Join the conversation with phone calls, tweets, texts and facebook messages. On booktv on cspan. Welcome. Thank you for joining us for our latest future tense social. This is very exciting for me because aim other huge fan of erik larsons books and we got to listen to a little churchill as we were warming um. Im andres martinez, the editorial director of future tense, collaboration between new america, and Arizona State university. We look at the implications of impact of technology on society and im prefer of practice our Cronkite School of journalism at Arizona State university. Its a pleasure to have you here and your latest book othe splendid and the vial a saga of churchill family and defiance during the blitz. Erik is the author of such fabulous books as dead week in the garden of beats, thunder struck, devil in white city. I have read most of your book but not read your first book. Was intrigued looking at your biography that you wrote a book called the naked consumer. How companies spy on individual consumers, which is actually a very future tensey subject. So maybe we will have you come back and talk about that one if also loved on your website, which you should listening to check out. I think its eriklarsonbooks. Com. You have an alternative biography which is fantastic and you describe the naked consumer is a book you really liked but nobody else did. And i seriously doubt that but ill take a look at that. Because were having this conversation today of all days i feel like shy ask the question on everyones mind and thats how did Winston Churchill celebrate cinco dimayo no. Im kidding. Guest that would stump me. Host okay. Youre right, that was not one of the things we discussed. All seriousness, we are having this event on zoom as opposed to in person which i would have loved. Because were on lock young quarantine, house arrest, choose your term in the face of the Global Pandemic, and so i just want to read a paragraph from your book to set a scene here. You wrote, churchills notion of what constituted an office was expansive. Often generals, ministers and Staff Members would find themselves meeting with churchill while he was in the bathtub, one of his Favorite Places to work help liked working in bed, and spent hours there each morning going through dispatches and reports with a teachist seated northeastern always present was the box. A black dispatch back that minutes. So, clearly Winston Churchill was someone who had mastered the art of working from home. Guest yes. Host something were all struggling to do these days and so maybe not the place that these conversations about your book usually start but im curious whether you think churchill would have some working frock home. Guest if i were Winston Churchill doing the zoom interview with you right now i would be in the bathtub. Actually churchill had no sense of vanity and very likely 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 typewriter taking notes and more than likely have a cigar and also frankly morn lookly would have this is very appropriate for today very likely have a tumbler full of water and whiskey. Very little whiskey but nonetheless a whiskey and water. Host its interesting you talk about we tend to think of this epic relationship, friendship, partnership, alliance, whatever you want to call it, between fdr and churchill, and the Communications Going back and forth between washington and london and the summits. But i was it was interesting reading 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 there somebody we can take seriously. Guest well, drinking has always been something that people have noted about churchill, but it is a mistake to ever think he was a drunk or an alcoholic. Certainly was not. In fact, his very close private secretary, John Colville wrote he had never seen churchill drunk or in any way with his faculties limited by alcohol. Churchill himself once said to clementine, he said ive taken a lot more of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. So that is how he felt. Going back to the working at home aspect. One thing that sortly resonates today is that churchill in this period spent a lot of time the Prime Minister country home, and dividing his time between two Country Homes which other people are doing now. She would have been very likely quite at home with this whole was donate. Guest it was donated in 1914. Dont quote me. Donated the government. The idea being that chequers was to be used no work was to debun there no work was to be done there a place for Prime Ministers could just enjoy the buie alcoholic countryside and let their faculties restore. Churchill took that very, very differently. He decided to make this his country command post and packedded every weekend with guest and booze and fun. Host so, i have to confess that when i first heard that this was a subject of your next book, i was intrigued. I feel like i had read quite a lot about this first year of churchills being in office and that moment the finest hour that britain faced and the blitz and so forth and i think its and recent recently i read i think andrew drew roberts biogf churchill and we have been inundated with books about this great historical character and i might have skipped this book had it not been written by you. Having read your other book is felt like he is going to have a new angling, new insight, some new fame framing. Was it daunting at install tide you write about churchill because there were too many books written about lincoln . What drew you to guest listen i was totally daunted. Let me be clear. It was not actually churchill that drew me to do this work. Churchill kind of became entered the party a little late in the process because what happened is that i had decided for a variety of complicated reasons it would be very interesting to look into how it was that people actually got through the day during the blitz, during the german air campaign and including that portion we know as the blitz. Hough did they actually do it . And the reason was the reason was that we had my wife and i moved from seattle to new york city, and no sooner than i moved to new york city i had this epiphany what 9 11 had been like for new yorkers versus what the rest of us who rapid watched in realtime experience. A world of difference, the sense of violation of having your home city attacked and that made we write about how pea got through the blitz. 57 custody nights of bombing. 57 consecutive nights of bombing. I thought maybe id just write but the typical london family, and then i thought, why not the quintessential london family, churchill, his family, his advisers and see how they got through the day, and really 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. Oh, yes, once i realized how much material had been written but churchill and how much good stuff. Andrew roberts, my favorite of the churchill scholars, a brilliant writer. So much material had been done that i had to do had to make a strategic decision how to pursue the research. The idea of reading everything that had ever been written about churchill or by churchill which would have been herculean test, i realize would be a fools errand and would take me a decade and even then by the time i got to the tenth year, i wouldnt be done because eight more books would come out about churchill. So i did a made a strategic decision it would read us a much as i could and get a sense of churchill and the landscape and then dive into the archives to see what was really there. Thats where i feel most comfortable with original materials and so forth. So thats how i managed to kind of pare things down but i would have just been overwhelmed. Not to say that every single day for the last four and a half years i did not in fact and myself what am i doing . Host it was very interesting to see how it did feel like a portrait of churchills orbit. You had we were looking 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 i have read. You mentioned churchills own writing. One thing that astonished me reading the roberts biography what i had no never had realized just how prolific really histories he wrote after the war but the fact 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 earlier in a way i had not fully appreciated. Guest ultimately his writing got him finally out of the financial hole. One thing about churchill that is so remarkable is that he was extremely wellread, extremely talented writer, and also quite good painter but he also all this win into the machine that was churchills brain it and all really helped him in this process of trying to lead the nation through this particular through the crisis of that german air campaign. Host so, its interesting that you said you gravitated towards this moment by thinking about what it must have been like to be in new york on 9 11 and then sort of 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 society that is quite different from war, although we see people roaching for those analogies. The analogy it is unquestionable is the need for leadership to mobilize society, to meet the crisis at hap, that requires extraordinary effort and sacrifices, and so i want to ask you about that and whether theres a secret sauce to churchills leadership, but before we get 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 thinking about that in preparation of this. So just sort of set the scene in terms of describing what it was that the uk and Winston Churchill were facing. Guest so may 5, 1940, when the action starts in my poock was the day that churchill became Prime Minister, the greatest day in ohio life. I think even he would agree. The thing he wanted most of all. He payment prime he became pe minister owing to something of a rebellion free house of commons and the consents was that neville chamberlain, the prior Prime Minister, was not up to the challenge of dealing with hitler and germany. The same day, main 10, 1940, the phony war became a shot, shooting war when hitler invited the low countries. So heres this 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 si this 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, really a immediately appoint thursday cabinet and this is crucial, the main characters in this book who i think in other works have been relegated to simply the secondary posture, but he quickly appoints his cabinet and immediately is confronting you talk about existential threats the presumption at the time was once germany consolidate its hold over france, that britished fors being he can eled the entire picture would change, prior to france falling, the assumption was that france would always stand, that this would keep the air force would not have the endures to fly to britain. With france falling that were german air bases on the coast of the english channel, just minutes away from england and london, something that planners in brian had never even speculated out. You hat thad three and the very real fear that germany would invade in a crosschannel attack. Seemed to most people at that time be a certainty. If germany ever attained air superiority over the channel other there would be a invasion. So taking control of britain at this time when not only has history hitler begun innovating country now facing an a threat in termed of invasion across the channel. What a hellish pros special for any normal mortal but not for churchill he took this on with a verve and gust score that came through time good time again in subsequent months. Host we were listening to snip. Snippets of his speech and his oratory we have all been exposed to it and a lot of hollywood renditions. And yously he had a gift, a language. But when you think of the his recipe for leadership, i think theyre a ten den si to focus on the oratory and that ability to communicate and inspire through the leveraging the english language man shouldnt be unestimated but was it mostly that he was a great communicator or how much of the ratio of elements and guest a mix of things. First of all were all familiar if oratory, the great line, never has so much been owed by so many to so few. Thats not strong point of his speeches. In fact at the time that particular line did not necessarily have the same resonance it does now for all of us. Basically a speech, just a speech, but the thing that made churchill i think particularly excellent at communicating not just news and information put also communicating also a sense of reason for courage, is how he structured his speeches with got a taste of the opening speech about dunkirk. Hayes a great story teller and he was telling as you heard in the opening moments, he was telling it as a story, as this is what was happening, this is hough it was up following, sort of unfolding, sort of a thrilling story. He would give you give his audience a sober appraisal of the situation. Not happy talk. Just a down to erring, sober sometimes too sober and detailed and scared the heck out of the audience and then follow with comments about, real grounds for why people should be optimistic, like how this problem of the blitz, of dunkirk, of the potential for a german invasion how this can be resolved, positive reason for optimism, and not happy talk. Real grounds for optimism, and then would come the rhetorical force at the end that would metaphorically have people rising from their seats and saying im going to be part of this. Were going to take this guy on, goddamnity and this is how it well be. Weeing beat hitler. That was a very powerful thing but theres another element to churchills leadership. One of is that come booze may the terms of his able to communicate. Being this great reader 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 islands story has he would put it and that was important to make them feel part of this thing, this great tradition, and also he had a real understanding of the power and sim pollic act of symbolic acts, something as simple as refusing to call hitler by his name. He would say, that man, or that wicked man, which when you think, very subtle but very powerful thing. If you dont identify, if you dont demonize your enemy, mate makes them seem like this presence off in distance, then other end of this continuum, he learn very early on in the blitz of the power of visiting bombed out areas and showing him there, showing himself surveying the damage, talking to people, expressing emotions. Not afraid at all of weeping in public and also showing his resolve simply by by being there he was engagings in a courageous act and showing tee defians. I had to landfill, graham way the i had to laugh when we saw vicepresident mime pence at the mayo clinic without a mask when everybody else was wearing a mask, and to think of that to think of the optics of that, possibly appealing to a tiny slice of america maybe but somebody like churchill would be wearing this mask, charging around, saying this is what we do. That power of sim pollic acts and if you symbolicking as and if you engage symbolic acts that create you dont wear a mask when your audience knows damn well you should be wearing the mask, thats problem that uncutsor credibility as a leader. Churchill had this acute sense of the power of symbolic acts. Another example is he certainly seemed to be utterly fearless and frankly i think fearlessness is ineffect infectious and can be taught. When there were air raids churchill was more than likely to good on the nearest roof and watch the air raid and bring people with him, including staff. Thats the kind of leader he wase ive been to the bunker which they now expand into a nice museum in london at that time was there for them and then to read that he wasnt going to be very not going to spend much time there because he was going to he rooftop snow only spent three nights in the churchill war room. Host one thing that fascinates me, and i dont maybe talk but this as a source 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 britain residents war and describing the Mass Observation phenomenon. A sociological process. Can you describe that . I dont know todays equivalent, social media or google searches. Guest Mass Observation was a social Sciences Organization that was founded before the war, the opinion being to create as the to create a social psychology of ourselves, the idea being to recruit hundreds of diarists to just write about daily life in britain, the one way that the diarists were recruited to do this were to sharpen their skills was to describe things on their man tellpiece. Its that kind of daily personal detail. So all these diarists submitting them for analysis and then he war starts and then they continue to keep their diary is. What a tremendous resource. One of my favorite diarists of the mass 0 observation group, olivia, who is she is a clerk for scotland yard, dating an old are man well, a married man. Shes in this love affair with an older man, and her diary shows this i think shows in metaphorically what the broader culture in britain was experiencing, and how they evolved. Here comes the blitz, dem 7, 1940. She is o