Okay, we're live. Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates on today's show of a very special guest. He comes to us from the UK. His name is Lawrence James, and he's just put out a new edition of a book he originally published in 2006. The title of this book is the middle class, published April 7th, 2021. Really a fascinating book goes in very great detail about kind of the rise of the middle class in Britain.

But this is not his only book. He's written eight or nine other books. He has another book coming out next year.

But his first book was The Golden Warrior, The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, published 1993, also the rise and fall

of the British Empire, 1997, Raj, the making and unmaking of British India, 1998, the illustrated

rise and fall of the British Empire 2000, also aristocrats, power, grace, and decadence, Britain's

great ruling classes from 1066 to the present, published 2010.

Also, the Iron Duke and Military Biography of Wellington, published 2020, and also in 2020, Imperial Warrior,

the life in times of Field Marshal, Viscount, Allenby, 1861 to 1936.

He also has a new book coming out next year.

Title of it is The Lion and the Dragon. It's about the relationship between Britain and China.

So I'm looking forward to that. But again, we're going to talk about this book titled,

The Middle Class. So Mr. James, are you there?

Yes. Awesome. Well, thanks for agreeing to the interview.

For people who may not have

heard of you here in the States or not familiar with your books, can you talk about your

background and what led you to write this book, the middle class? Well, and background is probably,

first of all, I was born a member of the middle class. I was educated at York and Oxford universities.

I originally did research on medieval English history and after that I moved to the modern

age, writing particularly about the British Empire and what might be called the forces which made Britain into the country it is now.

The middle class is one of them, the empire, our rule over India and Winston Churchill,

who I've written about as an imperialist.

So these are the sort of things that make written the country at is at the moment.

...