UNITED KINGDOM

MARTIN GILBERT, author, June 27, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: How did you become the official biographer of Winston Churchill? Were there any limitations places upon you in what you could write about him?
GILBERT: I had worked for five years as one of Churchill’s son Randolph’s research assistants on the project. When Randolph died (in 1969) I was asked to take over.
I was incredible fortunate that no restrictions were placed on what I could see and use (from the most sensitive political to the most intimate personal records).
At no time did a single member of the Churchill family ask to see what I was writing, or to read a word of it before publication.
This meant that I could delve as deeply as I wished, and tell the truth even when it was painful or embarrassing—and, most important of all, I could tell the story as it was, not as someone else might have wanted it to be.
I wrote six large volumes of narrative, and edited eleven even larger volumes of documents. But you can find all the inner story in my one volume “Churchill: A Life”.

TINA BROWN, author, June 13, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Your book (“The Diana Chronicles”) confirms one of the things I have heard about Diana (Princess of Wales), and that was she was a bit of a trouble maker as a youngster. Was there a particular tale you found most amusing?
BROWN: Yes, Diana made real trouble for her nannies—her way of getting her own back after her mother left home. She took it out on the help. She used to put pins of the seats of the nannies so that they pierced them when they sat down. She threw another one’s clothes out of the window and locked her in a bedroom. When her stepmother told her she couldn’t use the stereo system, she tore all the wires out from under the floorboards. She was always not a woman you wanted to cross!