Andrew Roberts

‘How can one person lead one hundred?’ That was one of the questions in my Cambridge entrance exams back in 1981, and although I can’t now recall whether I tried to answer it in the three hours we were given, it has fascinated me ever since. So when I was given the splendid opportunity of delivering nine Lehrman Institute lectures on military history at the New-York Historical Society three years ago, I used them to try to answer it, at least in terms of war leadership. What became apparent was what a total waste of time and effort most of the modern ‘leadership skills’ industry is whenever it tries to apply the lessons of war leadership to anything else, and especially business.

John McDonnell might think Churchill a villain, but he’s beloved in America. I’ve just returned from a ten-week, 18-state, 27-city, 87-speech book tour there, and can report that the enthusiasm for all things Churchillian in the USA is stronger now than at any time since his death. Merely bringing out a new biography of him secured me interviews on all the major TV morning news shows, invitations to speak at three presidential libraries, and a place on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks. There are active Churchill appreciation societies in 14 states and more being set up.

This week, an astronaut called Scott Kelly was quoting Churchill and his great line, 'in victory, magnanimity'. He got massively trolled by the anti-Churchill cyber warriors who denounced him for all sorts of things. One of the things for which he was attacked, of course, was the Bengal famine, which they say he caused. In October 1942, Bengal was hit by a massive, terrible cyclone which destroyed the rice crop, which the Bengalis living in that area entirely depended upon. The road and rail links that had hitherto brought food in were also destroyed. In the past, rice from Thailand and Malaya and Burma was brought in to deal with these horrific famines.

‘Revealed,’ blares the Sunday Telegraph. ‘Churchill's secret affair and the painting that could have damaged his reputation.’ ‘Winston Churchill’s secret love Doris Castlerosse a blackmail risk,’ agrees The Sunday Times. At least the Daily Mail inserted a note of doubt in its headline - ‘Churchill may have cheated with society's wildest woman’ - and included a question mark in its opening line: ‘Did Churchill cheat on Clemmie with Cara Delevingne's great-aunt, who was 1930s society's wildest and most ecstatically beautiful woman?

Did Winston Churchill, like Donald Trump, also like to ‘grab them by the pussy?’ Last week at the Jaipur Literary Festival, I was on a panel discussion entitled ‘Churchill: Hero or Villain?’, where the Indian biographer Shrabani Basu told a large crowd that at a suffragettes’ demonstration outside Parliament in November 1910, Churchill, then home secretary, had ‘given instructions for police that they can batter the women and assault the women and sexually assault them as well’. He allegedly told policemen to ‘put their hands up their thighs, they can grope them and press their breasts’. ‘Can I just point out that that is completely untrue?’ I intervened.

From Andrew Roberts Q. My wife and I are addicted to the brilliant TV series Gogglebox, which makes us feel proud to be British. We know two of the people who appear on it socially and might be meeting them in the new year. How can we show our appreciation of their superb, hilarious and insightful contributions without seeming sycophantic or embarrassingly adulatory? A. No need to worry as one of the couple is so reclusive you are unlikely to encounter him outside the television screen. The other would be able to offset any sycophancy with her memory of the verbal abuse she once received when tactlessly bursting into your bedroom at a house party to give you an unwelcome wake-up call. For more letters to Dear Mary, including ones from Ed Balls, Nigel Farage and Bill Bryson, click here.

The advice of Andrew Roberts, head of European Economics at RBS, has today gone around the world: its time to sell, ahead of a stock market crash. The RBS European rates research team said that things all "looks similar to 2008.” It seems to cap a bearish round of forecasts: Standard & Poor’s, the credit ratings agency, has more companies on a negative outlook than at any time since the last crash. Are we due another one? The fill document of the RBS note is here (pdf). And the edited highlights below:- I think my ‘severe downside for the world’ call is looking ok so far. The fact that we are going well is very dangerous for every investor in the world. Why?