Peter Moore: Before we start, I just want to ask you a little bit about Churchill's completely distinctive personality because he is a figure that we all have in our minds in some way but let's get back away from the legend to the person and the young man, in particular. Welcome to Travels Through Time, Andrew.Īndrew Roberts: Thank you very much indeed, Peter. In October of last year, he published his major, single-volume biography of the statesman, Churchill: Walking With Destiny.

His first book, 30 years ago, was about Churchill and he's written five books with Churchill's name in the subtitle or title since. His great, biographical subject though is Sir Winston Churchill, the figure we're going to meet today.

Through his books on subjects like Waterloo, Wellington and Napoleon, Andrew has become a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. We're being taken there by a writer who knows the time better than almost anyone else and that is Andrew Roberts. Today, we're heading to one of the most dramatic, perilous and consequential moments in all British, some might even say world, history which is May 1940. Peter Moore: Hello, I'm Peter Moore and this is Travels Through Time, the podcast where we examine one year in the past through three different scenes. Transcription Andrew Roberts talks to Peter Moore about Winston Churchil & May 1940 This event, Andrew Roberts argues, Churchill had foreseen as he destiny many decades before.Ĭlick here to order Andrew Roberts’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast. On Churchill was summoned to meet King George VI. We watch as Chamberlain suffers the humiliation of the Norway Debate in the House of Commons and as he attempts to cling to power in Number Ten Downing Street the following day. In this latest episode of Travels Through Time, the historian and biographer Andrew Roberts takes us back to those tense and dramatic days, 8.

This political change coincided with the NAZI ‘blitzkrieg’ invasion of western Europe. It was replaced by a new regime of ‘growling defiance’, headed by the pugnacious and polarising Winston Churchill. Out went the undistinguished, dithering government led by Neville Chamberlain, known for its failed policy of appeasement. Click here to order Colin Jones’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.In seventy two hours in the middle of May 1940, Britain’s political leadership was transformed.

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