who they who they asked for diagnoses. In fact, it was bipolar disorder effective type B.

And all the modern experts are clear about that. So we have for 60 years been misdiagnosing this poor man's illness. But it was then after overrefer, overreasonizing this poor man's illness. after over a year, he then got his faculties back. And then there was another gap until 1809. And then finally in 1811, sorry, 1810 at the time of his jubilee, he went completely insane for the last 10 years of his life. And he also went blind and deaf.

It was an incredibly sad end. to a very good man's life. Well, the fact that he was known to read the Bible to his daughter's many nights, that side of him is virtually unknown to most people. Again, we think of him as some kind of a caricature of a tyrant. Oh, he was a truly committed Christian. He was what you call evangelical, of course, He was an Anglican.

He took a great deal of trouble over the appointment of bishops. He only wanted good people as bishops. When politicians tried to stick bishops into important roles, when essentially for political purposes, he wouldn't have it. He was very interested in matters of theology and so on. And as I say, he was respected and admired for that. My Pillow's second annual mega sale is finally here. Get our patented premium My Pillows that adjust to your exact individual needs to give you the best sleep of your life.

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Use your promo code to take advantage of our second annual mega sale. But that's not all. Order right now and we'll ship your order absolutely free. But did I hear you correctly in describing him as somehow evangelical or not? Because I know that Lord Dartmouth was an evangelical and obviously John Newton, there were evangelicals in the Church of England. There were, yes. No, he wasn't of that persuasion. There were also, I mean, there were three groups in the Church of England at the time. Latitudinarians were all. also quite important and he was sort of in the middle which was where monarchs tended to be

ever since the counter-reformation but you have this sense of him enjoying church and and reading the bible and having a proper personal relationship with Christ he was somebody who who was a true believer, unlike some other kings, who essentially just went through the motions, including, of course, his son, George. Yeah. I'm surprised he even took the trouble to go through the motions, actually. Well, it was part of being a god.

But he also, very interestingly, of course, since the glorious revolution, when the Catholic king, James II, was overthrown, George III was the first person to actually attend a Catholic service. and also he had friends who were Catholics. He wasn't in any sense of Catholic himself, as was made out by some of the more weird conspiracy theories, especially in America after the Quebec Act of 1774,

which allowed toleration of Catholics in Canada. And some of the people from the Patriot Party argued that George was a crypto-Catholic who wanted to impose Catholic Catholic Catholic Catholic Catholic, on America. There's no evidence to that whatsoever. Well, anti-Catholics and hyper-Catholics tend always to say things like that about C.S. Lewis or whoever that, of course, they were on the view as on the very verge of swimming the tiber. Well, I don't want to forget to mention, and it's unclear, and I say so, I think in my book, that when it was that George III made his

famous comment about George Washington. It was either in 1783 or at the end of Washington's second term, but his famous comment where he calls Washington the character of the age, praising him. And I've always found that fascinating that the man whom we sometimes erroneously remember as this arch villain would be so generous in his consideration of, you know, theoretical his arch enemy. Yes, that's right. And it wasn't the only time that he said positive things about the Americans and also Washington. The first time he met John Adams when Adams came over as ambassador in 1785, he said that, essentially paraphrasing him, said that nobody fought against the separation for longer than I did. But now that the separation has taken place,

our two countries must become friends and put all that behind us which I thought was a statesman like and gracious attitude to take and so he was friendly to John Adams who was after all his greatest enemy along with Washington almost and then it was the moment when

Washington gave up the presidency and he said when he was told about that he said he's the greatest character of the age which again is a tremendously gracious remark to make from somebody who, about somebody, who has given you the greatest reverse of your reign and George III must have known by that stage that the thing he would be most known for and go down in history as was the man who lost the colonies. And so, yes, I mean, that's also, I think, another plus point in his favor when it

comes to his reputation. Well, it's very moving. I mean, it's statesman-like and gracious, but really, it's also very Christian. It's magnanimous in a way that's moving to me, that he would be able to be that gracious. You could see how he would be inclined not to be. So, yeah, that's, it's beautiful. The anecdote, it's always a little unclear. I guess it was the painter Benjamin West, who reported. in his conversations with the king. And some have said that it happened, must be 1782 or 83, where he said, well, what's Washington going to do now?

He's asking West, and he's always going to go back to his farm, which astonishes the king. And then the other version is when he hears that he's after two terms that he's decided to step down. And I think we forget that he could have had five terms if he'd wanted them. That's right. and also West, of course, being an American loyalist

was somebody who George III was interested in hearing the opinions of regarding America. Well, I'd love to, you've made a career in a way of rescuing misunderstood leaders. You've written about Napoleon and Churchill maybe we can touch briefly on how either of them or both of them have been misunderstood. Maybe start with Napoleon. I'd say, I mean, of course he was a dictator, but he wasn't a dictator of the modern kinds

that we associate with Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin and so on. He wasn't somebody who wanted to, or was at all interested, in getting into every area of He wasn't a totalitarian. He wasn't a totalitarian. That's exactly right. Yes, exactly. He was somebody who, who I believed he had the right to dictate the laws and was not about to be overruled by parliaments and so on. He very much ruled by what he saw as the consent of the people, so referendum that made him first consul and then first consul for life and then emperor. So in that sense he was a dictator, but yes, he wasn't one who wanted to open windows into men's souls in the phrase of Elizabeth I first. The reason that I think he's misunderstood is the assumption that pretty much everybody makes about him that he invaded Russia out of a sense of hubris, and it was the hubris that brought him down.

And I don't think that's the case. I think he wanted to fight an entirely different kind of war in Russia than the one he was sucked into and ultimately fought, where he, of course, went to Moscow and then stayed there too long. But what he actually wanted to do was to fight only about 50 miles inside the Russian border for three weeks or so, and crushed the Russians. He had an army over twice the size of the Russian army. He'd beaten the Russians twice. twice before, he was not planning at all to go to Moscow. And he actually, when he was in Moscow, had enough time to come back before the snows came in if he had taken the correct route back via southern Russia. But instead, because he was pushed back at a battle called Malayaro Slavits,

which nobody really has heard of, but nonetheless is a key moment. in history, in my view, on the 25th of October 1812. He took the decision to go back via the battlefield of Borodino and Smolensk, and that was the moment that the blizzards swept in and destroyed over half a million men out of his army of 615,000. Extraordinary. And Churchill, my goodness, I don't, maybe, because I'm an American and Americans tend to think so well of Churchill. It's hard for me to think of Churchill as a figure who needs to be redeemed at all. But maybe that's not so much the case over here.

Here in England, only in the past week, we've had a video installation at the National Portrait Gallery, which claims that Winston Churchill deliberately and willfully wanted to, who, sorry, deliberately and willfully did starve millions of Indians to death during the Second World War and that he was essentially a genocidal maniac and a war criminal and so on. So you do have, there is by the way no evidence for this whatsoever. It is a complete and utter bare-faced lie. And pleasingly, actually, and it's very unusual in this era of sort of woke and post-woke, the National Portrait Gallery have taken down that. video installation because the artists, when presented with the facts, didn't want it to

continue to be put up. So there are small victories that can be won, but overall, Churchill's reputation is under huge pressure, both from the extreme left and the right. What were you then, so some years ago, seeing about Churchill that needed correcting? Well, it wasn't so much correcting as I had this incredible opportunity to use sources that hadn't been used in the major biographies of Churchill before. The late Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, allowed me to be the first Churchill biographer to use her father's diaries. And King George VIII met Churchill every Tuesday of the Second World War. they had lunch together and they discussed all the big issues

which countries were going to be invaded and when and were under what circumstances and the story about the facts about the ultra decrypts and the nuclear bomb and Pearl Lobber and so on and was able therefore the king then wrote down what Churchill said and I was able to use these papers which were a tremendous new source as you can imagine and there were 50. 57 new sets of papers that have been deposited at Churchill College archives in Cambridge University. And so there was just so much new information.

It deserved a new book because there was a good deal of new light that could be shared. So I didn't write the book as a sort of dialectic against attacks on Churchill. And there are plenty of things Churchill got wrong in his 65 years as an MP. know, blunder after blunder, frankly. And those all had to be looked at. But what I didn't find was any example of deliberate viciousness. He wasn't this horrible character that he's been made out to be by this new strain of detractors. Well, in case you're unaware, I just want to say as an American, most Americans think of Churchill as a great hero.

Well, I certainly think of him as a great hero. And actually, my book sells better in America than it does any other country, the world, including Britain. Well, history is important. And as John Adams said, and I can't believe he coined the phrase, but he did, facts are stubborn things. They are. But if we don't find the letters or don't have access to the letters, a lot of these facts remain unethical. unknown. So it's wonderful that you have availed yourself of these letters. It's amazing to me that the Queen made those diaries or journals available to you. And it's also, I never cease

to be amazed at how it can be that things take so long, that it would have not been until fairly recently that that would have been available because it does matter to history. This is after all the king writing about something of historical importance. It's not a personal thing, issue, that he was writing about. That's right.

I just think that perhaps, especially, of course, Her Majesty of Queen was born in 1926. She wouldn't necessarily have seen this as historical so much as almost current affairs as far as she was concerned. And although the king comes out very well from the diaries,

there are references also to her uncle, King Ibert the Eighth, and other sort of family ructions that she might not have wanted to have come out earlier than they did. She also possibly, I mean, I have no idea what was going through her mind, all that of her advisors, but perhaps they wanted to have an historian as opposed to a judge, journalist from one of the newspapers go through it and therefore to have it presented in a sort of objective and serious and substantial way in a book. I have no idea the theory behind it.

But nonetheless, it is quite a long time, since it's 75 years before one sees the truth about these things, not least because, as I say, both the King and Churchill do come out well. And speaking of King George III's Christian faith, it seems that Her Majesty Elizabeth II was herself a very sincere Christian. Oh, certainly. Oh, absolutely she was, yes. I mean, she enjoyed going to church, and she enjoyed interacting theologically and intellectually with her chaplains and so on. She cared about which bishops were appointed and things like that. And that is the sign of a monarch taking the role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England extremely seriously. I know that there are some letters between her and Billy Graham. I haven't seen them, but I've spoken to Billy's son, Franklin, whom I know.

I'd love to know whether those are available. but it is interesting to think of the British monarchs as defenders of the faith. And I don't know that anybody's ever written a book about that aspect of their monarchies. I don't know of one, but I'd be surprised if there isn't one, because it is a very important aspect. I mean, we have it on all of our coins, for example, Fid death, defender of the faith, is on every, you. British coin, because it's a, actually, it's slightly ironic because the title was given by

Henry the 8th, sorry, to Henry the 8th by the Pope, who obviously then didn't defend the Catholic faith, but actually completely undermined it in Britain. But nonetheless, they've all been very proud of that title. And I think the, actually the present king has tried to extend it to defender of faiths. So he sees himself as defending all of the faiths as opposed to just the Anglican faith, which was controversial at the time that he said it. I just want to go back to George III. It really is an extraordinary thing that he is, and this is the case with many historical figures,

they're thought of in one or two sentences. And if you get a sentence or two, you know, oh, he, lost the colonies. He was the tyrant who, you know, we rail against in our Declaration of Independence, and then he went mad. It seems baked in to history that, unfortunately, we do some people up in that way, and often very, very unfairly, which only underscores the importance of biographies. and history the way you've done it? I think actually in the end, if you go back to the sources and you read them in a way remembering

the circumstances in which they were written, if you're constantly looking at what was said and written in their proper historical context, and you return to the archives, you sift through the evidence, you do the work essentially, then actually people, if you've got the evidence, people will listen to and look again at a person and re-establish what people were genuinely like. I think most intelligent and educated people are willing to look again

if it's in the light of documentary evidence that is. is clearly unassailable. I remain fascinated by how long it sometimes takes, how strange it is, that it can take decades or centuries before information comes out. I'm thinking in my own book writing about Charles Lee, the general who really undermined Washington, but who more recently a book came out very, very plod,

causably accusing him of out and out committing treason, not merely of being unpleasant and undermining Washington because he himself wanted the top job. And that's because of a letter that was discovered in the New York Historical Society not so long ago. So it is fascinating how information can be hidden. Is there anyone on whom you've trained your eyes for a future book? Well, my present book is coming out in October. It's called Napoleon and his marshals. And it is about the emperor's relationship with his 26 marshals of the empire.

And almost all of whom hated each other. So it's a fun book to write because they're all having a go at each other. And in campaign after campaign and battle after battle, their relations with each other change. They very often come from absolutely nothing. They're the sons of Beryl Coopers and Inkeepers, and they become kings and princes and so on. So it's a wonderful tale, and in some of those I have taken issue with the established views of people's characters and personalities, and others, I think, are people who haven't been appreciated enough. So, yes, it's part of the excitement, the pleasure of history, isn't it? It's exciting.

And I have to ask you, I assume Napoleon never actually said, Abel was I, Ere saw Elba. He did not. Of course not. Did he speak any English? No, no. He tried right at the end of his life to learn a bit of it, but it was pidgin English at best. And he probably didn't speak in palindromes in any language. Of course not.

No. Well, I look forward. He also didn't say not tonight, Josephine. Did he do any of the things that he's purported to have done? Luckily, thank God, yes. Gosh. Well, really a privilege and a joy to have this time with you, Andrew Roberts. Thank you for your works of history.

I'm somewhat familiar with what that takes, not nearly as familiar as you, but thank you for that work and for your time with us today. and I look forward to your next book. Thank you. You are kind, Eric. Thank you very much indeed.