Dominic Sandbrook

I think Churchill also has become a kind of...

because of his shape, because of the look and the sound of him.

He's a brilliant avatar for Britishness, the kind of bulldog spirit and all of this kind of thing.

But, you know, when we did a series on The Rest Is History about young Churchill, what was so striking for me, reading his book My Early Life and telling the story of him at Harrow and in South Africa and all of this stuff, was...

the remarkable humanity of the man.

Everything is in technicolor.

Everything is larger than life.

He's extremely funny.

He's complicated and sometimes he's difficult, but he's often extremely generous.

He's endlessly curious.

I mean, this is one of the amazing things about Churchill.

When he was a very young man and he was sent out to India, he decided to kind of educate himself by reading all the great books.

And he wrote afterwards, you know, he was delighted for the first time to open Plato's Republic.

And he said,

There's lots of good stuff in here, and most of it I've actually thought of myself already.

And I think, especially, so for those of you who haven't read Churchill's book My Early Life, which is one of the first books he wrote,

It's a really funny, enjoyable read.

And that's not necessarily true of a lot of politicians' books.

You're probably the only person here who's read Liz Truss's memoir.

I think it's- Every last word.