>> fictions series and a

membership program. visit our welcome center for special prescription rates including book bags and a poster and finally the author's book will be sold in the second floor of the university's center and book signing is in the arts from. hill take place immediately following the program at this time please make sure your cellphone is turned off and any other noisy electronic devices that you have. a disney great pleasure at this time to introduce our moderator for this discussion, had taken away craig. [applause] >> figure for turning out on a sunday morning for this event. we have met before in talked before so it is a real pleasure to see him again.

thank you for coming to chicago. we will talk for about the 40 minutes and then we will have questions at the end. so feel free to talk to him after. he is a wonderful guy and a journalist from his he was part of a reporter in palm beach and came across those who knew bill manchester and through his job as a feature writer got to go build manchester literally because he would take over the project and i had a chance to read it and it is an amazing book and welcome.

tell us how the project started and how it came about. >> the project began 60 years ago. i always get confused worded it began because it is a nebulous i say it was the six marines 1996 that serve with the manchester in okinawa and never going to have a reunion in west palm beach for the surviving members of their section. mr. manchester could not come because he was sick with they had their reunion anyway and i wrote the story and the feature and then to send it up to manchester and send a nice little note that was something for a rookie to get. a couple years later this a

marines went to middle telekinetic it where mr. manchester live t. had two strokes in 1998 and his wife had died that summer. five marines went up there to boost his mayor route and they invited me along to do another story and my editor at "the post" loved those stories with south florida is where veterans go ultimately. and i interviewed pearl harbor veterans and took in arizona "survivor" out to parole and it is just marvelous to write these stories. saw i went up to middletown with those five marines to spend two nights and three days with them and i will never forget the first night

i met manchester and we had dinner together and cocktail's on his porch. not yet in a wheelchair and he made it very clear he could no longer write. he had not lost his memory or which or charm. he loved to read but he just could not put words to paper and that is the great tragedy with bill. i took notes and i remember one night it move me around 10:00 at night a woman student knocked on the door and she was about 21 with two books and she wanted mr. manchester to sign them for her father was a veteran. he invited her rigged and sat her down so they spent the next hour-and-a-half talking about okinawa and

this young woman i am sure have never heard anything like that before so i wrote my story and a year later i wrote to another and another and a tiny daughter was near middletown at the time so every time i would visit her i would visit manchester and we became friends and five years later 2003 after the yankees beat the red sox as usual, october 9, the playoff game but he was having a jack daniels propped up in the bet and i was in the easy chair and he turned to me and said of paul, i want you to finish the book. it took me a split second to realize what he was asking because we knew, "the new york times" said in a story there was going to be no one to finish the book. he had made that public. i had tried to encourage him a few years earlier to find

someone and he told me to drop the subject and i didn't tell that night but to say was flabbergasted would be an understatement. >> host: he was on his deathbed at that point*? then he asked you to take over the book but he collected clomps? a lot of information and having read it i wonder how much bill manchester as a famous author that wrote death of a president, about jfk and also general macarthur. how much is churchill because he was a great authors. >> october 2003 when he asked me to write the book, he was very, very sick and had been very sick but not quite deathbed the at. in fact, he had had a jack mont negative jack daniels and his doctors said one or two per day and i said did you seek another one? he said no.

and then in the next six months he got very sick. very sick and died june 1st, 2004. he sent me that home that we can with a bunch of his long notes or clumps and every time i met a place like this i remind myself i should have brought one. they were eighth half by a 11-inch pads of paper 50 pads each tape to the middle so 50 pages of 18 1/2 by a 22 on to which he would call you or tape xerox copies of pages from books and he did this in the '80s. he had about 50 or 55 of these clumps which

essentially are 100 pages each which is about 5,000 pages on which were extracts from speeches or telegrams from stall when or roosevelt or diary entries from more than 100 sources many primary newspapers of "the new york times" or by character, harry hopkins hopkins, churchill and his family or roosevelts dog dog, everyone had a place in the notes. [laughter] but they were not strictly chronological nor were they strictly by topic so charles de gaulle would be scattered between 20 or 30 of the clomps. pretty much might address 1940 through 1944 but there was no charles de gaulle section. and when i watch elections now and the anchors are on

their touching the screen to show the county in ohio that abominates and the collating of information that can be done, this was long hand and i realized pretty quickly that notes could not serve me as they did him. i could not figure out the source codes and the topic codes that key, he had lost. he had secret codes. rx word doctors notes i deduce that and i tried to do some -- to induce others the page that the secret code was on and i made a lot of headway that may have had to do with family so if i saw four or five injuries about churchill's children with a number and in a that

would be family but then i would do this for the next 20 years so i had to find a new way for reinvent the wheel and i had a brainstorm and i called the wesley and library and ask for all the books he had never taken out than they said that is private. how about this? can you send me a list of all the books that were overdue? [laughter] because i knew bill and they said i guess we can do that. the list was about 20 pages long and on that were all the diaries and collected speeches of churchill, roosevelt biographies, all of his sources essentially which i then went on amazon five or six years ago to look for everything and assembled essentially the same sources bill had in my house along

with the latest additions into newly released british archives papers and started that way to right to 1,000 feature stories to connect them such at the and you get to a book. >> host: net was eight years of labor and it shows. the book is extremely detailed, throw and a great read. i know one of the difficult parts of channeling manchester was he didn't just want a history but a chronology, a story told and you can see already he is a great storyteller but this is a big story to tell. 1940 through churchill's death in 1965. the biggest defense. one thing i'm of paul about and that to that preceded it were the preambles that were

50 or 60 page beginnings that clue into her churchill was it is like a trailer that talks about clementine churchill swiping gives you a sense of who he is the of the animals and vice versa. tell us who is the and what goes in there? >> they both have the beautiful preamble and he would change the terminology early my editor and i thought to in this book for a couple of reasons we wanted this to be a standalone book. we do want people to go into a bookstore to say i have to read that but i have to buy the first to? we wanted to stress it is a stand-alone story. so we did the 55 for 60 page prologue that has the film's trailer, a sketch of

churchill, a portrait in pencil that the book hopefully fleshes out and we wanted to introduce churchill to the people who may not ever have met him but to the eating habits, and drinking habits, his so-called depression which i don't think was accurate, but give you a picture of the man so that when you encourage him doing something really crazy on page 200 you don't think what is this guy? you have already met him and are expecting him to be eccentric. he developed as soon he could wear during the blitz essentially it was a working man's overalls with sippers said he could jump right into it instead of putting back on his evening clothes. his staff called it winston's rompers. he would call it the sirens suit because he would jump

into an when the sirens sounded and then he would wear monogrammed bill fitch slippers that his wife gave panama with pompoms and the sirens to one of which was lavender for evening wear. [laughter] and a tin hat, a battle, and cigar in doubt he would go to watch the german bombers. and his aides were modified the bombs were falling around him and he was specifically point* to an area that a bomb fell and say take me there. they would have to get into the armored car and drive to the bombed out streets and would be smoking. that behavior, i want "the reader" to be prepared for that behavior. because only churchill bidets that way.

>> host: he was classical 19th century mail with a different idea how to run your life. how or what were his personality quirks? >> especially in volume one when bill manchester writes about his victorian genesis genesis, he was born in the 19th century and a victorian mansion with the virtues of courage was churchill's main value that he sought to emulate. valor, courage were very important to him but i realized going into this that he was also a classical man in the sense he was not a religious man, he took his ethics from the pre-

christian platonic ideal stand was extremely well read and suffocated. i realized early on this is a man who would have been comfortable with plato at the academy hundreds of years before the christian ideals evolved. i wanted to stress that. he was not to a fuddy-duddy but a court helmets' he was a complex and classical man. >> host: quite an experience having dinner with him i gather with his eating and drinking and table conversations? >> guest: he loved his dinners but he was the one who gave me the line that his idea of the perfect evening was a wonderful meal in the company of friends with wonderful conversation and himself the center

followed by drinks and more conversation and i checked to see if fade diary entry was not jerry picked but everybody agreed that churchill did not care if toe of us were sitting at his table he didn't care what we thought were felts it was all about churchill. he was honest when he said that would be a wonderful evening and his doctors said but he was so insulated from people including his family at times he did not like to

be touched by years later he was to name of the steps after private having just lost again. and he grabbed his hand and shook it and he said he always wanted to do that. and then they said who the hell was that? [laughter] his world as a powerful member of churchill's camp -- cabinet of course, we know how this turns out. tell us where the book picks up and what churchill is thinking at that time. >> picks up pretty much with

the battle of france which was not long in passing, 38 or 40 days between may 9th when hitler came through through june 24 sent when they agreed to silver between europe and the expeditionary force was minuscule in comparison. the book picks up with the battle for france, the french loss of will or backbone, almost a betrayal when the french ask the english for all of their reserves and he could have sent it and his air marshal's told him that said? the french have lost if we send the remaining.

>> the tanks come of the guns, and bill manchester started from there in tuesday invasion scare but i realize that was a function of churchill's genius of a propaganda. he never believed to favor coming but they wanted to build up the armies in the best way was to keep people on their tomes -- joseph and scared to death the germans are coming and had him up at dinner on july 12th he was going to make a speech and there are the diary entries he said we must keep this invasion going it is the best thing to get the offensive army. so growing up i always have

the same issues of germans who are about to comment of any moment in the battle of britain was a great karoly care battle that decided war. all along during those months churchill knew he believes strongly the germans were not coming for one simple reason they had to cross water and they did not have the boot -- the people to do it but they did not have the merchant shipping for the tankers or the troop carriers are no landing kraft on the the trap door for idb was extremely quotient -- premonition that he kept up to scare of the invasion. >> one of the many things i looked is public at it was

not this way when the book opened. but i had an americanized version of franklin roosevelt and my father went to the naval academy 55 years ago set these destroyers they have saved his chestnuts this to mike 50 disasters but roosevelt was playing a very dangerous game and still leave progress seemed to war but not fast enough and the telegrams between churchill and roosevelt correspond

with the conversations and i did not find them to be bosom buddies, barely friends and i think after the war in his memoir memoir, churchill started to refer to tears in his eyes when he saw roosevelt failing in his health in order to rewrite the history which churchill's memoirs were exactly that a rewriting of the history of the war. >> another source of conflict was that he was an over his head dealing with stall one. roosevelt told his aides if only he could sit down alone with uncle joe everything would be settled and he went behind churchill's back to the conference and did just that. to the modification of both the american and english.

roosevelt and his own people said this, like a cruel joke he would laugh and other people's expense. he did that a lot. i interviewed his daughter cruz said my father was hurt by that but it never but but what is roosevelt doing? thirty-five for two years come along before america but the american press this solo whole story but there is no mention of their british even being involved in the american press, at first. it was an interesting relationship between the three of them with roosevelt

and stalin. >> one of the and hongs o -- hero's is his direst and and he seemed.and he seemed. >> he should not have kept the diary and he knew it. it could have been imprisoned for long time but that prison opens the window to use pictures sheriff it and the cold hill was with the prime minister good on his farm in german a camera but his diaries are more accurate in the sense that but if he was in their room

and have others -- those words and at times but from what i can tell this i have not paid attention to when to read the book but she was remarkable, a novelist who became but the of but to do a lot of the work to use mfn as a sources and i could figure out i bought it on amazon but sure enough he had maybe hundreds of the 0x x -- extracts and now i realize what he was doing and i did it.

she was his score is if you will, bringing into the book the day to day life of londoners in and and then they could not kim at meat or chicken then they could knight get bared -- so she is seeing things that churchill's off but did not ride a back door talk about in the cabinet meetings and with the lines and few foote of hearing -- that was not rationed then apparently still is not. [laughter] i used your lot because i knew bill manchester was going to and that was brilliant on his part and it is funny there have been

peaky peaky reviews but what is this with molly? she is everywhere. >> she is our eyes and ears into the east bin of london 70 years ago when he will not get it from the "times of london" or from a cabinet meeting memo. >> host: but molly served

all the time but never did. but they are a riot. the guy was literally pulling his hair out over to churchill and he would write, my god had no where to go without him but i dunno where we would go with him. [laughter] i checked admiral cunningham's memoirs and dave mayor -- mayor brooks exactly i did not want to seem as if i was piling on churchill. super mean -- suburban cunningham and that winston is a loose cannon and churchill wanted to north

africa and france and all at the same time and but to go to negative tourism france, and they have for rap in the states that he did not oppose that second french data belligerence or shove -- he was on the shores of france and he was right and finally everyone realized it. had marshall had his way they would go to france in the summer of 1942 and that would have been the end of the mayor can involved in the european war and would have been thrown off. these diary entries of breath and montgomery montgomery, cunningham, harry hopkins, they all give a window into churchill and

the main characters and it was my job and bill manchester. not to cherry pick but people say this is the very mixed review of churchill. he was the next man. >> host: but one thing that does come across is he kept up the fight in the scenes his biggest contribution didn't matter he was assessed with the mediterranean but he wanted to fight and was always looking for a way to punch the enemy right then and right now. >> he was. and not losing the of for during those battles almost two years he won the war and gave us time to come in and during that time he wanted to hit any place he could by mussolini, a submarine comair, and those two years

and made a point* in the book from an american standpoint, 1944 meet in my collective memory began on december 7th 1941. what happened the rest of the year? and he means when it was horrible. worse than 1940 and wanted that to come through. so january, march, april and june was still fighting alone and franklin roosevelt in the september 11th address said we would challenge the germans to shoot at bishops in the atlantic and at 1.he said if you see a rattlesnake you don't stop you crushed it and he had thrown down a challenge to hitler and early september the germans tried to do torpedo the destroyer in one month later

they tried and did hit another destroyer then they sulk the reuben james with a hundred and 15 men going down with the ship so there are three attacks on u.s. shipping and at that point* churchill realized this country is never going to war unless they do so on their terms when something far greater than the loss of a destroyer takes place. he thought the morning after the reuben james went down he thought he would have a declaration but he didn't. >> we know how this ens but one thing that amazes americans in vivid lee told in the book but as soon as the war was ended he was kicked out and no longer in office to declare victory. and by the way he won his

office with 90 percent victory margin but because of the english system his party lost so labor took over and it is amazing she is almost out of office. >> that is a story that i grew up with the ungrateful english three out winston and the pacific war was not over he wanted to finish the job but the european war was over the scheduled elections and inexplicably he was out of office. if you look at the campaign, at churchill was a no liberal and 1912 he, with the old welch man began social insurance and unemployment compensation this is just before the new deal and churchill was an old edwardian liberal but

during the war he kept all of that under wraps and as he told his aides to offer shangri-la or utopia to the english people would be tough after the war and let's win the war. during the campaign he let loose and i think it was a deal breaker he compared the labor party socialist policies and said in order to implement them labor will need something like a gestapo which was his word and that was the wrong thing to see to these men who were coming home after five years of for there were fighting for the gestapo philosophy all those years to say that these good and decent people would turn into not sees and i think that is what cost him the election that year. >> once he lost power one of

the first autopsy gave a very famous speech to point* to the phrase the iron curtain but what surprised me is how badly that speech went over and here he is out of power steering the pot deliberately against russia and that was very unwelcome. >> they were here it -- they rose forget about the mass murders and the ukrainian famine it just wasn't mentioned the brave russians were winning the war. the russian army with 10 million casualty's defeated hitler. in 1946 most americans including chairman fought the russians were still heroes than many thought we cannot do this to our former allies.

before the ink was dry when the germans surrendered churchill was planning his next work was to fight the russians and began to pull his hair out saying winston wants to go to war against russia. that was a bit premature he would buy his time and by the time he made the misery speech people were beginning to see what stalin was doing and those behind the iron curtain and a year and a half later he came out with the truman doctrine to take over british involvement in the eastern mediterranean and caressing is history i should say. >> churchill recognize the difference of the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb?

>> that moved me a lot and i remember thinking this is where the book ends with churchill the the office 1955. there is a 20 page addendum with the final years of his life very sad and sick but his final speech in parliament march 1955 was another warning that the h bomb was a factor indefinitely more dangerous than the atomic bomb but 10 years earlier he and roosevelt saw it as a strategic weapon and it worked. eisenhower in the mid-50s saw the h bomb as the same way of battlefield variety and churchill again ahead of its time and he came up with the concept of mutually assured destruction and said

the only value is to build enough to ensure that nobody could ever use them. he gave a beautiful speech in march 1955 and he says sometimes wonder if god is wary of mankind with the little children who are playing might not be there in a generation and that was the last time he spoke in the house. for me, that is his greatest legacy to save western civilization twice won with the concept of we need h-bomb's for the sake to never having to use them contradictory but that is why we are here today. >> host: and those are the last words of the book are there other reasons?

i think if you value plato and shakespeare and for '08 and the whole legacy the classical western tradition i think he saved it and if you go down that list where would freud be if hitler could get his hand on it? it is obvious these not sees were mind-boggling insane and thugs and debris evil and for two years one man in one country this little island was fighting them alone and stalin was in bet with them taking his half of poland. that was the first or and the legacy with the atomic bomb and it was to sit down at the table he coined the

word summit meeting to sit down with the russian leader's and as men and human beings agree the atomic bomb for the h bomb simply could never be considered a weapon and only a person with that background in the classics of the six, only someone with that frame of mind would think that way. stalling -- stalin did not. so yes 30 years ago in westminster abbey nears the west doors with green and italian marble and it simply says remember winston churchill and i remember thinking way back then that is all you need to say 1,000 years from now. you don't have to put anything on the plaque about

what he did or he was the myth will transcend the legend and people will what can and in none of them will ask who is winston churchill ? >> host: thank you and we would certainly welcome questions if anyone wants to approach the microphone. i do have thought of churchill as quite the drinker and you address that thoroughly i think. >> he had a miraculous metabolism. that is all i can say. [laughter] i created a word document and i took from all the diaries and sources i could find a reference from eleanor roosevelt and the usual suspects and i called the document booze is drinking was off the charts

-- off the charts he had a bottle of champagne with every meal 70 years. one dozen cigars per day and brandy at night and occasionally he got sloppy and that is mentioned in his diaries high rate -- i attended a horrible meeting with the prime minister who had a good lunch and a good breakfast. [laughter] eisenhower walked in one day and it was practice time and churchill was in bet with a bottle of white wine and he said i don't like powdered milk. [laughter] so he drank a lot the he was not boris yeltsin. i wonder if some reporter tried to do a story on that i will drink like him for a week or two and see how it goes down it will not happen

>> did you try to replicate mr. manchester's style? >> no. in fact, my editor and i chatted a lot. build manchester came of age in the mid 20th century as a writer thinking us stephen ambrose, william manchester manchester, black hats, white hats and even samuel eliot when our borders -- when our boys were routine for them then they swoop down on the japs. that generation saw hero's and mr. manchester was one of them. so we agreed my goal was to right in a voice and as my

editors said did you tell the story well nobody will say this doesn't sound like manchester and that is the goal but i will say this about his writing style, in his mcarthur book, in the churchill volumes manchester's pros hall -- prose whisperers churchill and that is manchester putting himself in the book and that was a nifty way to approach things as a reminder of churchill rhetoric in the first two volumes. i hope there is here but not as a device but just as a way to get the story told. >> you mentioned a bothered

getting a mention in africa and having met his riding this by a note from the british perspective but the americans are mentioned in a footnote because it is always about england and the mention of the fighting of 41 and 42 negative church real realize -- churchill realized they needed the english that the empire was coming to an end in everything he was trying to do was to keep the empire going? >> i will paraphrase in the finest hours speech they will say 1,000 years from now this was the finest hour and specifically he mentioned the dominion or the empire but not england's finest hour from the lips of churchill it was the empire

finest hour and he was so grateful every night there were three or four australian and new zealand and canadian divisions and it came out of france at the surrender and he knew what the dominion said for the empire but also new with the americans were not doing and until november of 42 when it went to africa. >> you have in my inning comments with churchill's relationship of both truman and eisenhower as they were presidents? >> when he first met them that was churchill he did not form an opinion and did not spend much time because he was voted out of time -- out of the conference period

he grew deeply to respect truman not just because he let them speak at westminster but because of the truman doctrine and the marshall plan in truman was seeing things in the way they hoped the new american president would see things and the empire was down on the totem pole. eisenhower churchill held a modest to lower opinion especially started using nuclear weapons against the chinese and the north koreans and at 1.he said he reserved the right or if this happens, we will use nuclear weapons and churchill bade him and then he changed it to we reserve the right to consider the use of.

but churchill did not have much and truman was out of office before he went back and so he never knew him in a professional sense and churchill did not go back into office and tell 1952? and left office mid 1955 so eisenhower was president of eight years but churchill was on the scene for about three of those. >> host: we're out of time that we will continue this conversation he will sign books in the room adjacent to hear and thank you for your questions and attention it is a pleasure. thank you. [applause] >> thank you to everybody for your excellent conversation and to think paul and craig if you are

interested in his book "the last lion" you can purchase it here and he will be signing copies in the arts ram immediately after this presentation date you for coming and enjoy the rest of your day. [inaudible conversations]

>> then the washington editor of the national review of a lot of books but i am looking ahead to the

2016 presidential race with the candidates that will run on the republican side and i am looking at chris christie's i picked up his new book the inside story of his rise to power. it is a fun reid and it takes you back to his political ascent in new jersey before he was u.s. attorney he was involved in a lot of county politics so this takes us behind the politician on the magazine cover with president obama and asks who is chris suze told by people who'd known new jersey politics. i would recommend it because i think he is a likely contender and you have got to know where he came from what is politics me now head of the election. my second book is by a colleague called the end is near and it is going to be of some.

i think this is a lot of fun because the fiscal cliff earlier in 2013 was the big story but later this year you'll have the debt limit be the story that consumes congress and this looks at that from a political perspective, historical perspective, talks about the consequences, it is taking up zero lots of congress's time and could ruin the country and make us go broke and he does it with wit and fund so the end is near is a great book. third, this town. there is always gossip and talk about what is really happening behind the steep -- behind the scenes and a power struggle that only with politics but also the of media and he is coming in with the book in july and this town is all about that about the inside seen in dupont circle and the georgetown salons that is a

story of washington and the political media establishment and a book is called mickey and willie. i was just down as spring training in arizona watching the cleveland indians and the chicago cubs iran into willie mays but it looks that to men who came of age at the same time, became stars at the same time and formed a lifelong friendship that is something i didn't know and it will be of good book for baseball fans. that is my list provided for to reading them.

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