My guest is John Kampner.

John Kampner is an award-winning author, broadcaster, foreign affairs

commentator and conference speaker. He began his career reporting from East Berlin during the fall

of the wall and Moscow during the collapse of communism for the Daily Telegraph. After covering

British politics for the FT and BBC, he edited

the New Statesman. He's a regular TV and radio pundit, documentary maker, an author of eight

books, including the bestselling Blair's Wars. Why the Germans Do It Better, published in 2020,

were the top 10 bestseller and Book of the Year in The Guardian, Economist and

New Statesman and sold over 150,000 copies in all editions.

His new book is called Brave a New World, the country's daring to do things others won't.

Welcome to the podcast, John.

Hi there, Paul.

Great to be here.

Great.

It was great to see you after all this time.

In your book, you describe yourself as a professional pessimist, or you weren't before you started writing the book.

So it sounds a bit counterintuitive that you would write a book of this kind.

What was this kind of road to Damascus or whatever conversion that made you write this kind of book in the first place?

I think it was rather a piece of self-help, actually.

It was just that sense of, while it may be professionally smug,

to keep on getting it right when you expect the worst of countries and governments and

elections, it doesn't actually get you or the world anywhere.

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