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Andrew Roberts on The Habits of Churchill, Lessons from Napoleon, and The Holy Fire Inside Great Leaders (#773)

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“As soon as you think you understand a period, all it takes is one new set of papers or a new book written by somebody else that can make you look again at the same period and completely change your mind about it. And that’s a little unnerving at the age of 61, I have to say.”
— Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts (@aroberts_andrew) has written twenty books, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have won thirteen literary prizes. 

These include Salisbury: Victorian Titan, Masters and Commanders, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, Napoleon: A Life, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III, and most recently, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, which he co-authored with General David Petraeus.

Lord Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, the Bonnie and Tom McCloskey Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. He is also a member of the House of Lords.

Please enjoy!

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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch on YouTube.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#773: Andrew Roberts on The Habits of Churchill, Lessons from Napoleon, and The Holy Fire Inside Great Leaders
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This episode is brought to you by Our Place’s Titanium Always Pan® Pro. Many nonstick pans can release harmful “forever chemicals”—PFAS—into your food, your home, and, ultimately, your body. Teflon is a prime example—it *is* the forever chemical that most companies are still using. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to major health issues like gut microbiome disruption, testosterone dysregulation, and more, which have been correlated to chronic disease in the long term. This is why I use the Titanium Always Pan Pro from today’s sponsor, Our Place.  It’s the first nonstick pan with zero coating. This means zero “forever chemicals” and a durability that will last a lifetime. That’s right—no degradation over time like traditional nonstick pans.

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Want to hear another episode with a historian who looks to the past in order to understand where the future’s headed? Have a listen to my conversation with Niall Ferguson, in which we discuss the revoking of academia’s license to be outrageous, historical contingency, keeping Cold War II from heating up into World War III, the joys of digging deep into historical correspondence, why an atheist takes his kids to church, life under fatwa, an evolving toolkit for enacting change, and much more.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with Andrew Roberts:

Website | Twitter

SHOW NOTES

  • [00:06:14] Expelled from Cranleigh school.
  • [00:07:14] Why MI6 considered Andrew for recruitment.
  • [00:09:56] The teacher who made history exciting to 10-year-old Andrew.
  • [00:13:05] Words Andrew avoids when writing about history.
  • [00:14:20] Are steady-nerved leaders naturally born or nurtured?
  • [00:16:05] The thinkers who influenced Winston Churchill and his sense of noblesse oblige.
  • [00:18:26] What made Napoleon Bonaparte the prime exemplar of war leadership?
  • [00:24:37] Lessons from Winston Churchill’s autobiography, My Early Life.
  • [00:26:22] Napoleon’s relationship with risk.
  • [00:29:26] Andrew’s signed letter from Aldous Huxley.
  • [00:30:49] When historical figures carry a sense of personal destiny.
  • [00:33:07] The meeting Andrew wishes he could’ve witnessed as a fly on the wall.
  • [00:34:30] When historical villains carry a sense of personal destiny.
  • [00:37:14] What Churchill and Napoleon learned from their mistakes.
  • [00:39:38] “Dear Diary…”
  • [00:44:00] Maintaining creative flow during the writing process.
  • [00:47:18] On working with brilliant publisher Stuart Proffitt (aka Professor Perfect).
  • [00:52:53] Why are some significant figures immortalized while others go the way of Ozymandias?
  • [00:57:59] Thoughts on personal legacy.
  • [00:59:18] Fiction favorites.
  • [01:02:05] Being objective about the history of imperialism.
  • [01:03:31] The challenges of teaching and learning history today.
  • [01:06:40] Why “Study history” is Andrew’s coat of arms motto.
  • [01:10:22] What Andrew, as a history expert, sees for the future.
  • [01:14:01] Counteracting natural pessimism.
  • [01:15:34] What to expect from Andrew’s latest book Conflict (co-authored with David Petraeus).
  • [01:19:21] Upcoming book projects.
  • [01:20:26] Parting thoughts.

MORE ANDREW ROBERTS QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“I don’t think I’m the first person ever as a young man to get drunk and climb up buildings … It led to one of my wife’s most brilliant witticisms. She said, ‘And all Andrew’s done since in life is to get drunk and social climb.'”
— Andrew Roberts

“When I feel pessimism for America, it’s for things like taking the Thomas Jefferson statue down from the New York City Hall. It’s a form of cultural suicide. It strikes me not to admire the founders of your nation. And yes, of course he owned slaves, but he also wrote a constitution that has survived for a quarter of a millennium and he was brave enough, and Washington and all the others, brave enough to stand up against the most powerful empire in the world. These things, you deserve your statue, it seems to me. And if you go around pulling these things down, I think you’re breaking a living link with the past that makes you a great country.”
— Andrew Roberts

“I find it very relaxing and calming to think that my life isn’t just going to be a complete waste of time. And one of the only ways that I can justify this concept that it’s all not just a nihilistic maelstrom is by writing books, obviously, which I hope will survive me. But also, noting down what I’ve done in the day.”
— Andrew Roberts

“As soon as you think you understand a period, all it takes is one new set of papers or a new book written by somebody else that can make you look again at the same period and completely change your mind about it. And that’s a little unnerving at the age of 61, I have to say.”
— Andrew Roberts

“I’m a bit of a pessimist anyway because I’m a Tory and pessimism is an essential part of Toryism.”
— Andrew Roberts

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield
Susan Gilchrist
James Bond
Cookie Monster
Christopher Perry
Charles I
Oliver Cromwell
Elizabeth I
Mary, Queen of Scots
Robert Caro
Niall Ferguson
Napoleon Bonaparte
Winston Churchill
Julius Caesar
Alexander the Great
Edward Gibbon
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Arthur Schopenhauer
Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Sir Francis Drake
Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
Randolph Churchill
Jeanette Spencer-Churchill
Aldous Huxley
Adolf Hitler
Neville Chamberlain
George VI
Claus von Stauffenberg
David Koresh
Jim Jones
Xi Jinping
Benjamin Netanyahu
Joe Biden
Louis XVI
Samuel Johnson
Stuart Proffitt
Herodotus
Abraham Lincoln
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Robert Goddard
William Boyd
Salman Rushdie
Robert Harris
Michel Houellebecq
Henry VIII
Denzel Washington
Sherlock Holmes
Eleanor Rigby
Ronald Hutton
Simon Roberts
Edward I
Elizabeth II
Warren Hastings
Nelson Mandela
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Thomas More
Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford
William Wallace
George III
Thomas Jefferson
P.G. Wodehouse
David H. Petraeus
Matthew Ridgway

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.