when you are reading a book you know all the characters you know some of the legislators it is interesting to get that perspective and some of the staffers. then there is a book that i just ordered on james byrnes who was a legendary south carolina public too chollet john jonathan martin put this on the radar and said you are going to love this book coming and he very nearly was vice president instead of truman and 44 and continued to play an extraordinary role in politics and became one of the architects of nixon's success in the self and 60 and 72 and is actually interestingly enough just popped up working with henry on the 1940 and this book i'm reading on the 1940 nomination of fdr in the third term which was pretty neat political work. so, look i like to read about the process and study history

and i ought to read more policy and less history but i seemed to learn better on history. >> interviews authors in lond3 >> interviews authors in london acclaimed historian and biographer paul johnson sat down with us to talk about his nonfiction work including biographies of queen elizabeth i come edward, napoleon, george washington, pope john the 23rd and pope john paul ii. >> author and historian paul johnson joins book tv in london. mr. johnson how many books have you written? >> i'm not sure. it's somewhere in the high 50s, not yet 60. but i hope before ipod off i

will have written 60. >> host: what books are you working on now? >> guest: i'm writing my memoirs though they only cover a part of my life. so that is what i am doing at the moment. but i just finished a short life of stalin aimed at young people because i find young people don't know anything about him. and i think they ought to know about him. >> host: what should they know about him? >> guest: they should know that he was an unmitigated a villain who murdered at least 20 million people and imprisoned many more of them. and they should know that he put russia on the course from which it has still not reestablished

itself. so i think young people should know this. >> host: what are the best books at least in the united states is the history of the american people. and in the book, you write that america is still the best hope for the american race. >> guest: i think that is still true. though since i published that book, other countries have been capturing up with the united states in terms of economic output, particularly communist china. but in my opinion, america will remain the top nation for the indefinite future. the reason i say that is because the united states is a very free country. in many ways it is the freest country in the world. and freedom means that you can interchange ideas and develop ideas and creative ideas and it's the ideas a long run that

keep one nation ahead of another. the ability to produce striking new ideas. i think the united states still has that capacity, and therefore will survive as the top nation. >> host: recently to books that you published on darwin and soccer teams. how did the door when become charles darwin? >> guest: he was a man who could be his own master for the simple reason that he inherited a lot of money. he came from a distinguished family of doctors and other people. his father was a very successful doctor. so he never had to work. he worked very hard all his life but he never had to work for a living. he had that living already because he inherited it and he is in fact a great argument in favor of inherited wealth

because he used it not only to subsidize his own researches but to create the atmosphere in which the researchers could take place. he had for instance a large garden which he grew plans and things which he needed for his research. so he was able to do this because he was a rich man. >> host: was his research beneficial to understanding who and what we are? >> guest: very much so. one of the plans i make in my book is that he was very, very good researching into small creatures and plants of course and insects and small creatures of every kind of human beings

and bigger creatures. so, although his main work on the species, the origin of the species. he wrote more about human beings is less so. that is one of the planes that i make in my book. >> paul johnson, who is a separate peace? >> guest: he is an athenian fifth century bc who never had a regular job. he'd been in the army and was a very distinguished fighter. one of the things we know about him is that when people saw him approaching, they gave him a very wide berth, said he was a ferocious man or could be a ferocious and that he spent his time wandering around.

he was a philosopher but he never wrote or published anything. all that we know about him or most the we know about him we get from plato. but he went around talking to people interrogating them, asking them questions, listening to their views, and on the basis of this, that is what he taught. he taught people sitting at street corners in the marketplace and so he was absorbing a and also emitting wisdom all his life but in a practical basis mainly from ordinary people. >> host: why was he killed? >> guest: he was killed because it was felt that he was a threat to the morality of young people.

this was a trumped up charge. he was certainly a disturbing influence of the one that he questioned or received an official wisdom of the day. but he wasn't a threat to morality. except in so far as he made people think. that is what the authority's didn't like. he taught people how to think for themselves. he taught them not necessarily to accept anything they heard or that was handed down to them as the official line on anything or the truth or all known things he told them to think out things from themselves. and that is what the author tarriance didn't like. >> host: paul johnson, we talked with a lot of authors and the first thing that keeps coming up is the so-called special relationship between the u.s. and the u.k.. does it exist and should it

exist if it does? >> guest: if it does exist, it inevitably exists because throughout the existence of the united states as an independent country and during the long colonial period when it was dependent upon great britain, the relationship between the two countries has been very close and a cultural sense as well as in the political and economic sense and that has shaped the united states very much so that it also shaped britain, too and people who say the special relationship doesn't exist. it's not something we can choose about, it is something that happened which started to happen in the late 16th century and it's been happening ever since. we are very close to each other. we have very important

differences and disagreements from time to time and we fought the war against each other, the war of the revolution, the revolutionary war and the war of 1812. so, we have had our disagreements. and we still have our disagreements. and relations are not very close at the moment because president obama does not like britain and makes it clear that he doesn't. but these things are trivial on the service. presidents come and go. and as i have said before, president obama is the winner of the king george iii award for the worst president in american history. >> host: why king george iii? >> guest: because king george iii was the king of england at that time of the american revolution.

and was to a very great extent responsible for that revolution taking place. >> host: why did president obama in your view win that award? >> guest: one thing i didn't like about him is that almost the first thing he did when he became president was that he had winston churchill removed from the white house. he wasn't only half american himself because his mother was american and he inherited most of his brains and brilliance from his mother, not only was he have american that he was the best english friend that america has ever had in my opinion, and he and roosevelt formed a magnificent do during the war to destroy it were and defeat japan. so i resented the fact that he had churchill removed in such a

precipitous manner. i think the roots of president obama are not in america. they are in kenya and he sees britain as a colonial part which in his view oppressed kenya said that is the intellectual background. >> host: what board world war ii have been like if winston churchill hadn't been pre-minister at that time? >> guest: i was 9-years-old when mr. terkel became prime minister and i was quite certain from the beginning from his tenure that he was going to win the war but a lot of people went and things were very tricky particularly in 1940 when we were alone. we had been deserted and

betrayed by the french. we had no other allies outside of the commonwealth. the americans were hoping, doing as much as they could, but there was no question of them actually joining us. and things were very, very bad. now, mr. churchill kept our spirits high in three different ways. first of all he was a great orator. i used to listen to all his speeches on the wireless sitting with my father. we've been right through the first world war and we listened to winston churchill and what he said. second he was a tremendous people. he had little papers he sent to his subordinates and the very short, crisp to the point instruction they were to carry out and had to carry out the

same day so that was the second reason. the fifth reason is people loved him. he'd been through many things including periods of on popularity. but on the whole, people believed in him and they thought that he was going to somehow pull us through and he is a wonderful example of the impact, the influence of individuals on history. we hear from the other sociologists and things like that that history is controlled by huge forces and enormous people and so forth. it isn't. history is controlled by brilliance to the pavilions of outstanding individuals who make history and the most upstanding in my career and it was winston churchill because he turned the

war around. he carried on until russia and the united states joined us and overwhelmed the nazis. >> host: have you met him? >> guest: yes i have. he came to my town. he stayed at a hotel was manager was known to my mother and he said to my mother if they want to meet sir winston, winston churchill, tell him to be in the lobby of the hotel at 20 past nine because that is when he is supposed to be coming down to get into his car. so i was there, and he ensured

that he could introduce me. so anyway, i said he gave me one of his giant matches in order to light his big cigars and liked to have a very big match that would last a long time and he had them specially made and they were quite a piece of timber. in the week and he gave me one of his matches and i was emboldened by this to say mr. winston churchill, sir, to what do you attribute your success in life and he said without any hesitation, energy, never stand up when you can sit down and never sit down when you can lie down. and he then went often to his limo and drove off. i've always remembered that and it's very good advice, too.

>> host: did you ever work with him officially? how did you get interested in history? where did you begin your career? >> guest: i've always loved history. my father taught me history when i was very little. he taught me how to paint, too but his hobby was history. and i always studied history very intensively at school. the first book that i ever read through when i was six was the chronicles, one of the famous books in history in the middle ages and then when i went up to oxford i studied history and my main subject in my degree and ever since then, i have written history, books of history and all kind of aspects of history, so it's been the love of my life. >> paul johnson received a medal

of freedom in 2006 have you been united here in the u.k.? >> guest: no because i don't like the honor system in the country because i don't have anything to do that. >> host: why don't you like it? >> guest: i think that is corrupt at some of the higher levels whereas in america it wouldn't so that's okay. >> host: you write the first line from that book is the modern world began on the 29th of may, 1919 what happened on 29 of may? >> guest: the nature and the consequences of neinstein's general theory of relativity. was to our three years before

the war but we haven't been able to verify that. it was when the piece came and showed them to be pretty accurate, then it was announced and on the data that you've just mentioned. so they were among the cognizant among the intellectuals come in the scientific community, the true nature of einstein's great discovery became public knowledge as it were, so it was an important point in world history because not only did it change the world because a was at the basis of our discovery of the power of the at atom but it

had a metaphysical effect on people's thinking and we began to think in terms of relativity and in terms of great changes in the world. so i picked that as the beginning of the modern world. there is something a bit arbitrary and that trice but nevertheless it is as good of a beginning has any. >> host: what effect did world war i have on the world and its structure up to the point? >> guest: not as much as it should have done because the slaughter was immense. the orders were unbelievable and unprecedented to destroy a whole generation and the fact. generation and the fact. certainly it did in my country because we didn't impose conscription for a long time. so, the big slaughters of the western front which took place in 1915 and 16 and 17.

one of the best of our young men who volunteered to read the germans and the french role conscript so it even out. the people that were slaughtered were the best. i don't think that we have ever recovered from that. but the effect in general is to intensify violence and the second world war began in the first because it sprang out of the first and what the germans regarded as the injustice of the settlement. so we have 40 years in effect of violence. so the interesting thing is that since 1945 there's been a general peace among the great

powers given all kinds of threats and many years of cold war. since 1945 we had no general war among the great power. now, that is the longest period of peace among the great half and the whole of history come in the whole of recorded history and what is the reason for that we don't know what we can't be proving. but in my opinion it is because of the existence of nuclear weapons and the huge destructiveness which we know we will bring to the world which has kept the peace. back to world war i was america's role 51 world war i i wouldn't say that it was vital

but it certainly made and shortened the war in 1918 even in 1917 but in 1918, americans began to arrive in the western front what was the key fielder in growing numbers and they were old and a vigorous and unspoiled by the orders of the war was still optimistic whereas all of the other powers were jaded and defeated as it were and they were in important factor in the germany surrendered. i think it would have occurred anyway in the long run that america probably shortened the war by two or three years >> host: you've written a book called intellectuals from marks and -- karl marx, an

intellectual? >> guest: these were all intellectuals. the way that i define an intellectual is someone who thinks that ideas matter more than people i don't agree with that of course i think people matter much more than ideas. but most intellectuals to fall into that category, and certainly karl marx did because he didn't think people mattered at all. what he thought mattered were ideas particularly his own. so i am rather proud of the book because i managed not merely to identify the great weakness and intellectuals, that concern for ideas rather than people, but i managed to get quite a lot of jokes particularly dealing with scoundrels and so forth.

i got some good jokes in there. i often get postcards from readers saying thanks for all the jokes you put into intellectuals and that gratifies me because one of the things i think is that they are -- there isn't enough humor in books particularly solid and formidable books. they tend to be written in a spirit of cumulus less. now i try to get in as many jokes as i can because i think jokes are very, very important. the world is a sad place. it's full of sadness and ends in sadness for most of us and the more jokes we can laugh at during our lives, the better. so one of my games as a writer is to put more jokes and i think i was very successful in that particular book.

>> host: we are talking with author and historian paul johnson, the author of 50 some books, two of which the history of the american people and modern times, the war from the 20's to the 90's, and those are two of his recent books. paul johnson, who are some of your favorite historians? >> guest: historians? the trade with india and so forth i very much like the cambridge historian and maitland and not least because he said there are plenty of jokes in doomsday bucks if you know where to look for them i look for them all my life and haven't found

them but then when you see the meat and later said of course only about six people know where to look for them. i read a lot of churchill's histories and he was an amateur. i've always tried to imitate historians and make my books readable that is one of the great things in life and the libraries are full of history's coming quietly collecting dust as the decades will buy and nobody takes them from the shelves one should always

remember that. >> host: how many books have you sold? >> guest: god knows, millions. i have no idea. if the figures are poor you get to know it sooner or later and people tell you. if they are good you'll get your royalty check. so, so long as the second is healthy and the first doesn't happen i am content. >> host: finally, paul johnson, what are you currently reading? >> guest: well, i am reading quite a lot about fdr, franklin roosevelt because my publishers have suggested that i might like to write a short biography of him and they encompass a

remarkably wide ranging life. i'm also reading about lincoln because i mean the end decide to write a short biography of lincoln i've seen a remarkable film about him that seemed to me to stress some of the wrong things i like to give my own version of events. so that's what i'm reading too at the moment. >> host: very quickly what were one of those events you saw in the movie that you would like to -- >> guest: i think it presented the white house as a sort of messy place with jumbles and things all over. he was a neat and orderly person. >> host: paul johnson has been our guest here on book tv. we are in london interviewing

british authors. thanks for being with us. >> guest: thank you. >> now from london we sit down with mr. lamb's lady author of four nonfiction books including poor pretend and the cost of any quality. this is about half an hour. >> joining us this week on book tv from london is stewart landsley who is a visiting fellow with the townson center for international poverty