Welcome, Allen. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's great to be with you this afternoon. Thank you for taking the time to be with us. So my first question is a fun question, because you have what sounds like my dream job. How did you end up with one of the coolest jobs in historical scholarship, the head of the Churchill Archive? I think the short answer to that is that it's all luck.

And that opened my eyes to archives as a possible career. And from there, I obtained the postgraduate qualification. I spent three years working in Derbyshire, in the Beautiful Peak District, in local government, local government archive. And then I saw an advert. I saw an advert for a job to become part of a team working on cataloging and exhibiting. the papers of Sir Winston Churchill, which had just been purchased for the British Nation with the aid of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant.

And that was way back in September 1995. So since then, I've spent 29 years working with Churchill's papers, initially cataloging them, and preparing them for microfilming and digitisation and exhibition, and then since 2001, as director of the Archive Centre, having this sort of management position with regard to projects relating to the Churchill papers and the 600 or so other collections that we hold here in the Archive Centre. So, yeah, I've just been incredibly lucky.

In fact, when Churchill has been portrayed in relation to D-Day, it's often tended to be quite negatively. You may recall that there was a film that came out in 2017 called simply Churchill, which has Brian Cox in the title role. And that film opens with the British Prime Minister walking along an English beach and recoiling, as in his mind's eye. waves turn red with blood. And he's remembering Gallipoli. He's remembering the First World War. He's determined that this should not happen again.

And if you believe the script, he then spends the next 48 hours doing everything he can to try and obstruct the D-Day landings and prevent them from happening. And then when no one will listen to him, he takes to his bed as a sort of gibbering wreck. And I think both Richard Dannatt and I felt that that probably wasn't the whole story. And what we wanted to do was to investigate, well, what was Churchill's role actually in the overall strategy, in the planning and the execution of D-Day?

And what we wanted to do was to ground that very much in the archival evidence so that you could see the information that Churchill was seeing. You could see perhaps why he was taking the decisions that he did. and you could get hopefully some wonderful insights into those characters and events. So it was an attempt to look at D-Day through the contents of Churchill's dispatch box and without the benefit of hindsight, stripping away those layers of hindsight and going back to the moment, seeing what Churchill saw, experiencing what he experienced, trying to understand those incredibly complex decisions that he, Roosevelt, Marshall and others had to take.

We feature in the book a wonderful handwritten letter from President Roosevelt, which is delivered to Churchill by Roosevelt's emissary, Harry Hopkins in April 1942, which Roosevelt encourages Churchill to embrace this idea of going into France and accompanying this letter is the initial American plan for what will become Operation Overlord, ultimately, in which General Marshall makes clear that the Americans see the quickest route to Berlin as running through France, running through Paris. The Americans want a large-scale operation in France, and they want it as soon as possible.

The problem for Churchill is that the British are in no position to contemplate a major operation in France in 1942, and it's quite clear that it's going to take at least a year to build up sufficient numbers of American troops in the UK to countenance a major operation. And in the short term, the British are already fighting in the Mediterranean, in North Africa. They're hopelessly overstretched in the Pacific, where Singapore and Hong Kong have just fallen, and so Churchill cannot contemplate supporting operations in France.

At that that stage, and he has to gradually steer Roosevelt towards his preferred strategy, which is to go into North Africa. And I think Roosevelt recognizes that there is no real alternative to that, because it is going to take time to build up the forces for the invasion of France. And in the meantime, it's simply politically unacceptable for the British and American allies to sit back and do nothing, while the Soviets, who were our allies, are bearing these huge losses on the Eastern Front.

So you have these sort of huge debates about strategy. I think the other thing that I found really interesting when sort of looking into D-Day, and an aspect which I think is often forgotten, is the huge civilian preparations that have to be put into place to make this operation possible. Basically, the whole of England is turned into this huge armed camp, accommodating 1.6 million U.S. service personnel and people from other countries as well. It's huge buildup of forces.

And it's not just getting the troops across the Atlantic. It's also making sure that you've got the right equipment in place to support them. So it involves building the barrack, making sure that you've got all of the weaponry, but just putting in place the specialist craft needed to underdard. take an operation on the scale of D-Day, assembling the landing craft, training the crews, developing the specialist tanks that you're going to need to be able to storm the beaches.

There are a whole number of preconditions that have to be met before you can land an army on the fortified Atlantic coast. And Churchill plays a role, I think, and an often neglected role in ensuring that those preconditions are being met. So he takes a a very keen interest in the political arrangements deciding when to lock down the UK. He's involved in assembling the overlord preparations committee, which is deciding when you're going to lock down, when you're going to break off negotiations with Ireland.

Because, of course, at this point, Ireland is neutral, and you have a German minister in Ireland. There's a risk of the D-Day operation leaking through there. He's involved in developing the huge deception and intelligence covers for the D-Day operation, and he's banging civilian and military heads together to ensure that the production targets are met for the artificial harbours and for the complex logistics that are going to make the operation possible. And he has all sorts of concerns.

In the weeks leading up to D-Day, one of Churchill's biggest concerns is actually that the Allied bombing in France may lead to a huge number of French civilian casualties, thereby inciting a sort of dull hatred against the Allies by the French, and which might mean that they then don't rise up in support of the overlord operation. And, you know, he's wrestling with this in the Defence Committee and in the Cabinet Committee and doing all he can to try and sure that those civilian casualties are limited.

So he's not just dealing with the military operation. He's dealing with the political implications of that within the UK and within Europe. And he's also having to think about the future and what is going to happen in France once the troops have gone in. So just the range of issues that he's having to deal with.

Or do they, do they feel like here's our friends here, we're going to help them do everything we can to accomplish this goal?

And Churchill plays a key role in that. I mean, one of the things that he and Roosevelt do almost immediately after Pearl Harbor is to establish the combined chiefs of staff, which brings together the British and American chiefs of staff in a single entity means that they're meeting on a regular basis to actually hammer out the wartime strategy at the highest level. But then, as you say, at the lower level, you've got suddenly this huge influx of American troops into the UK.

And that also takes time to integrate. Churchill is very keen on establishing facilities that will bring together British and American officers, clubs that will bring them together, planning staffs that will bring them together. So he's working to try and integrate them at each level. There are still tensions, really notable tensions. There are fights between British and American troops in UK ports like Southampton. And of course, it takes time to forge the sort of the trust between the various different combat units.

That is all forged in the Mediterranean ahead of D-Day. I would argue, and Richard and I do argue in the book, that actually the team that delivers victory on D-Day, Eisenhower, Montgomery, Ramsay, Patton, this team is forged in North Africa and in Italy prior to D-Day. And you can develop the tactics, you can develop the teamwork against much less well-defended shorelines. And that's what they do in North Africa and in Sicily before going into France.

And that means that the Navy is being relegated to a support role. It's blockading in Germany. It's supplying the British forces in France and Belgium. But it's not playing the sort of decisive role that Churchill would want to see for it. So he's looking around the ways in which to break this stalemate. And what he latches onto is a plan to force the Dardanelles Straits, which are the straits leading into the Sea of Namara and leading to Constantinople.

The plan is that if British can force those straits, and then the Navy can blockade Constantinople, hopefully not Turkey out of the war, opening up a second front to supply our Russian allies, but also a sort of second front against Germany and Austria ultimately. The sorts of great, grand, strategic concept that Churchill loved, but of course, it doesn't work. It fails for all sorts of reasons. The British Navy finds that it can't force the straits. They're too heavily defended by forts and minefields.

The Turks provide much stronger resistance than they'd anticipated. They're not able to divert the best ships out of British home waters. There are all sorts of failures of communication between the army and the Navy. It all ends up in a terrible mess and it ends up with the British trying to land a force on the Gallipoli Peninsula to seize the peninsula and with that being repulsed by the Turks with huge losses. And this, Churchill is the leading advocate for this operation in the British cabinet.

And as a result, when it fails, he has to take the blame for it, who's the prime minister, restructures his cabinet, and Churchill is dropped as first Lord of the Admiralty. And this is a huge blow to him. Up to this point, he's had this sort of meteoric rise. This is the first real political setback and it looks as though it had the potential to finish his career. His wife Clementine thought he would die of grief.

Now, the lesson that Churchill takes from Gallipoli is that if you're going to attempt an operation of that scale and complexity, an amphibious operation that is going to involve inter-service and international cooperation, then you have to prepare for that extremely carefully. And you have to have a clear line of command, a clear chain of command. And I think it undoubtedly influences his approach to D-Day in the Second World War. I think it makes him wary about undertaking the operation until the Allies can be certain of its success and therefore to put the emphasis on wearing the enemy down in other theatres and in building up the allied position.

I think it also influences his whole approach to his war premiership. When Churchill becomes wartime prime minister in 1940, he makes himself very deliberately not just Prime Minister, but also Minister of defence, which means that the heads of the army, the Navy, the Air Force are reporting into him directly. And that's because the lesson that he takes from Gallipoli and takes from the First World War is that if you're going to fight war on this scale, you need to have a coordinated central command.

He wants to make sure that he's putting himself at the heart of that and that he's bringing together the political and military bodies under one unitary authority.

So they're actually developing the military plans. What Churchill is doing is ensuring that there is the correct political framework and strategic framework around that to ensure that the operation is going to succeed. In terms of sort of missteps, I think there are certainly all sorts of worries ahead of D-Day and problems that have to be solved and fought through before you can launch the operation in June 1944 and which contribute to it being put back to June 144.

One of those is simply that the problem of how you actually land your troops and forces on the beach and beaches and then reinforce them. I suppose the biggest misstep in a way is the allied attempt to seize the town of Diet on the French coast in September 1942. This was designed as a reconnaissance in force. The idea was to test the German defences in France, see if they could seize a German strong point to German port and hold it for a short period.

period of time. And this is undertaken by largely sort of Canadian troops working with the British Navy and the ARA, and it's a disaster. It's sort of everything that Churchill would have feared, thinking back to Gallipoli. There's failure of communication between the different services. They're not able to get the tanks up the steep beaches. There's been a sort of failure of intelligence and the Germans know that they're coming and are ready for them. And it results in the Canadians being decimated on the beach.

And that is a sort of huge wake-up call, I think, really, you would say now, to the allied leadership about how difficult it is going to be to land on the heavily defended French shoreline and also points out to them that actually you're not going to be able to seize the ports. Those are going to be the most heavily defended positions. And if you can't seize the port, the problem you've got then is even if you get your armies ashore.

onto the beaches, how are you going to reinforce them and sustain them? If the idea of this operation is actually to liberate France and to push on into Germany, then you're talking about landing huge numbers of troops and supplying them with huge amounts of equipment on a daily basis. How are you going to do that if you haven't got a port to get the material into, at least initially? And so that's a huge problem that they have to think through.

And the answer, of course, is these artificial ports, so that are constructed immediately after the allies have gone in. Also, a pipeline under the ocean, under the channel to supply the allies with fuel. So, you know, all of that takes a lot of thinking through. And Churchill, I think, is a key patron to a lot of that, that thinking. He encourages Admiral Mountbatten and his team in special operations to go away and to think about this.

problem. And then he does what Churchill does best, which is to keep prodding Mountbatten and others until they've got an answer in place. But it's the logistics. The logistics of the D-Day operation are huge.

So he was was very aware, I think, the declining influence. of Britain when compared to these two new giant allies. I mean, it's very interesting. We cover this in great detail in the book. Churchill famously said that the only thing worse than having allies was not having allies. And the problem that he has from 1912 to onwards is that you have these two huge new allies, which make ultimate victory possible. but you find yourself caught between them, because they have very different visions for the Second World War and then for the post-war world world.

You know, Roosevelt is very interested in establishing the United Nations organization and establishing a new framework for the peace. Stalin is all about real politic and dominating Eastern Europe. What Churchill wants is a return to the world of 1939 and to come out of of the war, having recovered as much of the British Empire as, so you can see that these things are all pulling in different directions, and it becomes increasingly difficult for him to navigate this as you go into 1944, 45, and you see tensions emerging, particularly between Churchill and Roosevelt over how the post-war world is going to look.

And I think for that reason, he starts to put more and more emphasis on the importance of the relationship with the United States going forward. Churchill always believed that Britain, derived her power and her influence on the world stage from sitting at the focal point of free overlapping circles. And those circles were the empire, what became the Commonwealth, Europe and the wider English-speaking world, by which he increasingly came to mean the United States, because that becomes the dominant country in that wider English-speaking world.

And Britain needed to maintain a relationship with all three. The problem he has is that by the time you get to 1945, Europe is in ruins, with Eastern Europe now dominated by the Soviet Union. The empire and the empire is disappearing, and many of the dominions are now largely independent of the United Kingdom, and the United States, therefore, is now the dominant circle. And I think, you know, he feels that in the post-war world, you know, the United States now has this huge presence, this sort of huge responsibility.

and that that alliance is the most important one. It's very interesting that when he leaves office for the final time in 1955, his final word of advice to his cabinet is never abandoned the Americans, advice which Eden immediately ignored by I going into Suez without telling Eisenhower.

He becomes increasingly concerned that there aren't enough frontline troops and that actually there are too many vehicles, too many support services associated with the initial landings. And he tries repeatedly to take this up with Brooke and Montgomery. And I think that's all a reflection. of Churchill's worry, because he knows how much is riding on this operation, and also of his frustration that he isn't directly involved in the military preparations in a way that, you know, he had been involved in military operations in 1940.

So I think it comes out of his frustration. So, yes, he is driving his military commanders mad. But the other side of that is, I think there are examples where actually his interference is valid and useful. and that's where he's able to use the convening power of his office and the patronage of Number 10 Downing Street to actually bring together key experts to solve some of the big problems associated with D-Day. So in the first few months of 1944, he assembles an overlord preparations committee, which is meeting on a regular basis.

And what he's doing this doing there is he's bringing together the various civilian and military people who are associated with the key logistical problems. And he's banging their heads together and getting them to hammer out the problem. And because the prime minister is saying to them, what is, you know, what is the answer to this challenge? Is this piece of equipment going to be ready? That forces them to move and to provide the answers. He's also, you know, he takes a key interest in the key equipment that is needed for D-Day and in making sure that that is going to be made available for the military.

So I think the answer to your question is both. He could drive his commander's mad, but equally, I think there were times when you needed the Prime Minister to actually bring people together. When people think of Winston Churchill, they tend to think of Churchill, the fiery orator. And again, thinking back to the summer of 1940. But of course, by the Second World War, He is a very experienced political operator. He understands how the levers of power and government work.

And you see him using that quite effectively in making sure that the military are going to get what they need for D-Day, while also striking the right balance to make sure that the civilian population isn't sort of overwhelmed. It's a difficult balance to maintain.

There's, you know, he's no longer able to influence the military strategy. He's waiting for it for it to happen. And he needs the release of action. So what Churchill decides is that he wants to go and accompany the troops on D-Day. itself. And he asks Admiral Ramsay, who's in charge of the naval operation, to draw up a plan. And because Ramsay is ordered to do it by the prime minister, he has to do it. And he produces this plan.

And this plan would have seen Churchill embark on HMS Belfast, the British cruiser, on, I think, D-minus 1, then transfer to a destroyer for a tour of the beaches on D-Day itself, where it's safe to do so. Now, Ramsay draws up this plan. He does this because the Prime Minister orders him to do it. But, of course, the last thing that he or any of the military commanders want is the added burden of having to look after the Prime Minister on D-Day.

So Ramsay does the only thing he can do, which is to inform Eisenhower as the Supreme Commander. And Eisenhower then tries to talk Churchill out of this idea. But Churchill's not budging. He tells Eisenhower that actually Eisenhower has no control over the complement. of one of her majesty's ships. And if Churchill wants to put himself on one of those ships, he's perfectly a liberty to do so. And Eisen has forced to concede the point. Now, constitutionally, the only person who can order Churchill not to do this is the king.

And I think it's no coincidence then that Churchill uses a royal audience to raise the question with George the Six about what the king wants to do on D-Day. And the king then says, well, you know, I would love nothing more than to a company. the troops myself. Of course, the king was a former naval man that served in the Navy in the First World War. And Churchill says, well, sire, you know, this is exactly what I was thinking of doing and effectively says, wouldn't it be great if like in days of old, the king and his prime minister, his first minister, could lead their forces into battle.

And I think they both get swept away with this idea. But of course, everyone around them is horrified at this prospect. And it falls on the king's private secretary, Alan Lascelles, Tommy Lascelles, for those of you who've watched the crown, to actually tell Churchill, to tell the king, well, Your Majesty, I'm not going to tell young Princess Elizabeth that there's a real chance that she may have to become queen if your ship goes to the bottom of the channel.

And actually, there is no way that you can do this. Not only that, you have to tell Mr. Churchill that he can't do it either. And the king then sends handwritten letter to Churchill on the 31st of May, 1944, basically telling Churchill that he doesn't think either one of them should go. Churchill simply ignores this letter and goes off to the south coast of England to inspect the troops, still in the hope that he will be able to go further.

And it takes a second letter from the king, delivered to Churchill's train by dispatch rider on the 2nd of June, 1944, before the Prime Minister grudgingly concedes to his majesty's wishes and indeed commands. But I mean, Churchill later wrote that he felt that he ought to be allowed to go, to have gone, and that if you're sending so many men to their death, then actually you need to share in some way their responsibility. You need to share in some way that responsibility.

And I think it gives you that, as I say, that real insight into Churchill's character. But of course, the whole idea was complete madness. And Churchill's place was not to be on on a cruiser or destroyer on D-Day, it would have made him completely unavailable at a critical moment. He needed to be where he finally ended up, which was in London, where he could follow the events and where he could shape the political reaction to those events.

And I think there are two reasons for that, really. The first is that he wants British troops, or British-led troops, Of course, there are American troops fighting under Alexander as well. But he wants British-led troops to continue winning what he would have called battle laurels and to be playing and to be seen to be playing that sort of prominent role. But the other point is that he is thinking increasingly about the post-war world. And he is worried about the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

He's worried about control of the Eastern Mediterranean. Pope 1945. So he wants to maintain a strong British presence in that theatre. And I think he becomes increasingly frustrated by the decision to prioritise the Second Front in France and the push into Germany. But in that, ultimately, he's overruled by Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

The thing about Churchill, I think, is just his overall dynamism and energy. This is someone who, when they're not engaged in politics, is writing. I mean, he writes incredibly some 40 books in his lifetime, published in some 70 volumes, ultimately winning the Nobel Prize. the literature. His whole career is underpinned by, by newspaper articles and writing. And then when he's not writing, he's painting, and there are sort of over 500 canvases. And when he's not painting, he's playing polo at a high level as a young man, or he's learning to fly, or he's breeding racehorses as an old man.

It's, it's the sort of variety that there is. And also the fact that, you know, you just mentioned never give in. He never allows any of these major setbacks, whether it's Gallipoli or losing the 1945 election or the huge stroke that he suffers in 1953 to end his career. He keeps coming back from that. And he does it, I think, through this wonderful juxtaposition of action and words. So not only is he shaping the political landscape through his actions, but he's also doing it by then writing about it.

His writings earn him the money to sustain his political career, but they do far more than that. They also raise his profile and allow him to advance his arguments. So that the juxtaposition of Churchill, the man of action and Churchill, the man of words, I think is one of the things that makes him so interesting and makes the archive so strong. And of course, you know, the collection is full of wonderful sort of Churchill letters and wonderful anecdotes.

Give you an example of one of my favorite documents in the archive. And that's actually a doctor's prescription from early 1932. So Churchill is in New York, and he's about to embark on a lecture tour. He's decided he wants to go and see his friend Bernard Baruch, who lives on Fifth Avenue, takes a car out there. He's going up and down Fifth Avenue looking for Baruch's apartment. They all look the same. He's getting crosser and crosser.

Eventually, he stops the car at what he thinks is the right place, gets out, makes the classic British mistake of looking the wrong way, and is hit by a car coming in the other direction. Because of course Fifth Avenue was two-way at that point. He's hospitalized, badly injured, his lecture tour is going to have to be delayed. What does Churchill do? He does two things. The first is that he writes a couple of newspaper articles on what it's like to be hit by a motor car, syndicating them all the way around the world.

And the other thing he does, which I love, is that he summons to his bedside, an American doctor, Dr. Otto Pickhardt. And I think you can almost hear Churchill dictating this prescription, because the prescription basically says that the recovery of the Honourable Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits. The quantity is naturally indefinite, but the minimum quantity would be something like 250 santa liters at real times. And Churchill has written in the top corner of this prescription, keep at hand.

And the reason, of course, he needs to keep at hand is that this is prohibition. And so here is Churchill using this terrible accident, but actually turning it to his advantage through his pen and also using it to circumvent prohibition. And I think that is sort of characteristic at the man. So for me, the interest lies in, to some extent, in its in the sort of the whole career and in the totality of material, in the sort of breadth of his interests.

Of course, he wasn't always right. And of course, many of his decisions can be criticized. But, you know, this is a fantastic archive for the study of the 20th century and provides a real insight into someone who played that sort of critical role between 1940 and 45, as we've been talking about.

in what do you think of what's going on in the Middle East? And of course, it's impossible for Churchill to answer those contemporary questions. I think what you can do is you can go back to sort of Churchill's principles and what he stood for. But I think if you're where you can use AI or may be able to use AI very effectively will be for much more faster and much more nuanced, detailed analysis of his writing, and of the archive.

So, for example, if you applied AI to the whole of the Churchill archive, what you might be able to do would be to then look and see, well, how did certain relationships develop? When did he first come up with this particular phrase? And how does it just state and change over time? And I think there's a huge role for AI in that sort of complex analysis. But I'm quite sort of worried about the idea of a a Churchill hologram which people can ask anything of because, you know, it's not just about feeding the right information into such a facility.

It's also about asking the right questions.

The fact that he's not reading his papers, he's not listening to his cabinet ministers, he's bringing in other people from outside the cabinet, other prominent conservatives and paying more attention to there. For six pages, this letter goes on. And we have the draft in some of Attlee's papers that we have here, and we have the final copy in Churchill's papers that he receives. How does Churchill respond to this? What Attlee gets back is a wonderful two-line letter, which simply says, my dear Lord President, I shall always endeavor to profit by your counsels, yours sincerely, Winston S.

Churchill, which is a wonderful repost, but it's not the whole story, and we know that from other archives here, because we know from Jock Colville's papers, that when Churchill received this letter from Attlee, he was furious, and he sat down and he wanted to write a point-by-point rebuttal, and we actually have the draft in his papers, and that he was going to send back to Attlee. But while he's writing this, according to. to Colville, he has a telephone conversation with Lord Beaverbrook, and Beaverbrook says, well, actually, I think there's something in what Mr.

Attlee's saying. Churchill slams down the phone, and at that point, Clementine Churchill enters the room, and Churchill regales her with the tale of Attlee's letter, and she says something like, well, dear, I'm sure he's only doing what he thinks best for himself and his cabinet colleagues, at which point Churchill puts down his pen, turns to Colville and says, well, let us think. No more of either Attlee or Hitler, let us go and see the movies, and they go off and watch a film.

And I think it's a wonderful story, but it also, you know, you can see it from the various different perspectives in the archive here.

And he looks then at, you know, what Churchill chose to emphasize, what Churchill chose to ignore and leave out, and what he couldn't say. And so it's a multi-layered book. It's about Churchill fighting the Second World War, but then reinterpreting the Second World War for the Cold War, because, of course, you know, one of the, one of the things that comes out of that book is there are certain things he doesn't want to say because he doesn't want to criticize Eisenhower, because he knows Eisenhower is about to become president, and he's back in Downing Street as, as Prime Minister.

So it's a book that works on all sorts of different levels. There's also a wonderful book by a man called David Lough called No More Champagne, which is all about Churchill. 's finances and how about how the changes in his finances over time influence his political decision. And that's an absolutely fascinating book as well. If you're looking for a short one-volume history of Churchill, my predecessor as keeper of the archives, man called Dr. Piers Brendon, he wrote a wonderful book, Churchill A Brief Life, which is a sort of short, well-written volume, and very entertainingly written.

And I also like, if I can have one more, Martin Gilbert's In Search of Churchill. Martin Gilbert was the Churchill biographer. The official biography is eight volumes with 23 companion volumes. But his short book, In Search of Churchill, describes Martin Gilbert's own research journey in tracking down the individuals and sources for the official biography. For an archivist like me, that's a great book.

He's out of office and he's starting to warn about the rise of Nazi Germany. And it's a really interesting film that, again, juxtaposes the personal story of his sort of life at Chartwell and his relationship with Clementine and the family with what's going on in the political world.