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Welcome to We Have Ways to make you talk with me, El Murray, but no James Holland. Yes, we have a very special guest today and I've been wanted to talk to for ages since I first came across his book and to talk about an aspect of the war as well that we tend not to touch on on the podcast that much, which is British politics with a view to what the Conservative Party's up to,

because, after all, the received version of events is there's a national government and Labour win in 1945, so let's not worry. Let's just not worry about what happened within that

national government and certainly within the Conservative part of the national government

in the five years preceding the general election in 1945, the khaki election, of course,

which leads to the post-war consensus and the Attlee government and the NHS, the welfare state,

and all those sort of touchstones of the way people look at the war through the prism of

post-war politics. And last year, I was recommended an absolutely amazing eye-opening and sort of game-changing book to read by the historian Kit Kovall called Blue Jerusalem, which is about exactly what I've just sort of outlined.

And I'm so delighted to be joined by Kit all the way from Brisbane. Kit, welcome to Whereof Ways and Make You Talk.

Oh yeah, good evening. Lovely to be here.

Well, yeah, it's evening for you, morning for me.

You're in Brisbane and where's your office?

You said you're just up the road from...

Yeah, so I'm actually just up the road from MacArthur's office.

He was based in the fanciest brand spanking new office building in Queensland, one considerably

nicer than the government one that I work in to this day.

Right, okay.

Well, I suppose, you know, that befits the man, doesn't it?

Well, now, you took on perhaps the, I mean, undiscovered area in a way of Conservative Party politics

...