[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everybody. my name is mort rosenblum. welcome to the tuscon festival of books. it's only march. i grew up here. i love it. thanks to george davenport for making this possible and i want to add my appreciation for all of the thought and work behind this amazing fistful. if anyone thinks books are dying, just look at the mall outside. one announcement.

any self on that rings will be said to the scavenging a molina's outside. [laughter] this is the point where the presenters says it gives me great pleasures but in this case nah. he may not be able to judge a book by its cover but you sure can buy the author. lynne olson and i have not only learned to make our sources lives miserable right here at the university of arizona, journalism department now school, but we also joined the noble tried of animals reporters for the associated press as a former professor of your. lynne quickly joined ap's hot off squad new york and then worked in the moscow bureau during the much miss medieval in place. she worked at the "baltimore sun" which has now been set. [laughter] 1981 she went straight to be a

free lancer and unlike most freelancers, she made a great life out of it. and the secret is, among other things, her reporters ear further rightwards. i'm going to read a couple of points from the end that will explain the title of the book. ..

>> >> take a subject we did not know we were interested in and keep us riveted. so tell us about this book at 140 characters? [laughter] >> i got a question. you focused on edward murrow. perhaps the most crucial. succeeded joe kennedy. what do you think the world would look like today if that little pack of americans in london had managed to convince people back home much earlier

that hitler was an extremely bad dude and have to be stopped? the u.s. forces would join forces at the out set? >> that is a great what if question. i am not sure. it just wasn't in the cards that that was going to happen. the book is really a behind-the-scenes look at the partnership between the u.s. and great britain during world war ii, with these three americans as the main characters. one reason i am writing about them or wrote about them is that they were really key players in the whole debate in 1940 and 1941 over whether britain should be saved. britain at that time was the last country in europe holding out against hitler. desperately in need of american aid. really close to defeat. hanging on by the skin of their teeth at that time. they needed american aid, but american aid was incredibly

skimpy. that was true until pearl harbor. so these three americans, and there were others based in london, did everything they could to get, not only more american aid, to get american public opinion changed. edward murrow really tried to sway and did, in fact, sway american public opinion to a great degree. averell harriman was this hard-charging elbows-out multimillionaire businessman who had been sent over. as you said, mark, winant was the guy he replaced joseph kennedy as ambassador to great britain. that and by the way, it was not a hard act to follow. an appeasement minded

ambassador, a pal of nevel chamberlains. thought britain was going to be defeated. it was a businessman first and foremost. he really thought business in the u.s. is going to suffer a loss some accommodation was made for hitler. he tried very hard to try to get fdr not to give anything to britain. he really thought britain was going to be defeated. he basically poisoned the well between these two countries. the poison the relationship between roosevelt and churchill. he could not stand churchill. and kennedy would tell roosevelt that churchill was a drug. he did not know what he was doing. he was an imperialist. and so things were pretty dark, not the least of which because of joe kennedy. winant had a big job, a very difficult job to fill when he

came over. >> what is going on in washington and the rest of the country that was making people so isolationist and, you know, as we always say in times like this, when it was so clear what had to be done. >> well, it was clear to some people, but it wasn't clear to most americans at that time. i mean, the fact that there were two motions on either side of e of this country played a big role. the war was 3,000 miles away, more than 3,000 miles away. many people did not see the urgency or the need for us to go to the brink of war in order to help the british or even to go to war. there was a lot of isolationist. a lot of anti british feeling in the country. i grew up in the west, and i went to school here. i have been an anglophile all my

life. i love the literature, everything. i thought, well, everybody is an anglophile. i soon saw that was untrue. so i really found out doing research for this book how deep the anti-british feeling was in this country. american industry did not want to produce war-time goods at that point. they were not forced to by roosevelt because we were not in the war. there was no, there was no force at all. so they had finally started making money after the depression and not surprisingly they wanted to keep making money. there was no great push within the country. roosevelt himself clearly wanted to help england. there is no question. he was very a loaf to get ahead of public opinion. he was very cautious. he wanted very much not to get into the war if he could help it. so while britain was, you know,

being bombed, while german submarines word strangling british supply lines, you know, america wasn't sending over much stuff at that point. >> and when they did, 50, 66 from world war ii. you know, brat invested. holes in the halls. you could only use a couple of them. we made the brits pay for them. >> that's right. it was a great amount, a great sense of the british tricked us into world war i, and we weren't going to let that happen again. if we were going to help england then we were going to, it wasn't going to be strict altruistic aid. all of the aid, we are talking about 1940, early 1941, the british had to pay for it.

cash-and-carry. so the destroyers. 18 destroyers. the british really could use. they got them in exchange for british bases in a number of british territories. so it was a much better deal for the u.s. then for britain, which winston churchill well knew and was very furious about. that is really the only way that roosevelt felt he could sell this aid to the american people. we were getting something for it. it wasn't just helping the british. >> you know, beneath this exterior this book is pretty racy. tell us about ed murrow's sex life and pamela and churchill's daughter. >> i have to back up here. this is not just thrown in there. [laughter] >> but it is in there.

>> it is very germane to the story. winston churchill was brilliant at wooing people that he needed. he knew that these three men; winant, harriman, and murrow were key to the survival of this country. there were very, very important americans that he needed on this side. so he brought them into his official family. his door was open for ed murrow. ed murrow would drop in at 10 downing street for a couple of, you know -- churchill would come out and wave him in. do you have time for several whiskey's. so they would sit and have whiskey's and talk. he included winant and harriman even more. they were government officials. so he made himself available to them in ways that had never been

before. he made himself available and teammate members of his government available. the really interesting thing goes to what you are saying. he made them part of his own personal family as well. they really work, especially winant and harriman, the fact of members of the churchill family. they spent many, if not most, weekends with the churchill's at the various country houses that they would get to during the war. the relationships was so close that all three of them did have more time with members of the churchill family. churchill's middle daughter, favorite daughter. harriman and murrow. she was married to randolph churchill. i should add that there was not, these affairs were not at the same time.

i mean, london was a fairly romantic city, but not that much. they were sequential. they were sequential affairs. it goes to the aura of london during that time. i mean, it was anything went in london. you know, it was an incredibly exciting, vibrant city. probably the most exciting city during the war in the world. and it wasn't just murrow, winant, and harriman. it was going on all over the place. there was a real carpe diem mentality. live for the day for tomorrow you may die. most of the people in london did not die. churchill actually after çóthe r is actually in the beginning of the book. talking to one of her biographers, and she said, it was a terrible war, but if you

were at the right age and the right place it was spectacular. end for many people who had a serious important jobs during the war there was this other life that they had outside of the deadly serious work that they were doing. it was really an incredibly emotional charge time and an emotion charged place. >> a lot of these events turned around. the personification of france behind it. infuriated his allies, but he managed to whip up this and of spirit to save france rance fro. how did roosevelt and dugal play out? >> caused enormous amount of friction. the only french leader a very

minor figure. the only french important figure to basically denounced the armistice that the french made with germany and he came to london and founded a movement, a very few tiny movement in the beginning, the free press, but a movement nonetheless. church show basically threw his is support behind dugal. no none of the other major government leaders came out. and so he had dugal. roosevelt could not stand dugal from the beginning even though he had never met him. he thought that the french were bankrupt morally and in every other way because they had agreed to an armistice with the french. and so he wanted nothing to do with france. he wanted nothing to do with dugal. church held throughout the war knew he had his on problems.

he was not an easy person to deal with on any level. he knew that he needed them. churchill and the british knew that dugal was the only figure who had any support in france once outside of france. he was the main kind of symbol of the french resistance. there was nobody else. there was absolutely nobody else. even though churchill get furious at him many, many times. there was this back and forth between churchill and roosevelt brought the war until as you know until the end of the war. after paris was liberated. >> even then. >> roosevelt did not want anything to do with dugal. he refused to acknowledge that his government was a provisional government. it was really a huge blow of contention. and it's really tainted the well

between france. he can speak more to that. he lived in france for many years. between france, england, britain, and the united states. we see the results to this day. >> tell us, and curious about your reporting process. you have always had this way of peeling away the hang in layers and telling asset detail that makes this tear up or crack up laughing. this particular item in has gone through a lot. over the years, it has been told in a different ways. we become so much material that i have never seen or heard. >> well, i have written five books. four of them have dealt with england and britain. i get the mails from people saying it is not england. it is britain. but if i go back and forth i am really talking about the same place. i have written about britain in

different ways during world war ii and four books. so when you do it that much you start acquiring a body of knowledge. i'd just like finding little parts of history that nobody else has covered or at least i don't think is covered. the book i wrote representative for this was about how churchill came to power. so i wrote about how he actually did, this group of members of parliament who helped bring him to power and get rid of neville chamberlain. it was not just a something that was automatically going to happen. these guys really have to work very hard to do this. that was kind of a little tiny bit of history. the same way with this. i was really interested. actually, the main reason i wanted to write this book is to write about london during the war. then i started thinking about how to do that. i thought, you know, we all have

this idea or many of us have this idea that the partnership between britain and the united states was a done deal. it was going to happen. it was automatically going to happen. churchill and the british people were going to stand alone against hitler just long enough for roosevelt and the americans to come right into the rescue and create this great alliance and that it was going to save the world. but, in fact, as i mentioned a little bit, it wasn't a done deal. it was not clear that it was going to happen. once it was created it was a very difficult relationship. so i thought, let's back up a little bit. that's, you know, look at the relationship before it became a done deal. let's see how it actually happened and she was involved in making it happen and what was going on with these people. i like to write about people. history is about people. history is, people make history.

these events don't just spring forth. people have to make them. people are fascinating. their lives are fascinating. if you could intertwine and interweave what people do and how they do it then you come up with really good stories. that is what i try to do. it always has to be a good story about people. you know, they may have love affairs. they may not. you have to be involved. you have to be drawn into their lives, at least i have to before i can write a book about them. >> so i guess you just use google and wikipedia? [laughter] what kind of sources do you use? >> one reason i like writing about england is that primary sources are fantastic.

especially writing about britain. british leaders, british writers, british everybody kept diaries and journals. they wrote letters, letters, letters. and it's true in this country as well. not as much as the birds. the breads are just just leaving behind this wonderful colorful record of what happened. i don't know if any of you are familiar with harold nicolson. he was a british mp during the war. the premier diarist, i think, in britain. he was an mp. he helped bring churchill to power. their son wrote a book called portrait of a marriage. wonderfully colorful guy. his real value is that he left

this first hand account of history in his diary. he brings everything to live. if you have access to diaries like this or letters like this and it makes it much easier to write in the style where you feel like you hope your readers feel like they are there when you are describing it. he and many, many others did that. and so if you have access to their papers then you are halfway home. with the americans that i am writing about that was also true. ed murrow wrote wonderful letters. the one who really wrote wonderful letters was his wife, janet. she wrote to her parents virtually every week. so when they were caught in an air raid she wrote this very long letter back to parents in

which there is a chapter in the book. it begins with this air raid and having this wonderful dinner in london and strolling home and all of a sudden hearing the planes. almost all of that comes from and janet tomorrow. if you have that, then your job is made a helluva lot easier. in fact and that is what i've relied on most. what i do rely on most. primary sources. >> congratulations. one syllable. okay. back to the sex life. [laughter] >> not really. today we have certain journalists to declare themselves to be fair and balanced and aren't really either. back then it was really crucial. this is the beginning of the spoken word. so many other people at that

particular point. it was a major story to tell. the business of objectivity. objectively is a really difficult word. it is essentially impossible. there is real fairness. balance is always a tough one to call. what was the wall of the broadcasters and the good journalists? >> that is a really good question. never really approved of conductivity in that way, especially in regard to the war and especially in regard to its broadcast that he made in 1940, 1941 before u.s. got into the war. he really believes that there was right and wrong. he did not think that there was anything balanced about hitler or the nazis. he made no apology for the fact that is broadcast, they

certainly underline his broadcast was the message that the u.s. not only had to help bring in more than it was, but it had to get into the war. he was a moralist, an idealist. he thought that there was no question. you could not even talk about objectivity when you're talking about what was going on in britain and berlin at that particular time. so he would get in constant trouble with the powers that be back at cbs about objectivity because the set, you are making it very clear what your opinion is. he would say, yes, i am. i'm going to keep doing it. he continued that kind of reporting throughout his career. he crossed the line sometimes. there is no question. i think in this case he was

right. objectivity has been a thorn in the side of journalists says the beginning of journalism. the whole idea that your reporting has to be free of personal prejudice or opinion is quite frankly nonsense. there is a point. there should be balanced. and this particular case he thought that there was no balance. one was white and one was wrong. >> you did that this really well. it is a brief introduction. as everybody was gearing up for the war in iraq in 2003, the editors, the french are not grateful for normandy. we would remind them it wasn't really only about normandy. had it not been for the french we would all be drinking tea at 4:00. it wasn't because they were

being asked guys. you have got, their is a line here are kind of circle. the british woman, talking about the americans coming in to london. the americans taking over the war that the british had just suffered. early on they lost 10,000 people. how many british casualties were their? >> well, there were more than 30,000 civilian casualties in britain. there were many more than that. more than 30,000 or 40,000 british civilians were killed. >> but they saw their arrogance, misguided sense of destiny on side of the americans to have little knowledge of the growth beyond their borders and scant prior experience in dealing with it in the last planned to take it over. a british woman who worked in the u.s. embassy, sorry, a

british woman he worked at a u.s. naval headquarters told her co-workers they needed to know more about the world. he now, people now were getting a little bit tired of the fact that we were during that. we have to bring this up to the question to what we have learned from that to what we ought to be learning today. >> that is another reason why i wrote the book. at least i was interested in how these men, the three that i have been talking about, there are many others that i talk about in this book. they did the hard work of putting this alliance together. once it was put together the captive allied. i made reference to the fact that it was a typical relationship. it was full of tension. there were an enormous number of

problems, prejudices', lack of understanding. we have a common language with the british. we have a common heritage. back then there was very little understanding or knowledge about each other's history, about each other's military or political situation. and so these men and others were quite crazy to kind of bring people together to create understanding. i mean flight eisenhower went over to london in 1942 with the idea that this was going to be an alliance. the british and american military were going to work together. if anybody didn't they could go home. this actually did send a number of officers of. even though a number of his own generals said this