Andrew Roberts

  • Renowned British Historian and Biographer
  • Lehrman Institute Distinguished Fellow at the New-York Historical Society
  • Visiting Professor at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London

Professor Andrew Roberts took a first class honours degree in Modern History from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and PhD. His biography of Winston Churchill’s foreign secretary Lord Halifax, entitled The Holy Fox, was published in 1991, to be followed by Eminent Churchillians, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (which won the Wolfson Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award), Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership, and Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble. He appears regularly on TV and radio and writes articles and reviews for several British and American newspapers. His latest book, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, is published in the US by Penguin in November 2018. He sits on the academic board of five prominent British and American think-tanks, is a founder member of Jose Maria Aznar’s Friends of Israel Initiative, and is presently the Lehrman Distinguished Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London.

Of Roberts’ most recent books, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 won the US Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award for 2007, Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West 1941-45 won the International Churchill Society Book Award for 2009, and The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War won the British Army Military Book of the Year Award in 2010. His 2014 book, Napoleon the Great, won the LA Times Biography Prize and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoléon. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, a Trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust, and the chairman of judges of the Lehrman Institute-New York Historical Society Military History Book Prize. He is also the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

 



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Past Hosts Include:
  • Dr. Henry Kissinger
  • The HF Guggenheim Foundation
  • Hay Literary Festival
  • The Other Other Club
  • Foyles
  • Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization
  • Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
  • The New Criterion
  • The May 20th Society
  • Jardine Matheson
Rave Reviews About Andrew Roberts as a Speaker
Andrew Roberts is singular. His White House Lecture was inspired, brilliant, and altogether captivating. Andrew is a gifted, wonderful speaker.

Napoleon the Great? A debate with Andrew Roberts, Adam Zamoyski and Jeremy Paxman | iqsquared [1:25:43] - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Andrew Roberts
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Churchill: Walking with Destiny

How Winston Churchill prepared himself for leadership, and the techniques he used to execute it ...

How Winston Churchill prepared himself for leadership, and the techniques he used to execute it

Grand Strategy of World War Two

How the Allies planned the route to victory and the relations between the leading figures such as Churchill, Roosevelt and Marshall in deciding it ...

How the Allies planned the route to victory and the relations between the leading figures such as Churchill, Roosevelt and Marshall in deciding it

The Royal House of Windsor

How the British monarchy has survived and prospered since its foundation in 1917, dealing with crises such as World War One, the Abdication World War Two and the Death of Princess Diana ...

How the British monarchy has survived and prospered since its foundation in 1917, dealing with crises such as World War One, the Abdication World War Two and the Death of Princess Diana

The Storm of War

Why the Nazis Lost World War Two ...

Why the Nazis Lost World War Two

Young Winston

The story of Churchill’s youth – his schooling, cavalry charge, prison escape – and the way it engendered his physical and moral courage ...

The story of Churchill’s youth – his schooling, cavalry charge, prison escape – and the way it engendered his physical and moral courage

Napoleon the Great

Napoleon’s leadership techniques and achievements ...

Napoleon’s leadership techniques and achievements

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Speaker News
<p>Andrew Roberts provides fascinating insights into the most important people and moments of world history</p>

Andrew Roberts provides fascinating insights into the most important people and moments of world history

Renowned British Historian and New York Times bestselling author ANDREW ROBERTS is in-demand by audiences for his fascinating, in-depth insights into some of the greatest people and most pivotal moments of world history. A foremost expert on Winston Churchill—his numerous biographies of the world leader have won countless awards—Franklin Roosevelt, World War II, and Napoleon, Roberts’ unparalleled ability to bring history to life and reveal timeless lessons on leadership, strategy and international affairs in the process, have had him in-demand to speak everywhere from The White House to the prestigious London Library Annual Lecture. Hailed as “inspired, brilliant and altogether captivating” (The White House), “hugely entertaining and extremely relevant” (Barclays Capital), and “eloquent… spell-binding” (Princeton), Roberts enthralls audiences worldwide. Roberts’ 13th and latest book Churchill: Walk with Destiny, was an instant bestseller heralded in The New York Times as “surely the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written.” Roberts has been sought-out to discuss the book at The Hoover Institution, The LBJ Foundation, and more.

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Books by Andrew Roberts
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Biography

Prof Andrew Roberts, who was born in 1963, took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). He is presently a Visiting Professor at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London and the Lehrman Institute Lecturer at the New-York Historical Society. He has written or edited nineteen books, which have been translated into 22 languages,  and appears regularly on radio and television around the world. Based in London, he is an accomplished public speaker, and has delivered the White House Lecture, as well as speaking at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton and Stanford Universities, and at The British Academy, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sandhurst, Shrivenham and the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

In 2011, NBC commissioned him to commentate alongside Meredith Vieira on the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton, following his well-received broadcasts at the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the wedding of Prince Charles to the Duchess of Cornwall. He also commentated for NBC on The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the birth of Prince George of Cambridge.

His biography of Neville Chamberlain’s and Winston Churchill’s foreign secretary, the Earl of Halifax, entitled The Holy Fox was published in 1991, to be followed by the controversial, but no less well-received Eminent Churchillians in 1994. As well as appearing regularly on British and American television and radio, Roberts writes for The Sunday Telegraph and reviews history books and biography for that newspaper as well as The Spectator, Literary Review, Mail on Sunday and Wall Street Journal.

In 1999 he published Salisbury: Victorian Titan, the authorised biography of the Victorian prime minister the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award for Non-Fiction. In September 2001 Napoleon and Wellington, an investigation into the relationship between the two great generals, was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and was the lead review in all but one of Britain’s national newspapers. January 2003 saw the publication of Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership, which coincided with Roberts’s four-part BBC2 history series.

Prof Roberts has two children; Henry, who was born in 1997 and Cassia, who was born in 1999. He lives in London with his wife, Susan Gilchrist, who is the Global CEO of the corporate communications firm Brunswick Group, and a Governor of the Southbank Centre.

In 2004, Prof Roberts edited What Might Have Been, a collection of twelve ‘What If?’ essays written by distinguished historians, including Antonia Fraser, Norman Stone, Amanda Foreman, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Conrad Black and Anne Somerset.

In 2005 Roberts published Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble, which was published in America as Waterloo: The Battle for Modern Europe. The publication of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 brought him an invitation to the White House in February 2007, where he delivered the prestigious White House Lecture. His books have been translated into Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Turkish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Marathi, Slovenian, Spanish, Thai, Malaysian and Vietnamese.

Masters and Commanders, which was published in 2008, won the Emery Reves Award of the International Churchill Society and was shortlisted for The Duke of Westminster’s Gold Medal for Military History and The British Army Military Book Award, both of Britain’s two top military history prizes. The Storm of War was published in August 2009 and reached No.2 on The Sunday Times bestseller list, and won the British Army Military Book Award for 2010.

Roberts is interested in public policy and sits on the boards or advisory councils of a number of think-tanks and pressure groups, including Policy Exchange, The Centre for Policy Studies, The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, The UK National Defence Association, The London Jewish Cultural Centre, and Intelligence Squared US’s Intelligence Council. He holds an honorary doctorate from Westminster College, Missouri.  He is a Director of the Harry Guggenheim Foundation in New York, a founder member of President Jose Maria Aznar’s Friends of Israel Committee (alongside Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and Alejandro Toledo), and in 2010 he chaired the Hessell-Tiltman Award for Non-Fiction. He is also Vice President-elect of the Guild of Battlefield Guides.

Prof Roberts is a quondam judge on the Elizabeth Longford Historical Biography Prize, he chaired the Conservative Party’s Advisory Panel on the Teaching of History in Schools in 2005, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has also been elected a Fellow of the Napoleonic Institute and an Honorary Member of the International Churchill Society (UK). He is also a Trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust and of the Roberts Foundation.

In 2011 Prof Roberts was appointed to the committee of the  International Friends of the London Library, the Academic Board of the Henry Jackson Society, the Review Committee of the Dan David Prize, and he became an Honorary Co-Chair of the New York Historical Society’s Chairman’s Council. He is also on the Directors Council of SpeakEasy, the Advisors Board of the British Journal of Military History and is an Honorary Vice-President of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.

In 2012 he was awarded the William Penn Prize (former recipients include President Ulysses S. Grant, Gen. George C. Marshall, Walt Whitman and Earl Mountbatten) as well as the British Schools and Universities Club of USA ‘Pride of the Century Award’; he joined the Academic Advisory Committee of the National Churchill Library and Centre at George Washington University, and was the guest curator of the Morgan Library’s ‘Churchill: the Power of Words’ exhibition. In May 2013 the Prime Minister appointed him a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. In 2013 he was the Merrill Family visiting professor at Cornell University, and in 2014 his biography of Napoleon Bonaparte was published, which won the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoléon, awarded to him by the Princesse Bonaparte at the British Embassy in Paris, and The Los Angeles Times Biography Prize 2015.

In February 2016, Prof Roberts was elected President of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, a post previously occupied by Rab Butler, Francis Pym and Michael Howard. In May 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the next month he was awarded the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation’s Prize, with its $250,000 stipend, for his contribution to ‘increasing the world’s understanding of pivotal world events’.

Andrew has become the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the CANZUK Union Institutes, sits on the Advisory Board of the National Churchill Library and Center at George Washington University and on the advisory board of The Conservative magazine. He is Founder-President of the Cliveden Literary Festival – www.clivedenliteraryfestival.org – and is on the Board of Visitors of Ralston University. In 2016 he joined the board of the International Churchill Society.

He is presently writing a biography of Sir Winston Churchill.