Latest future tense social. This is very exciting for me because im a huge fan of erik larson and his book and we got to listen to a little bit of churchill to get me mood. Im andreas martinez, from future tense a collaboration between new america, trade magazine and Arizona State university. We look at the implications of the impact of technology on society. Im also professor of practice at Cronkite School of journalism as Arizona State university. Its an honor to pleasure to have you with us today, erik, and what brings us here today is your latest book, the splendid and the vial, saga of churchill family and defiance during the blitz. As all of you probably know, im sure, erik is the author of such fabulous bookses dead week, in the guardian of garden of beads, thunderstruck, i have most of your becomes but not your first book. I was intrigued look agent your biography you wrote a book another companies spying on consumers. A very future tensey subject which. I loved on your website, which all of you should listening to check out, i think its eriklarsonbooks. Com, you have an al concern testify bask which is faction and you drive the naked consumer as a book you like but nobody else did and i seriously doubt that but ill take a look at that. So welcome and really thank you for being with us. Guest thank you. Host we should just get right to it, and i want to because were having this conversation today of all days i feel like shy ask the question, im sure is on everyones mind and that is how did Winston Churchill celebrate cinco de mayo. No im kid. Ing that would stump me. Host youre right. That was not one of the things we discussed. In all seriousness, we of hearing this event on zoom as opposed to in person, which i would have loved because were on lockdown, quarantine, house arrest, choose your term. In the face of this Global Pandemic, and so i just want to read a paragraph from your book to set the theme sear. You wrote churchills notion of what constituted an office was expansive. Often generals, ministers and pfaff members would find themselves meeting with churchill while he was in the bathtub. One of his Favorite Places to work. Also liked working in bed and spent hours there each morning going through dispatches and reports with a typest seated anymore. Always present was they box, a black dispatch box that contained reports, corporations and manipulates from other officials requiring his attention. Reprepareished daily by his private sect. Clearly Winston Churchill was sun who mastered the art of working from home. Something were tall struggling to do these days, and so maybe not the place that these conversations about your book usually start but aim curious whether you think churchill would would have something on us on working from home. Guest put it this way. I were Winston Churchill and doing this zoom interview i would be in the bathtub. And actually churchill had no sense of vanity and like lie would have been completely naked doing it. He was an ace work at homer. The guy would get up relatively late in the morning and work in bed. He had his typist, his personal secretary, nearby with a at all times with a type writer taking notes. He would more than likely have a cigar and also frankly more than likely would have this is very appropriate for today would very likely have a tumbler full of water and whiskey. Verse little whiskey but a whiskey and water. Host its interesting you talk about we tend to think of this enyuck relationship, friendship, partnership, alliance, whatever you want to call it, between fdr and church chul and the Communications Going back and forth between washington and london and the summits but i was it was interesting reading in your book how a lot of the early conversations in d. C. , when churchill first enters office, is about the drinking and sort of some of his over the top nature of his personality, and sort of i guess people were wondering, is this somebody we can take seriously. Guest drinking has always been something people have noted about churchill, but is it a mistake to ever think he was a drunk or an alcoholic. Certainly was not. In fact, his very close private secretary, wrote later oregon that he had never seen churchill drunk or even in any way with his faculties limited by alcohol. Churchill himself once said to clem mennine, he said ive taken a lot more than alcohol than alcohol has taken out of meche thats how he felt. One think about the working a home aspect. Resonates today is churchill in this period spent a lot of time at the Prime Minister country home, and actually later began divides his time between two Country Homes which a number of peopling also doing. He he would have been very likely quite at home with this whole situation. Host and i was struck that the i did not know this checkers was donated by somebody to the government, was that correct . As a camp david more of a traditional country home, suppose. Guest an american donated it well before the war, back in i believe he donated it in 1914 . Dont quote me on that one. But anyway, donate to hold the government. The idea being that checkers was to be used no work was to be done there. Host thats the other thing. Guest no work done there a place for Prime Ministers could sort of just enjoy the bucolic country side and let their faculties restore. Churchill took that very differently and decided to make this his country command post and packed it every weekend with guests and booze and fun. Host so i have to when he first heard this was the sung of your next book i wag intrigued. I had quite a lot about this first year of churchills being in office and that the finest hour, and the blitz and so forth and i think recently i read i think Andrew Roberts biography of churchill and i feel like a lot of us are even if were not specialists, we have been inundated with booked about this great historical character and i might have skipped this book had it not been written bit you. Having read your other books fit like he is going to have a new angle, new incite, insight, some new frame. Was it daunting . Did you write but churchill because there were too many books written about Abraham Lincoln. Guest i was totally undaunted. Let me be clear, it was not actually churchill that drew me to do this book. Churchill kind of became a entered the party a little late in the process because what happened is that i had decided for a variety of complicated reasons white be very interested to look into how it was that people actually got through the day during the blitz, during the german air campaign, including the portion we know as the blitz. How did they actually do it . And the reason was, we have my wife and i moved from seattle to new york city, and noticing i moved to new york city i had this epiphany what 9 11 has been like for new yorkers versus what the rest of us who perhaps watched in realtime experienced. A world of difference. Not just the sense and sights but also the sense of violation, having your home city attacked and that made me start think can about writing about how people got out there the blitz. 57 consecutive nights of bombing. How did people get through mitchell original thought was maybe ill just write but the typical london family. So i thought about that. Then i thought, wait a minute why not the quintessential london family, church hill, his family and advisers and see how they get through the day and much nobody had actually done that, decided to take a close look at that daytoday experience, and thats what really helped me get through it. But was i daunted . Oh, yes, how much material had been written but churchill and how much good stuff also. Andrew roberts, my favorite at the churchill scholar, a brilliant writer. So much material had been done i early hand had to make a strategic decision how to purr su reveach. The idea of reading everything that had ever been written but churchill or by churchill which itself would have been a hurricane leann task would take me a decade and by the time i got the ten inch year i wouldnt be done because eight more books would come out , so i did meat a strategic decision that i was going to simply read as much as could i to get a sense of church hill and the landscape in that period and then dive right into the archives to see what was really there. Thats where i feel he most comfortable with original materials and thats how i managed to pair pare things down. Every sungle day for the last four and a half years i did not in fact ask myself what am i doing. Host well, it was very interesting to see how it did feel like portrait of churchills orbit and you had these we were often seeing churchill and that historical moment through the eyes of his personal secretary or his daughter or other advisers that sometimes are not quite we dont necessarily see things through their perspective as much and some of the other accounts ive read. You mentioned churchills own writing. One thing that astonished me reading the roberts biography i had never realized just how prolific the history he wrote after the war ask the tact that throughout his life he would always get himself out of financial holes by his own writing and he was so prolific, and commanded quite a lot of money for his journalistic writings in a way i had not appreciate snead his writing got him out of the financial hole. This is one thing but churchill chat is so remarkable, i is that he was extremely well read, an extremely talented writer. And also quite good painter, but he all this went into that machine that was children churchills brain and it all really helped him in this process of trying to lead the nation through this particular through the crisis of the gerrymanderran air campaign. German air campaign. Host its interesting you said you gravitated dudders this moment by think can what it must have been like to be in new york on 9 11 and then multiply that by 57 nights of the blitz and so forth. And then your book comes out in early 2020 and of course, we are now the entire world is fighting off this Global Pandemic, which is an existential challenge to our societies thats quite different from war, although we see people reaching for this analogies. The analogy it that is unquestionable is the need for leadership to mobilize societies to meet the crisis at hand, that requires extraordinary efforts and sacrifices, and so i want to ask you about that, and whether theres a secret sauce that church chill residents leadership, and before we get to to that, maybe just sort of set the scene, may 10, 1940, amazing day in history, its where your account starts, 80 years from this coming sunday, i was also thinking about that in preparation of this. So just sort of set the escape of describing what it was that the uk and Winston Churchill were facing. Guest so 1940, which is when the action starts in my book, was the day that churchill became Prime Minister, the greatest day in his life, i think even he would agree. The thing he wanted most of all. He became Prime Minister owing to something of a rebellion in the house of commons or the consent this was that neville championer loin was not up to the challenge of dealing with hitler and germany but that same day was the day that hitler the socalled phony war ceased to be a phony war and became a hot war when hitler invadedded the low countries. Heres a situation where churchill the greatest day of his life and also one of the darkest days in the history of the world. This did not daunt churchill. Churchill thought this this is like add spice to the challenge, the idea of being in charge of this great empire at such a dire time really kind of thrilled him. So, he becomes Prime Minister. Appoints the cabinet. This is a crucial element. Talk about the people he appointed, the main characters in the book who i think in other works have been relegated to simply the secondary posture. He immediately is confront talk but excess stenshall threats the presumption that once germany consolidated its hold over france and the britished and den shear forces become expelled. The entire strategic picture would change. Prior to france falling, the assumption was that france would always stand, that this would keep the they would not have the endurance fly to brian. Suddenly with france falling there were german air bases on the coast of the english channel, minutes away from england and london, something that planners in britain had never even speculated on. So you had hat threat and the very real fear that hitler, germany would innovate in a crosschannel attic. Seemed to most people to be a certainty. That if germany ever attained air superiority over the channel there would be an invasion. You can imagine taking control of britain at this time when not only has hitler begun invading various countries in europe and succeeding and crushing them, but now suddenly he i facing what could be a threat in terms of invasion across the channel, what hellish prospect for any normal mortal but not for churchill. He took this on with a verve and a gusto cat him that through time and time again in subsequent months. Host and we were listening to snippets of his speech and his oratory we have been exposed to and there have been lot of hollywood renditions. Theres obviously he had a gift of language. When you think of the his recipe for leadership, their the tendency focus on the oratory the able to leverage the english language shouldnt be snubbed estimated but what is most underestimated. Was he a great commune tater or how much of a ratio of elements and guest it was a mix of things. First of all, we are all familiar with the orator, the great lines, never has so much been owed by so many to so few. That wasnt the strong point of his speech. That line did not necessarily have the same resonance is does now. Basically a speech, just a speech, but the thing that made churchill particularly excellent at communicating not just news and information but also communicating also a sense of need for courage is how we get a taste of that at the opening speech of dunkirk. A great story teller and he was telling as you heard in his opening moments, he was telling it as a story, as this is what was happening, this is how it was unfolding, sort of a thrilling story if you think but it. But what he would do is give you give his audience a sober appraisal of the situation, not happy talk, just a really down to earth sober sometimes too server and too detailed and scared the heck out of the audience on occasion, but then he would follow with comments about, real grounds for why people should be optimistic, how this problem of the blitz, of dunkirk, of the potential for a german invasion, how this can be resolved, positive reasons for optimism and not happy talk, real ground for optimism and then would come this rhetorical flourish at the eastbound would have people rising from thunder estates and saying im going to be part of this. Were going to take the guy on, goddammit and were going to beat hitler. But another almost to churchills leadership. A couple. This comes into act to communicate. Being a great leader of history he had this ability to put people to place people into the grand epic of british history to make them feel as if they were part of this great island story as he would put it. Thats very important to make them all feel part of this thing, this great tradition they had, and also he had a real understanding of the power of symbolic acts. Even something as simple as refusing to call hitler by his name. He would say that man or that wicked man, which very subtle, very tiny thing but very powerful thing. Dont if you dont identify, if you dont demonize your enemy, makes them seem like this unimportant presence, off in the distance. Then the other end of this continuum, the power visiting bombed out areas and showing himself there, showing himself surveying the damage, talking to people, expressing emotions, not afraid of weeping in public and also showing his resolve simple my by being there. He was engaging in a courageous act and showing defiance. This is a very, very powerful thing. Just to give you a contemporary example. I had to laugh in a film way the other day when we saw Vice President mike pence at the mayo clinic without a mask when everybody else around him was wearing a mask and to think of the of the optics, possibly appeals to a tiny slice of america maybe bet somebody like churchill would be wearing the mask and saying this is what we do. That power of sim pollic acts and if you engage in symbolic acts that create dividends you dont wear a mask when your audience knows damn well you should be wearing a mask, thats problem. That undercuts your credibility as a leader. Churchill had this acute sense of the power of symbolic acts. Another example of that is he certainly seemed to be utterly fearless and frankly i think fearlessness is infectious, as i would argue can be when there were air raids churchill was more than likely to go on the nearest roof and walk the air raid and bring people with him, including staff. Thats the kind of leader he was. Host ive actually been to the bunker which they now expanded to a nice museum in london that was there for him and then to read that he wasnt going to be very not going to spend much time there. Guest he only spent three nights there. Host one thing that fascinates me, and i dont maybe talk about this as a source is the extent to which we have some realtime information on how people responded to his speeches and so forth through the project the Mass Observation, something i first learn about reading britains war, a book about the homefront and describing this Mass Observation phenomenon. I guess a sociological project. Can you describe that . And todays equivalent would be social media or peoples google searches. Talk but a that. Thats fascinating. Guest so, Mass Observation was a social Sciences Organization that was founded before the war, the point being to create as its founder said to create a social psychology of ourselves. The idea being to recruit hundreds of diarists to write but daily life in britain. One way that the diarists were to kind of sharpen their skills was to describe things on their mantlepiece, that kind of daily personal detail. So, here are all these diarists, submitting them to Mass Observation for analysis, and then the war starts, and then the diarists continue to keep their diaries. What a tremendous resource. One of my favorite diarists of this Mass Observation group, young woman, olivia, who is she is a clerk for scotland yard, dating an older well, an older man in a love astaire her diary shows this i think shows in metaphorically what the broader culture in britain was experiencing and how they evolved. Here comps the blitz. She is terrified. Like everybody necessary london. This is everybody else in london, shocking thing. Up until then the belief was that for whatever reason london would not be attacked by german bombers directly. She is terrified. Over time, she becomes less terrified. The pivotal movement for her is when the incendiary bomb lands outside her house. The germans attacked at night and first they would first drop a live incendiary bomb, the point being to set things on fire so the flames would serve as a beacon for bombers to follow because this was an era when flying at night was best done with moonlight and if you didnt have moonlight you had to have fires as beck cons can one of these incendiary bombeds land it outside of her and shoes put it out, snuffed it out sparks she was so proud of herself so elated that suddenly she was no longer afraid. She had stood up to this awful assault from germany and she had had the courage to do this and had the courage to put this thing out. Meanwhile, her lover became as she was it would candid bit her lover and their sex life actually, her lover became more and more fearful and my favorite moment is as the story proceeds, as time passes, theyre walking during as an air raid begins to occur and they hear two bombs falling, they have a distinctive sound. They hear two bombs falling, and her lover shouts for her to get down, get down, and she says, not in my new coat im not. Host thats great. So, we are us a mentioned future tense, were usually focused on our relationship to technology and the impact of technology on society, and so part of the reason i wanted to have this conversation with you, other than the fact im a fan of your books and a history buff, there is sort of a future tense connection here which is one of the other things i was struck by reading your book, however familiar i may or may not have been with churchill, is that you really portray him as a i dent know if you call him a technologist in todays sense of the word but a tech enthusiast, and the character of professor behindman in the back ising and his role as part or churchills circle. That relationship and churchills relationship to science and technology. Clearly whether it was radar or the cryptography and the enigma code. Technology turned the tide and helped the alibis and the english contribution, not something we have this image of churchill as this antiquated figure from another from the distant past and even in hills day a lot of people had that image of churchill so not necessarily technology savvy, isnt the first thing that comes to your mine. In your book that was an interesting theme. Guest yeah. Well, first of all, he loved the idea of secret weapons. A big believer in the potential for it, for technology give britain a significant negligence terms of weaponry and so forth. Toward that one one adviser opinion he another aspect of his leadership smarts by the way, his special sauce if you will, was that he appointed advisers that he knew would give him the straight story. Didnt appoint people who were simply going to suck up to him and say, oh, yes, my lord, youre doing exactly the right thing. Fred lick behindenman was one of the most disliked men in white hall, the british government. He was diliked by just about antibody except maybe churchill and church hills wife and children because frederick, never forgot their birthday and after churchill became Prime Minister he appoint him to be his personal scientific adviser, very smoother, very savvy move because it gave churchill an insight into what technological things were actually happening within the defense establishment and also it gave frederick Carte Blanche to investigate anything he want ode to, in technology, and put assured churchill would bet the straight story. Not something that was massaged because frederick had this ability to look into anybodys affairs, any ministrys affairs and bring back a report to churchill. Some cases he actually wrote his own memoranda for churchill to sign that would be distributed then to the ministers in question. This proved to be a very valuable thing. For example, it turned out that the british didnt really actually know how many planes no surprise to didnt know how many aircraft germany had. An important thing to no the term of offensive they can wage. Also didnt know how many aircraft the raf had. That was another issue. That comes out in the saga as well. Such a conundrum that churchill decided he would have to actually hire a criminal court judge to review the evidence on both sides. This was the jump who would actually very famous murder case called the jigsaw murder because the bodies were chopped up into so many pieces they had to be reassembled to determine who the victims were. But he actually had to hire a judge to sit in on this meeting of the minds about just statistically statistical assessment, reconnaissance and technology elements, to try to determine how many planes did these people have and how many planes do we have . Fascinating thing. But the prof is a character who gets short shift short shrift but he was crucial to the story. Host theres also the im sorry. Im thinking about what you said about churchills not needing to surround himself with yes men who are going to tell him i dont know itself was a cultural shift but in our politics you cannot have any press conference or Cabinet Meeting without everybody going around and thanking the leader for his tremendous i think in the Trump Administration has taken that to an a completely new level. I think it is broader than that. More widespread. Dont get the sense that was there were updates about the situation on the frontlines they spent 20 or 30 minutes thanking churchill for his great leadership. Guest theres an analogy to the contemporary situation. Would argue that Anthony Fauci served the purpose today of Frederick Lindeman of the prof. The difference being the Current Administration doesnt want that kind of input, doesnt like having Something Like fauci out there as a loose cannon and churchill wanted frederick to be in everybodys face. His mandate was to cause trouble and he did in spades. Host i want to remind people that you can upload questions on the q a feature and were starting to get some bun dote forget but that. And then on the industrial side, you have lord Beaver Brooke who was the production czar and ising a been character, too, i feel an interesting character that might be a little more familiar. And we have analogous characters once the u. S. Entered the war. I forget his name but a former ceo of gm was brought in for a dollar a year famously by fdr to ramp up production, and beforebrook, they didnt know how many planes they had. Guest beaverbrook i feel that in larger biographies of churchill he tends to get somewhat short shrift. He was crucial in this era and wonderful thing but he was a widely hated as well. And in that case even clementine did not like him. Immediately after churchill became Prime Minister he appoint ed beaverbrook minister of aircraft production because churchill recognized something early on and that is his military advisers recognized if they were if britain was ever to be able to repel an invasion, it would require first would require they hold germany at bay. The potential for invasion would be very, very big if they got superiority. He realize the only way to prevent germany from getting superiority is the use of Fighter Aircraft and take down thunder fighters and bombes. The appoint0. Beaverbrook with the express goal of ramping up production of fighter, fight are production was already starting to increase but a very Small Program level. Churchill recognize it much more had to be done. Britain needed vast number of fighters to repel the assault. Beaverback was a newspaper baron and was smart about newspaper and ramping up circulation and knowing the dirt on everybody else. Now suddenly he is put in charge of this ministry of aircraft production and the whole point was to shake things up. Church which i newell he was hated and incredibly energyityic and smart and if anybody could do this job it would be lord beaverbrook and he came through to an incredible degree. And really kind of saved the day. So there, too, it was a not exactly the Technology Side but really understood not a manufacturing of aircraft. He understood the motivation of people. One of he most interesting things he did was he made sure that raf pilots, actual pilots, people who actually had their wings would visit aircraft industry Aircraft Manufacturing Companies to talk but what the planes were doing and how valuable it was that they were dag it. Another thing, here, too, he was sort of a very good at the power of symbolic gestures as well. He would they would bring german aircraft that were shot done, they would put them on the back of a truck and drive them through towns as if just simply reclaiming this aircraft and bringing it back if the point was to show people weve done this we brought down this german aircraft which is a clever little detail. Host one of the things its also easy to forget is the longevity that churchill had on the historical scene. He doesnt become Prime Minister until 1940, may 10th. And as you say and by that point he is how old . Guest when he becomes Prime Minister, 65. Host okay, 65. But he had been this famous character even in this youth because of his experience in the boar wars and his writing and he is in a high position in the cabinet during world war i with some controversies involving gallipoli. Guest he gets kicked out of his post as first lord of the admiralty because of gallipoli. Host i was putting it nicely. But so amy jackson has a question. She is asking an interesting question. Churchill was the first lord of the admiralty during the time frame, i think of the sinking of the lusitania and is a character in dead wake your book but the lusitania which was amazing. I highly recommend it. Amys question was did you research for this book change the image of churchill you had then and portrayed in dead san diego i was wondering if that led to you to want to write more but this character. Guest the answer to yourey is no. The answer to her question, thats a very interesting question. In writing about churchill in the book about he lusitania, i actually liked churchill even then. I know he screwed up with gallipoli. And that is really an interesting story in and of itself. But i think rather than changing my perception of him, it sort of it fleshed out my sense of what churchill was really all about. And made him seem to me a richer his experience during world war i informed my research in this current book by making him seem more of a nuanced character. A flawed character he was, deeply flawed and make no mistake that you can criticize churchill for many, many things especially in his postworld war ii goals and also in some of the things he did prior basically he was an imperialist. During this period he was in fact the leader of the moment that the man of the hour, and his experience during world war i was i think important to know because he screwed up. He screwed up bigtime in that prior experience, and now here he was coming coming coming intr during this even well i think actually apparent excess stenexcess stenshall threat and how he mustered the confidence do do so , a tremendous story. But the first did not led me to do this at all. Host you talk about his him being a flawed character, and him being sort of an arch imperialist and i getted the sense comes across in the roberts biography, too, even in his days his way of thinking seemed a little bit outdated and overly nostalgic and in the 30s he is i think he is seen by many people as a bit preposterous and over the gone to mellow dramatic some partly bus he is beating the drum on the threat the nazis posed and other point pooh tomorrow be more temperate. When you think but the kind of leadership we need when the Democratic Society is facing a existential crisis, it is is the persona and the trait you need in a leader maybe theyre different from the kinds of leaders and traits in your leaders you want in a time of normalcy . They turned to churchill, who was sort of this larger than life and character that was sort of had been so out of the mainstream until events caught up, they had no more choice in a way, and then one of the things that is so poignant but the whole saga of the war from the british perspective and the churchill protagonist, thes voted out of office two months after ve day, a month before the war end inside japan. Thats so unimaginable to us reading to us learning about this, and 80 years on, that would happen to somebody who carried the country through this experience on the shoulders. And so was there a realization even then that this guy is great or an emergency but too much melodrama in his clearly what brought churchill in was a profound sense that in neville champione chamberlin was not up to the task and the British Public before the end of the war had the same public feeling put churchill. While he was great during the war, confident, strong, and really able to rouse the public to his rhetoric, maybe thats not what we need now. Mack now we need at bit more stability and a little bit to manage the postwar era. So i think there are people who are suited to certain kind of leadership, just as there are there are certain who are certained for generals who are suited for desk jobs and certain generals suited for being on the battlefield, and so he, yeah. Host a couple of questions about coventry. A movie indicated that churchill was told by the decoders put an impending attack by germany and didnt warn the city because the germans would realize they cracked the code. Guest the store of coventry is this. Thanks to code breaking and deciphering german luftwaffe communication. There it was known there was a big raid come, moonlight sonata but wasnt clear where the thing was going to go the presumption was among british air intelligence, the presumption was the attack would be on london and that would be on a particular night. It actually happened one night earlier. Churchill was a report was done full of detail that was meant for the Prime Minister, given to him apparently according to one account, given to him in the car as he was leeing town to go to checkers. And it was so alarming, suggesting that there was this massive raid going to occur against london that night. He came back and was on the rooftop of the air ministry building, on the rooftop waiting for this huge raid but it was not coming to london issue it was coming to coventry. Did he know this raid was going to come . He did no a raid was coming, presumed the target would be london, he had no idea that coventry was going to be the target. Host and also on the subject of coventry, which you described the aftermath very movingly, david peters thanks you for joining us. And he says he found your description of that aftermath of the becoming of cover ven trend apropos to our current, particularly the speech let us vow before god to be better friends and neighbors in the future because we suffered this together and have stood here today. From writing this book and your many others what morals, beliefs, principles have you found have been critical in despair and tragic. What is the modern day equivalent another of that bishops speech . Guest the modern day equivalent, nothing frank live from the federal government, but i would think i think that for andrew como, his emphasis on things are improving now, rates of hospitalizations and so forth are coming down in new york state. Always very, very careful to emphasize how tragic, how a disaster of all these deaths night after night. He never has let us all forget the fact that what even though were in this race now to reduce this the virus to make it subside, he is always reminding us of the grave losses that are still we are still experiencing. He never loses that perspective and thats very important thing. Another suspect of leadership and then churchill had this as well to be a powerful to be an effective leader you have to have a strong, well balanced moral compass and one ancillary effect of having a strong moral compass is you are also able to experience and express empathy, and that is something that churchill was very, very good about. He could manage both. Manage waging war, which he was the first to confess he loved the thrill of war. But he was also deeply empathic and understand on a very personal level what the people of britain were experiencing. That speech by the bishop at coventry was to me very, very moving and very christian in the best sense. I found it very important to make reference to that. Host so, were seeing a lot of nice thing but churchill in terms of his rising to the occasion in that first year and meeting the moment. But janice asks the question. The become is very little attention to any unhappiness with the population of chuff chul and the handling of the world. Guest i cant good through all the home spellens reports now and tell you what i found and didnt fine. The overall sense i got was people were quite satisfied with churchill but there were moments when they were less satisfied. Depends on which moment you want to talk but. Generally the overall sense i got about the public n and churchill was that people were very impressed with him and they were very, very satisfied and happy with his leadership. There are critics but not the overriding sense. Host certainly in a time of war when you are facing a existential threat theres a rally round the flag effect. Over time people adjusted and as we talk about four years later voted hem out of office. You talked but 9 11. Think weeing forget that two months of 9 11 in november of 2001, george w. Bushs Approval Ratings stood at 91 . Here in the the u. S. , and so that kind of effect is obviously in a Global Pandemic with all of the current environment, not necessarily going to play out the same way. Guest its also one point to note about churchill, one reason he became Prime Minister in the first place is because he had overwhelming public support, overwhelming public support, and this is something that the king and the rebels had to acknowledge, the parliamentarian rebels has to acknowledge he had great popularity and persisted through this period. Host a couple of people i want to get to this because a couple of people watching and this is my reaction, too felt like Mary Churchills diary was an amazing addition to your book. Somebody is asking, can you talk a little built about the diary, has this been used before in other books . Guest Mary Churchill miss favorite character. The diary i think was a tremendous asset in working on this book. When i got permission to use it from her daughter, i was at that point one of only two people who had actually look at this diary. So the diary is very new in terms of new material and her perspective. This thing loved is she is a very smart, very astute and accurate observer of everything around her and adored her father. Guest she was 17 at the time. She was grieve for him when he came under criticism, which he did periodically for perceived errors, but she was a wonderful observer and al that but the thing that i really loved about mary was that she was exactly the kind of presence or observer that i was trying to corral for this book, force this lens is was trying to open on that, howl they got through this thing, how did they do this on a daily basis . In addition to being a very astute observer and very smart and very articulate observer she was a 17yearold girl who really liked to have fun and there are references to snogging in if with young pilots and going to parties at bases and a counterpoint and she and a friend of hers, at one point resolved they were going to learn all the shakespearean son nets, one per day during the summer. I dont think they completed the mission. Anyway so Mary Churchill was a wonderful, charming character and makes the book, honestly. Host so, lastly, we have a question from victoria who talks about how she is struck by churchills appreciation and understanding of history, something that maybe he did share with the previously reverend Abraham Lincoln and you can say at bit about this and her question is, what are you as somebody who appreciates history choosing to read these days while you are homebound in new york . Guest well, i will tell you that when it comes to reading for pleasure, or in this particular time, i read totally for escape. Im doing the im cowering. I love thrillers. I have to qualify that. Just finished reading the lord of the flies. I read it for whatever god forsaken reason but turn out be a great comforting kind of read for this period. I rather be sequestered in my house than to be on that island with a bunch of Primal School boys bent on killing each oomph turned out to be very interesting. I read for distraction. I read for i love a good thriller. One of my favorite things was the couple next door, terrific, nice, really sharp, kind of edgy thriller. That i read totally for escape. Thats my mission. Host erik, this has been such a pleasure. The hour flew by. On a personal note i also wanted to mention that i read a lot of your other books as im sure a lot of us watching have. And in the garden of beasts, was really i have sort of a slight personal connection to it because my father i grew minute mexico and my father, who is im a mutt, my mom was american, my father was mexican. When my father was going to night school in mexico city in the 50s, he get he was offered Administrative Office job by somebody named alfred stern, and get to know martha dodd and i would hear interesting stores stories about these people. Studying law at night and working in during their day for this character who was of great interest in the u. S. Government and to read your book where martha dodd is the daughter of the u. S. Ambassador in berlin 20 years before that and quite the character, it was an interesting corroboration and guest interesting. Host and postscript on the stories would hear from my father. Guest interesting. Host i thank you for that. I knew we could have a side bar on that. Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you for guest thank you. Host for watching this latest future tense social. We do these tuesdays and thursdays at 4 00 eastern. Please check out our the events page at new america or slate, and come join us for more of these, and, erik, thank you so much. Guest thank you. Thank you. Host stay safe, everybody. Thank you. Here are current bestselling nonfiction books. Topping the list is the memoir untamed. After that is the splendid and the vial. Erik layersons study of Prime Minister wynton churchills leadership. Then David Allen Sibley describes the life of birds falled by illustrated fables. And wrapping up the look at the best selling nonfiction books is Hidden Valley road. A profile of the Galvin Family which had 12 children, half diagnosis width psychiatrist seven ya. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the bay area virtual book festival. For the next hour, were going to be talking about Voting Rights and the rising american electorate. I am joined by steve phillips, a lu
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