Tim Bouverie in conversation with The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize

How does it feel to be shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize?

I am delighted and deeply honoured.  The pedigree of the Duff Cooper Prize is second-to-none; the list of short listers and winners inspiring.

What drew you to the subject of Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler?

Allies at War seemed the natural successor to my first book, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War.  This was a book about politicians and their failure to avert catastrophe.  But politics did not stop with the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939.  Politics carried on and politics was critical, both to the development of the war itself and the world that emerged in its aftermath.

Above all, I wanted to explore the antagonism at the heart of the alliance.  The ‘Grand Alliance’, as Churchill called it, was sophisticated, diverse, mighty and conquering.  Yet it was also fractious, suspicious, duplicitous and rivalrous.  The Allies were united in their desire to defeat Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan but were at odds over grand strategy, imperialism, finance, the allocation of resources and the future peace.  It was an improbable and incongruous alliance and it is this reality that I wanted to explore, by digging below the level of the ‘Big Three’; by examining the diaries, private correspondence and unpublished memoirs of diplomats, civil servants, military attaches, envoys and translators.

How did you plan, research and write Allies at War?

I wrote an immense cast list.  Every time I came across the name of a diplomat, civil servant, aide of attaché, I noted it down and then went about trying to find this individual’s papers.  Over the course of three years, I ended up trawling through more than a hundred archives in Britain and North America.

What were the surprises you encountered along the way?

Naturally, not every ambassadors’ diary contains revelations that are going to fundamentally challenge our understanding of so written-about a subject as the Second World War.  But the material I found does, I think, add nuance to an otherwise familiar story.

To give but one example, I was working through the Roosevelt Papers at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, at Hyde Park in upstate New York – millions of pieces of paper in tens of thousands of boxes – when I came across a one-line telegram from the British Ambassador, Lord Lothian, to FDR.  The telegram was dated 4 July 1940, the day after the Royal Navy had shelled a significant portion of the French Fleet at Mers el-Kébir, off the North African coast.  The primary reason for this ‘repugnant’ action, as many British officers saw it, was to ensure that this powerful weapon should not fall into the hands of the Germans.  Yet a secondary motive was to show the world in general and the United States in particular that Britain was not going to go the way of France; that the British were prepared to do anything, however dastardly, to survive and were, thus, worthy of external aid.  There had, however, never been the slightest suggestion that the British Government warned the White House, let alone sought Presidential permission, before opening fire.  The telegram from Lothian to Roosevelt showed that they had done just this.  ‘Mr President’, the communication began, ‘You will see that Winston Churchill has taken the action with regard to the French Fleet which we discussed and you approved.’  Fascinating in and of itself, this document exemplifies the wider reality that there was almost nothing that Churchill did during the first year-and-a-half of his premiership without an eye to US public, congressional and presidential opinion.

Tell us how Allies at War can be seen as a continuation or a departure from your earlier books?

Allies at War struck me as the natural sequel to Appeasing Hitler and was researched and written in the same manner.

What advice would you give a writer of non-fiction starting out today, given the current publishing climate?

People have been prophesying the death of the book for over one hundred years.  Yes, it is a hard business.  Fewer people are reading and even fewer are reading serious non-fiction but this is not necessarily a reason to despair since fashions can and do change.  My advice, therefore, is that if you have a good idea and if others agree with you that it is indeed a good idea, start researching and writing.

What’s next for you as an author?

Allies at War is the middle volume in a planned trilogy on the ‘hinge decades’ of the twentieth century.  In Appeasing Hitler, I examined the 1930s and the causes of the Second World War.  Allies at War deals with anti-Axis politics and diplomacy.  The next and final volume will consider the transition from World War to Cold War; the breakup of the Grand Alliance and bi-polarisation of the world.