This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

Andrew Roberts has one of the best known biographers and historians writing in the English-speaking world today.

He's the Roger and Martha Mertz visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

He has served in so many other capacities on both sides of the Atlantic.

His more recent books include a magisterial biography of Napoleon,

Masters and Commanders How Four Titans Won the War in the West,

but today we're going to talk about his most recent work,

his massive biography of Winston Churchill, Churchill Walking with Destiny.

Andrew Roberts, welcome to thinking in public.

Mr. Roberts, when you're talking about Winston Churchill, you're talking about an individual

of whom, I think by your own count, there are now at least 110 biographies.

What kind of determination does it take to write the one thousand and tenth. That's a very good question.

I don't know whether determination is probably the best word or hubris perhaps might be another

objective for what I've done.

It took four years, but in a sense,

I've been writing about Winston Churchill for 30 years

since my first book was about something to do with him and five of my

books have had him in the title or the subtitle. So I did feel that it was the right time

really for me to tackle this completely enormous subject and I did

...