Andrew Roberts (historian)

Andrew Roberts (born on January 13 1963) is a British conservative and historian.

Early life

Roberts attended Cranleigh School from where he was expelled for such pranks as statue painting, chapel roof climbing and rearranging the furniture in the quad. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/02/11/bvand11.xml Churchill, Hitler and me - Telegraph ] ] He took a first class honours degree in modern history [ [http://www.andrew-roberts.net/cv.htm CV of Andrew Roberts] ] at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he was also an honorary senior scholar. While there he was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.

Career

Roberts worked between 1985-87 as a corporate broker at Robert Fleming Securities Limited before becoming a freelance journalist and book reviewer. funded in part by his inheritance of the British wing of the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. His biography of Lord Salisbury won him the Wolfson History Prize and the James Stern silver pen award for non-fiction. In 2001 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts. He appears as a regular commentator on British television and radio programmes and contributes to a range of UK publications including "The Daily Telegraph" and "The Spectator".

He is also known to American audiences for his broadcasts on NBC during the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. In 2003 he presented a critically acclaimed four-part history series on BBC2 about the secrets of leadership which looked at the different leadership styles of Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King. He wrote a book on Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler's leadership techniques entitled "Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership", in which he delivered a rebuttal to many of the assertions made by David Irving, Clive Ponting and Christopher Hitchens concerning Churchill. His "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900", a sequel to the four volume work of Winston Churchill, was published in September 2006.

During the invasion of Iraq he emerged as a proponent of the war, arguing on "BBC Newsnight" that failure to take military action would be tantamount to appeasement.

After reading "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900", George W. Bush invited him to lunch at the White House on 28 February 2007. After spending time in the Oval Office, Roberts and his wife dined with Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, the National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and other White House officials. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/03/02/dp0201.xml Spy - Telegraph ] ]

Roberts was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2000. He is divorced from his first wife with whom he had two children, Henry and Cassia. He is now married to Susan Gilchrist, the senior partner of Brunswick Group, and lives in Belgravia.

Books

* "The Holy Fox : A Biography Of Lord Halifax", London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991 ISBN 0-297-81133-9.
* "Eminent Churchillians", London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994 ISBN 0-297-81247-5.
* "The Aachen Memorandum", London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995 ISBN 0-297-81619-5.
*"Hitler's England What if Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940" pages 281-320 from "Virtual History" edited by Niall Ferguson, New York: Basic Books, 1997, 1999, ISBN 0-330-35132-X.
* "Salisbury: Victorian Titan" (1999). ISBN 0-297-81713-2.
* "The House Of Windsor", Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-22803-0.
* "Napoleon and Wellington : The Battle Of Waterloo-- And The Great Commanders Who Fought It", New York : Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-297-64607-9.
* "Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership" (2003). ISBN 0-297-84330-3.
* "What Might Have Been" (2004). ISBN 0-297-84877-1.
* "Waterloo : June 18, 1815 : The Battle For Modern Europe", New York : HarperCollins, 2005, ISBN 0-06-008866-4.
* "A History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900" (2006), ISBN 0297850768'Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West' (2006) ISBN 978-0-713-99969-3

Notes and references

* Thomas, David (2003). " [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=%2Farts%2F2003%2F02%2F11%2Fbvand11.xml Churchill, Hitler and me] ". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved May 1, 2006.

External links

* [http://www.andrew-roberts.net/index.htm Official website of Andrew Roberts]

[Category:1963 births]