Great to have you in the interviewee’s chair for once, Phil. So 1945: The Reckoning has, a few months ago, celebrated its 1st birthday. It was the culmination of a kind of trilogy on Britain and the Second World War. What drew you to the final year of the war, and why did it require a book of its own after Finest Hour and End of the Beginning?

There’s so much happening in the final months of the war – and in the month immediately following it – and some of it doesn’t sit very easily with the way we like to think of Britain’s heroic role in WW2.  So I thought that the time had come to complete my trilogy with something that did indeed focus on heroism – and I have described the whole series of books as an extended love letter to the generation that won the war –  but also explored some of the more complicated and difficult stories, and try to find a way to reconcile it all and really capture what the war meant and what Britain’s place in it meant too.

In between the second and third book many years had passed while I busied myself with my TV career. One of the things that happened was the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020, and the somewhat anguished and overheated conversation that resulted about the past, especially Britain’s past. Which statues you should stay up, which should come down. And how, especially, we should remember the empire.

And empire is central to my book of 1945, and I think the idea of empire, and the fate of empire, is essential to any understanding of Britons role in the war and place in the world.

Many of us would see 1945 as this triumphant procession, for the Allies at least, yet your book focuses on uncertainty, rival visions for the post-war future, and, ironically, the beginning of new conflicts. How did your impressions of the war’s conclusion change during the research process?

What are the things that I’m proud of is that the book received generous praise from academics are opposite sides of the great debate about empire. Nigel Biggar, a conservative historian who likes to defend the imperial legacy, said warm words and so too did Alan Lester, an academic who generally takes a very different view of empire – and how it should be remembered – to that of Nigel. I don’t think Alan will mind me saying that some of the things I found out about the machinations of colonial policy conducted from London in 1945 where a surprise to him. They were certainly a surprise to me.

The full details of what took place in Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, and arguably Malaya too do not sit comfortably with the professed war aims of the British government, as famously expressed in the Atlantic Charter. That published commitment to a future world free of coercion and committed to self-government was often compromised by actions motivated by a more traditional fashioned idea of colonial glory and economic advantage.

One thematic dissonance that is observable is the marked tension between Britain’s stated wartime ideals – self-determination, freedom and the Atlantic Charter – and the realities and direction of imperial policy, particularly in Asia, by the time the war ends. Why did you feel it was important to dig into those contradictions?

I wanted the book to balance real achievements that modern Britons should rightly feel pride in with those other darker stories. That’s because I do like my history to be ‘warts and all’. And I think it’s hard to have the one without the other. Without the enormous power and depth of material and manpower that the empire provided, it’s hard to imagine Britain achieving any of the many great things that it did, notably in the heroic year of 1940. Put bluntly a rather ruthless attitude to the exercise of power, for which Britain was rather famous, was a necessary part of the effort that delivered victory over Japanese militarism and German fascism. Trying to get my head around both sides of that equation is partly why I wanted to write this book.

You recount much of the narrative through individuals, rather than nations or governments, particularly the respective trajectories Subhas Chandra Bose and Kodandera “Timmy” Thimayya. What made this pair such neat guides for understanding the dilemmas, both moral and political, facing India during the war and afterwards?

Timmy and Bose make an almost perfect matching pair. Both came from well off, well-educated Indian families and were destined for high office, whether in the bureaucracy or the military of the British Raj.  Both were also committed nationalists, believing that India’s future lay as an independent nation and that it should happen quickly.

Bose’s position as a leading nationalist politician, famous the world over, is particularly fascinating. He could quite easily have been the leader of a newly independent India, and was predicted to be so by many people all around the world. But, in my opinion, he was tempted by the glamour of the age of dictators, seeing himself as a transformational figure at the head of a paramilitary society somewhat along the lines of Stalin or Hitler.

Timmy was very torn by all of this which makes him a very interesting person to write about. His own brother decided to follow Bose, meaning that the two men could easily have ended up fighting each other in Burma.

Timmy was a friend of leading nationalist politicians and the Nehru family, and several times in his career came close to leaving the army over the question of independence. But deep down he loved the institution and he saw in it something essential for the future of India. He believed that a strong military under an increasingly Indian officer corps, something he could help build, would be an essential part of the skeleton of a new nation, and in that I think he was right.

Your portrayal of Bose, a figure who today still raises as many eyebrows as questions, is particularly nuanced. He is celebrated by many as a hero of Indian independence, yet you also explore his alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Will you always find it difficult to offset that fervent commitment to independence with criticism of the choices he made and company he kept?

Bose is more popular now than he’s ever been. Perhaps that’s because as we move away from the times in which he lived, it’s easier to take a simplistic view. He stands as somebody passionately committed to independence who would and refuse any compromise, in an age of TikTok history that makes him easy to admire to a younger generation who don’t have to live in the times that he lived him, or deal with the consequences.

In the 1940s Bose considered it necessary to form an alliance with Hitler and his leading ministers, including architects of the Holocaust. He also chose not to speak out against the terrible crimes and abuses that he knew were taking place in Nazi occupied Europe because ‘it is none of our concern’. Then later he allowed himself to be an effective servant of the Japanese military even speaking in Nanking, the site of a notorious massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops, on the benefits of pan-Asian values.

Bose was a better propagandist than he was a General, and in the long game that propaganda paid off. That’s why today on Indian social media someone like Timmy is frequently called a mercenary or a collaborator, which I think is a very great shame, whereas Bose is held up as the true driving force of Indian independence. This is one of the many ways in which history can be quite annoying!

One of the most striking sections of the book examines Britain’s role in post-war Indonesia and Indochina – episodes that have remained almost unknown here. Why do you think these stories have more or less disappeared from collective memory?

Because such naked displays of colonial ruthlessness do not sit well with how we like to remember Britain’s role in the Second World War.  But I consider it important to include them because they’re all part of the bigger picture. I also think it helps people understand that modern Indonesians or Vietnamese might not automatically regard Britain as a wholly benign force!

The debate over imperialism, colonialism and their collapse in the remainder of 20th century still rears its head as one of the most contentious areas of historical debate today. 1945: The Reckoning seems determined to avoid nostalgia and condemnation. Was keeping a cool head a clear objective from the outset?

I just wanted to strike the right balance for me. I do feel that Britain played an enormously positive role at a turning point in human history. But that’s not all it did, and some of what it did reflected deeper historical traditions that we shouldn’t forget because they affect how the outside world still thinks of us.

And what’s next? Any titles we’re likely to see in the near future? Or are we keeping you too busy with podcasts…?

I’m now writing a new WW2 book which I hope will emerge in about a year’s time and this time I’ll be painting on a much smaller canvas.

I’m looking at a single event over the course of about 10 days, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, and blending an action backed account of war at sea with the relationships of some of the key people involved, including a rather consequential love affair!