>> he was taking these risks and going off into the trench raiding. into she knew that. and yet she also knew that he would never be happy in life if he spoiled the reputation he had by returning too early. in june 1914 she writes him a marvelous letter telling him not to be so beastly to the staff and be nicer to the stenographers, the secretaries and the rest of it because he was just being bullying and

really difficult. and that seems to have worked, at least for the moment. he was, he was, he always thought of her as his rock and depended on her enormously. and the wonderful thing about her, she was an arrest accuratic -- aristocratic battle axe, basically. you certainly didn't want to get on the wrong side of clementine churchill when she was in full swing. and then a marvelous leapter that she writes to -- letter that she writes to herbert asking wits, the prime minister in 1916, in which she tells him that he needs to reemploy churchill and not let him leave the admiralty. although it got him nowhere and got her nowhere and rather sniffy about the letter, actually, when you read it

today, you would be so proud as a man to have a wife who could write a letter loo that. actually, i've got a wife who could write a letter like that, in fact. >> i strongly suspect we have a very large number of questions from the audience, and so i think we will turn to that now. if you do have a question, please raise your hand. anyone? we've got one over there. we've got a mona will come to you -- >> lady in red -- >> lady in red back there. there we are. >> hello. thank you very much. voice of america eurasian service. i have a very specific question. so, you know, the question of the caw cay saws and the british withdrawal was debated between lord hair soften and churchill. what.

>> yes, in september and october 1922 that brought down the lloyd george government. and it was at the heart of what the british empire was going to be about. a because the governments, lloyd george and churchill and others, wanted to insure that turkey stuck to the provisions which were very harsh on turkey. and the kickers weren't going to -- the turks weren't going to do it. and it was -- if people had supported the government, we would have possibly gone to war with turkey, which nobody wanted to do four years after the end of the great war. and so others such as andrew

bonner law really brought down the government in order to prevent this from happening. so were we going to be a continuingly pugnacious power, the plane policeman of the world -- the policeman of the world as was put in a letter to the times, or were we going to stand back and effectively accept that we were going to be a declining power. and what was called the carlton club meeting on the 19th of october 1922 made it clear that it was going to be the latter. >> gentleman in the bow tie, churchillian bow tie. >> hi. thank you for coming, sir. thank you, michael, for doing this and everyone at the churchill center. in christopher andrews' book "defend the realm," it's a history of mi-5, one of the things that struck me was that churchill, the impression i had was that churchill was almost fighting a two-front war in the runup to him becoming prime

minister that he was also, he was concerned with the rise of fascism, but he was concerned about the rise of communism at the same time, and no one wanted -- it was almost, in some policy circles, it seems like it was an either/or. and i just wondered if your book speaks to him trying to address that and get people to take it seriously. >> oh, absolutely. chapter after chapter does. it's from the bolshevik revolution onwards, he was a convinced anti-communist. but by the late 1930s, certainly by 1939, he believed it was essential to get the soviet union into a defensive pact to stop hitler which, of course, had many problems not least because the poles were essential to this. but they, quite rightly, feared and despised the russians as much as the germans. so it was a really complicated

geostrategic decision that churchill took to embrace the soviet union, which he had been deannounce for the previous -- denouncing for the decade and a bit. he did it partly with the help of ivan, the ambassador. we now do have new information about the extent to which he was doing this. and there is a chance that -- you mentioned the christopher andrew book which is the substantial biography of mi-5 -- the chance that he was being bugged by mi-5 because theying obviously, needed to know what was being said between him and mysky. it's a pretty gray area, of course, like everything else in the intelligence world, but nothing came of it, of course, ultimately, because the nazi/soviet pact in 1939 managed

to leapfrog anything that the national government were able to do. >> question. yes, ma'am. >> with this much material to choose from, i'm curious how you decided what not to include. >> the lady standing in the back in the blue is my editor the finish. [laughter] and she knows better than anybody in the world what we did and didn'ten include. basically, it could have been ten times bigger, couldn't it, joyce? [laughter] yeah. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> she said stretched to the limits of the binding. and you have to do that because there is just so much to say about churchill. and, but the real problem i found in writing this book was to, was what to cut out. it was condensation,

condensation the whole time one had to condense. and sometimes it's like chopping off your little finger, you know? if you've gone off to an arkansas a kentucky -- archive, you'll have found a nugget that you're proud of, and then you just don't have space for it, and it's a horrible thing. but you've just got to do it, because otherwise you're forced into two volumes, which doesn't sell so well -- [laughter] or you have something that if you drop it on your toe, it would break your leg. but i think with this one, i hope you'll agree with this one, although it's got -- right at the end there are about 150 pages of bibliography and notice and index you don't have to worry about. the actual bit that's the meaty part is under 1,000 passengers. -- 1,000 pages. >> james.

>> could you talk about the modern case against churchill and how you consider it but a feather on the scale of history? >> yes, yes. no, this is very important especially since the, especially since the internet. the attacks on churchill have become ever more, some of them, frankly, weird. but i saw the other day about your astronaut, scott kelly, the u.n. ambassador to space. only the united nations would send an ambassador to space. [laughter] they haven't got a government or people, but nonetheless, this man said that -- he quoted churchill saying in victory magnanimity. and -- in a tweet. and he got an enormous number of twitter trolls saying that churchill was a racist and a

colonialist and a war criminal and all of this kind of thing. and all the old canards came up, the gassing of the iraqi tribes mentioner etc., etc. which let me just point out, ladies and gentlemen, he was talking about tear gas. he was not talking about mustard gas. he actually made that clear in the letter. again and again with these things you just need to go back to the original sources or what mr. kelly should have done is just educate himself about churchill. instead, he put out a tweet saying that he was very sorry, that he should have said anything in favor of this evil, racist, you know, war monger. and then he got all the pro-churchill people -- [laughter] i really do think though the space that mr. kelly should have concentrated on really is the one between his ears. [laughter] rl that gentleman over there.

>> [inaudible] for about 30 years after the war there was a portrait of -- [inaudible] and everyone had gotten along, and then more and more the book started to pay out the shameful way that franklin roosevelt treat winston churchill. my personal opinion, maybe someone will troll maine but the question, i guess, is do you have any sense of how he personally felt about the way he was treated at y'all -- at yalta? >> yes. i think it's the too harsh, very much too harsh to say that it was shameful. i think fdr put american best interests first, so i don't think because they didn't go to war against true or shah -- which he'd have had to have done to oppose the agreement made at yalta -- that fdr can be accused of that. he did pivot from the tehran conference ontowards trying to

make sure -- onwards towards trying the make sure there was a long-term agreement with the russians. but what happened at yalta really was substantial lied all the way through -- substantial lie stalin lied all the way through. and without going to war with russia, it seems very difficult to work out how on % anything could have been -- on earth anything could have been done about that. so it was a terrible moment when by march 1946 and the iron curtain speech in fulton, missouri, churchill was the first person -- just as brave as anything he said in the 1930s -- kim out and said that soviet communism under stalin was going to be a scourge. of course, by that stage fdr was dead, but you're right in saying -- where i think you're

right is saying truly autumn of 194 onwards the close, friendly, relaxed working relationship between the two men had broken down. and there are overif 300 more lettest, i think it's 341, from winston churchill to franklin roosevelt than there are replies from roosevelt to churchill. so maybe that's what you're referring to when you use the word "shameful." >> yes, ma'am, in the blue. just wait for one second. we'll bring the microphone to you. >> could you explain churchill's relationship with our president's post-world war ii? i was under the impression that they shared our national intelligence information with him when he was in -- because he returned back as prime minister. so i'm pretty sure truman and eisenhower both -- and probably kennedy -- both sent him our

national security -- >> not kennedy -- >> not kennedy, but truman and eisenhower. >> yes. >> and i wanted to point out that in your imperial war museum, you only have one book on general montgomery, and it's comparing him with rommel. [laughter] and could you expand upon his relationship with -- >> first of all, the most terrible disbursement of book withs. they've sold their library, basically, and it's one of the great historic cag tragedies.. if you'd asked that question five years ago, there would have been well over 300 books. his relationship with montgomery was subject to fluctuations. he ad mired him very much in the beginning, made him field

martial early on to the fury of omar bradley and various other people who wanted to be five-star generals at the time but weren't. he then thought that monty got too big for his boots, which monty most definitely had. he then befriended monty in the postwar period period. to a great degree i think monty went around to chatwell, stayed there or had lunch 78 times in the course of the postwar premiership. and then he fell out with monty again. they were like -- as he said of his relationship, they were like two old birds pecking each other. but they ultimately, of course, there was a great deal of respect and admiration. was this a first part of the question? >> truman -- >> oh, i see. no.

well, of course, like everybody else, churchill liked ike. but he actually wanted adlai stevenson to win the 1952 election. and he was, he was nerve bragged because he thought thattizen -- nerve wracked because he thought that eisenhower wasn't going to pursue the policy of nuclear appeasement that he wanted to pursue towards the russians after the russians exploded their nuclear bomb in april 1949. at that point the great anti-communist winston churchill -- who, of course, had been pro-soviet during the war and anti-soviet at the time of the iron curtain speech -- then went pro again because he saw british interests were not best served by having a heavily nuclearized soviet union. he thought eisenhower would not address that whereas the democrats might. >> yes, sir.

we have a microphone. right here. >> thank you also for coming here, it's been real treat. and having read your book on halifax many, many years ago, i can't wait to read your book on churchill. you probably get this question a lot since "the darkest hour" came out, the movie, and now being an expert, obviously, on both the leading characters in that, what is your take on the movie? do you think that the artistic license that they took was necessary to get the story out to a wider audience? i'm just curious as your thoughts. >> thank you very much for reading my first book, "the holy fox," i wrote it 30 years ago since when i've written five other books with churchill in the title or subtitle. i really feel as though i was

walking with destiny and all my past life was preparation for this hour and this trial. [laughter] the -- i loved the film. i thought it was great. i loved gary oldman's prosthetics, the sort of glint in the eye and the chortle. i thought he caught churchill absolutely brilliantly. and the problem i had with it was that it actually detracted from the true leadership that was shown by winston churchill in may 1940 over the issue of making peace with adolf hitler where he did not go down into the subway and treat -- and ask a focus group of people -- [laughter] in his, what he wanted to do, what he should do. neither was he visited by the king in his bedroom at midnight at number 10 downing street. [laughter] that didn't happen either. so as a result, you actually have a detraction from the extraordinary leadership that he did show.

he decided that he was going to outmaneuver lord halifax. the he didn't go to mps, he went to the wider cabinet. he put forward -- well, it's all in chapter 21 of my book. [laughter] it was a campaign to insure especially, of course, once we'd got 250,000 troops back from dunkirk by the 28th of may. or these peace negotiations were never going to go anywhere. and it's one of those pivotal moments in history that if they had, if halifax had been prime minister -- neville chamberlain continued as prime minister and supported halifax -- we could have gone down a very, very dangerous path if we'd made peace with hitler then. he would have been able to instead of using 50-70% of the luftwaffe, he'd been able to have used it all. and when you think that in the north he got to subject

leningrad to a grueling 1,000-day siege and in the center he got to the subway stations of moscow and in the south he actually captured stalingrad, what he would have been able to do if he'd have had twice as many planes is terrifying to consider especially without america being in the war at the time. >> right back there. i see a hand there. this young fella. yes. >> i was wondering if you could talk about churchill's role in the attack on the french at -- [inaudible] >> very good question. yes. it was something that almost broke his heart. he was a franc to file -- francophile to the end. he loved france, always had. but when it became clear that the -- actually, nothing was terribly clear about the, we --

[speaking french] nothing was terribly clear because although we were intercepting the french naval signals, they weren't always being done. >> -- being done in realtime and also not completely successfully. so churchill believed that the french fleet was not going to scuttle itself. this is of course, the visual shi fleet that was in the port, but was actually going to try is and fight it out and take on admiral sir james sommerville's force. so churchill had to make this grindingly painful decision especially, of course, this was on the 3rd of july, 1940, and two weeks before the germans had marched into paris of not just setting back in the hopes of close anglo-french cooperating, but also killing 3,000 as it

turned out -- 3,000? so i know. >> 1,200. >> yes. nearly 1,300, 1,299 french soldiers. so he took that decision. it was one that he never regretted, and one of the reasons was that it sent the message to the world and especially here to the united states that we were going to fight on come what may. if you sink the french flight and they were your allies only two weeks beforehand, it's clear you're not about to give up and make peace with hitler. very good question. >> can you discuss the reaction of the -- >> well, the house of commons, of course, cheered churchill, and he cried -- as he so often dud can, as i mentioned earlier. [laughter] and, but he hated doing it and said so. but nonetheless, it was the first victory we'd had for some time. and, of course, actually the

other thing is the royal navy itself splits between the officers who had been, who knew other french officers, and they'd been on each other's ships and trained with each other and knew each other and liked each other who were devastated by having to kill so many frenchmen. and then the able seamen who just thought that they were something straight out of photographal garre -- photographal garre and nelson and absolutely didn't mind in the slightest. [laughter] >> we have a couple more questions. this young man right here in the front, please. >> again, i just want to say thank you for being here. my question is what are your thoughts as to why he was not reelected right after the war? do you think maybe because when the war ended, people saw him as a symbol of the old order?

he was an imperialist, and they wanted to basically start anew? >> yes, that's one aspect of it. he, it came as a terrible shock when he lost the 1945 general election on the 26th of july. he was, he expected to win because he'd been on one after the ore after the other after the other of these election tours where he'd been cheered to the echo especially in the northern and midlands town. but, of course, his name was only on one ballot whereas a a lot of conservatives who had been appeasers, their names were on the others. and people wanted, after six years of devastating war, wanted to have a more -- well, they wanted nationalization, they wanted the national health service, they wanted the welfare state and the beverage report put into operation. and they knew that it was going to be labour party that would do

that with gusto whereas, although churchill did offer to do most of that, he would not do it with anything like the same conviction. and that's, essentially, what -- he also made an incredibly stupid remark during the election where he attempted to equate the labour party with the gestapo which was extremely stupid thing to have done and probably also lost a few seats. >> i think we have time for one more question. sir, here. >> of all the churchill biographers out -- of all the churchill biographers out there, how were you able to convince the queen to give you unfettered access -- [laughter] to her father's diaries? >> it was, i'd love to pretend it was anything other than certain p dipty. i just, i didn't take no for an answer, and i kept asking, which i think is always very sensible with the royal archives. also, you know, it had been

70-plus years since the events, and so i think that it was pretty much time. of course, that's a decision to be taken between her and her private secretaries. luckily, they came to the decision that i was going to get a yes rather than yet another no. >> ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to invite all of you to join us here on monday, november 26th, when we welcome sir antony beevor who will discuss his new history of the battle at arnham, and i hope you will insure the education and the future of andrew's children by buying books remembering that the holidays are just a around the corner. [laughter] and please allow andrew to make a dash to the signing table over

there where he will be only too happy to give you his autograph. thanks for being here tonight, and andrew roberts, thank you and congratulations. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> unfortunately, we've had interruption in our schedule. we will get back to our normal programming just as soon as possible. >> and now booktv's monthly "in depth" program with author and astrofizz gist neil degrasse tyson. he's the author of many books including "welcome to the universe," "death by black

hole," "and his latest, "astrophysics for people in a hurry." >> host: dr. neil degrasse tyson, in your new book, "astrophysics for people in a hur arely," you open it by saying the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. what does that mean? >> guest: get over it. [laughter] i think up until, well, really up til the year 1600 when we didn't have any particular tools to investigate the natural world, our five senses were the primary means by which we obtained all information about the universe. and if not even knowing that our five senses had limits. if it's everything you know, you think it's everything the universe is trying to give you but, in fact, it's not. and so around 1600 was the invention to have microscope in one direction and then the telescope in the other direction. each invented within a decade of

one another. that all of a sudden pieces of the universe come available to us that transcend our senses. the fact9 that lieu wan hoping would look inside of a drop of pond water and see microorganisms just doing the backstroke, right? your eye/brain sensory system could not have detected were it not for the microscope. and you can say does that make sense that you'd have entire living creatures inside of a drop of water, well, today we know that because we learned it in childhood, but back in the day, it made no sense at all.

>> guest: one eyewitness testimony about one result is not a scientific discovery. you need verification of it to confirm that it's real. and especially in modern times, the 20th century and onward, we have particle accelerators. we've discovered quantum physics which has rules of how matter behaves that fall completely outside of not only your senses, but our expectations for how life -- how anything should work. particles popping in and out of existence, matter turning into energy and back and forth. so then we discover, like, black holes and the expanding universe. how could everything there is be expanding at all, right? and so if you keep invoking that doesn't make sense, you're going to miss out on a lot of what we have learned, discovered to be true about this universe. >> host: what's significant about the year 1600, anything?

>> guest: oh, well, optics had taken -- there was a lot of -- the dutch were very good at optics and lenses and this sort of thing, and we knew about what one lens would do. you could make a little magnifying glass out of it. but when you start combining them, you get other properties of your optical system, enabling you to get a microscope. and once you did that, that just opened the floodgates to what else you would do. and then galileo made a really good version of it back in the early 1600s and then sky's the limit as he looked up. >> host: was gal galileo treates kind of a devil, in a sense? >> guest: well, a little bit of cleansing -- depending hon how long is the write-up on the account of his time, life and times, that'll determine how much background information you'll get. so the simple story is he makes these discoveries,