[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercada center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at arcades.in videos transcripts and upcoming dates visit conversations withth tyler.com hello everyone and welcome back to
conversations with Tyler today I'm here with Ruth skur historian at Cambridge Ruth's latest book has received rave reviews and it's called Napoleon a life told in gardens and shadows she is also biographer of robes Pierre has written a wonderful book on 17th century British figure John Aubrey and is a frequent writer for times
literary supplement and just about everywhere else Ruth welcome thank you so much Tyler who was the hero or heroin of the French reevolu reolution I'm going to say it was dant because he was a revolutionary who saw the error of his ways after he had directly participated in setting up the Revolutionary tribunal
and before he went to his death he begged forgiveness for the part that he had played so for me he is a hero because he travels the full spectrum of the Revolution and he also takes very clear responsibility for what had happened Roes Pierre is more complicated figure by the end of his life I think he was in no position to be taking
responsibility and for me he also was far more deluded by the end of his life than Danton ever was is there a counterfactual path where the French Revolution simply work out well as a liberal Revolution and if so what would have needed to have been different so in terms of counterfactuals the one I thought most about was what
would have happened if robes Pierre hadn't Fallen at Thermidor and the relationship between him and saus had continued but that's not the Triumph of the liberal Revolution that would have merely been a continuation of the point they had gotten to for a Triumph of the liberal Revolution that would have needed to be much much earlier I think
that it was almost impossible for them to get a liberal constitution in place in time to make that a possibility so what you have is 1789 the liberal aspirations the hopes the Declaration of Rights and then there is almost a Hiatus period in which they are struggling to design the institutions and that is the period
which if it could have been compressed if there could have been more quickly a stability introduced some of the people are most interested in in that period were very interested in what has to be true about the society in order for it to have a stable Constitution but obviously when you're in the middle of a revolution and you're struggling to come
up with those Solutions then there is the opening to chaos was crane Brinton correct that all revolutions impose some kind of period of puritanism I think that depends on what you mean by puritanism if you mean something approaching political fanaticism or a moralistic expectation of not just the people participating in the revolution
but also those in whose name the revolution is being carried out then yes absolutely that is a a necessary part of the revolution is that what you meant by Puritan yes so you see it after the Russian Revolution for instance Roes Pierre who seems quite rigid right he rises to power he's not that old he's
not really a member of the previous Elite and why is it other than his ability to give a lot of ideological speeches does he become at least for a while the apparent leader well you're talking about a very very short space of time I mean that was the thing that struck me most working on his life you could say there was
elements of luck and timing involved in that he did have a very distinctive rhetoric the rhetoric of speaking for the people of sacrificing his personal interest for those of the people that was powerful in the circumstances it resonated with some of his fellow revolutionaries but really think when you look at the period and you
reconstruct it on a day by day week by week month by month basis what you understand is this is a tremendous Scrabble and his ascendancy was always insecure I don't think it's correct to ever describe him as a tyrant he's basically one of the people struggling to ride that revolutionary wave if we think of the thought of robes Pierre it
seems in some areas he was extremely radical but in other areas such as family and gender he was remarkably conservative arguably more conservative than the status quo exante what's the principle that delineates where he becomes radical and where he becomes conservative it's much easier for him and I think for everybody else to be
radical in opposition so in the early years of the Revolution he is an Ardent critic of those people who are trying for examp example to defend some kind of distinction between active and passive citizens he's an advocate of more public surveillance of the debates he's a pioneer he's definitely a radical at
that point once he is himself in power once he is trying to stabilize the revolution then he becomes much less radical he's basically recognizing the need to impose order because he is now on the inside he is a person who has taken on the role and the responsibility for trying to impose order on the revolution why were the Jacobins in
general so male obsessed it's a very male movement ideologically there's not much talk about freedom for women for all the changes that were made it seems reactionary on that issue well certainly you have other intellectuals who identify themselves in the opposing group The jir cond for example who right from the very
beginning is fighting the gender distinctions I mean he is the person who says very very clearly straight off from the Declaration the universal Declaration of the rights of man and citizen it makes absolutely no sense not to extend these to women but he's arguing in a context where there are the usual excuses for not doing that so you
have very forward thinking members of the jacoban party saying well you know in principle we would like to do this but you know now is not the time you know that can wait should we adopt Kray's idea of a mechanical King why did that make sense to him well that's a humorous contribution from him and actually I'm completely with him on that
I have no problem we have these debates in Britain about the role of the Monarch and how important and condo say was like Hey you know you just need an autom mat and you can bring him out or her at Easter and any any other time you feel like Wimbledon or for the football and um it doesn't need to be an actual
person I think he was obviously being very sort of witty but he's a republican he's one of the first to come out as a straightforward Republican how was Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments influential during the terror well that is a really interesting question actually I did some work on this exact topic there were people who
had been influenced by Adam Smith before the Revolution the abbees is one of the most prominent his archive is full of notes and annotations to the theory of moral sentiments um the ab has colleagues and friends who have been influenced by him and they are interested in trying to understand how you think about the stability in a
society that occurs naturally and spontaneously and what the Gap is between that and political order so how you tailor your political institutions to effectively fit with your expectation of spontaneous sociability or social order and definitely they look to Adam Smith K's wife Sophie translates the theory of moral sentiments it's not
quite finished during the terror condos does not survive the terror he dies in prison either a suicide or an assassination but afterwards his widow continues with that translation and the people who do survive and are interested in social theory build on what they think Adam Smith had already understood if we think about 18th
century French thinkers they seem obsessed with the particular theme the notion of what kind of virtue is required for commercial states to persist why is that such an important question at that time they're trying to understand the forms of government that are going to fit with the emerging markets so they are very aware that
International competition for trade is becoming hugely politically important and they want to understand what needs to be true about a society and its political institutions in order to fit with those Market forces as you know France is right next to Switzerland right the Swiss have no king or Queen there are plenty of
reports coming from the Jesuits and others that the Native Americans in the new world typically don't have Kings they might have Chiefs so why wasn't the notion of dispensing with the monarchy more Central to French liberal thought you know leading up to the revolutions the physiocrats they're obsessed with the King right why is the king so
important to the French in the leadup to the revolution it's absolutely right that there are very very few people who even consider that you could get rid of the monarchy in contrast to America they recognize that this is a very wellestablished old monarchy that it's integrated into the society they can see that in America
there has been an opportunity to experiment with a completely new form of government and they recognize that they're not going to have that opportunity in that completely pure re form that they've got a monarchy and they're focused upon reforming it that's the energy that's going into it the physiocrats as you mentioned other
groups for them the question is how do we reform we can take ideas from the Republican tradition we can think about how to maybe come up with some sort of hybrid but essentially for them it's a reform project until Suddenly It's not here's a thinker near and dear to your heart forgive my pronunciation but Pierre Louie roderer why is he still a
political thinker of relevance well he is one of the people I was referring to earlier who really tries to find a political application for some of these ideas of stabilizing the Constitution he's someone who's giving public lectures during the terror and he's really trying to take what his inherit an from the enlightenment which
includes exposure to Adam Smith but also montue Volta Russo as well obviously and he is trying to use those ideas and the landscape of intellectual contributions to actually work through the Practical political problems in the middle of the terror I mean I found that very very interesting but what his theory of
political economy like why is some particular system more stable in his view compared to what others thought how does the model differ he has I would say it's fair to say a very optimistic view of political economy he's a liberal through and through he thinks that you need to facilitate the free markets that
if you do that you will see the principle of work integrate people into a harmonious Society so he and someone exactly contemporary to him Benjamin conon they're both interested in this possibility that actually the free markets are going to really prosper and it will be possible to have stable societies that fit with that very broad
question but if we look at the enlightenment as a whole and not just the French Enlightenment but what is the underlying principle that gives it a un flavor I mean what is Enlightenment to paraphrase k for me it's liberty it's the evaluation of Liberty above all else and I mean I see this most in toille because
he is obviously first generation who has no personal memories of the Revolution but when he looks back on the Revolution and he tries to explain what has happened and in fact to explain not just the beginnings of democracy in France but also of course in America he sees a fundamental conflict between Liberty and equality and he is always prioritizing
if he can Liberty whilst expecting that equality will win out as the stronger value was Hayek correct that the French Enlightenment theorists were too rationalistic assigned to strong a power to human reason and thus inevitably were LED down a kind of slippery slope where their Liberty was self- undercutting and
that the British imperius tradition is far as Superior agree or disagree I disagree with that actually I don't think you can be too rational in that regard I'm a real signed up Enlightenment person I think you have to be very careful about thinking there I mean I recognize of course there are limits to reason and
what it can achieve I think Edmund Burke was exactly right about that a profound political thinker but I ultimately I think we have to be very careful about accepting in the first instance that there are limits to what reason can achieve that's where I disagree with Burke I mean I have more Sympathy for the revolutionaries and what they were
trying to do than he did are the origins of today's woke and cancel culture found in the French Revolution I don't think the origins of it are I think there are resonances and I think that's a very important difference I think you can definitely look at the Revolutionary rhetoric the prescription of certain views and the
radical attempt in the French Revolution to cancel the past I mean this was absolutely explicit right down to changing the calendar they said we do not want to continue with this oppressive framework that we have inherited from the church and therefore we are going to have a new calendar based upon the natural world and Etc and
and and that's just one example of the determined attempt to cancel what was by the revolutionaries perceived as inextricably oppressive past so of course it's very interesting to use the Revolution as a prism you can look at it you can see what happened as a result of that you can think about the resonances but I don't think what we see today is
directly related or in any sense caused by that what do you think of the common criticism of Napoleon that he lacked diplomatic talent and always had to make up for that with Battlefield Advantage I think that's part of the anti-napoleonic kind of group he's a very divisive figure you're going to have people who attempt to diminish him
that would be one way to say you know this guy is basically some kind of yob you know he can't negotiate he doesn't even have great French and therefore he has to start going for battles I don't think that's right I think he absolutely does diplomacy and you could argue that a lot of the battles are started by
other people not necessarily by him but what we're hitting here the moment we bring his name up is the very very polarized attitudes to him now if we view Napoleon's life through his Gardens which is a main theme in your new book Napoleon a LIF told in gardens and shadows what do we learn about Napoleon
that we don't learn by viewing Napoleon through the lens of his artistic am missions David kova many others what's the difference by situating him in the gardens I broaden the cast list so of course you could look at him and his influence on the Arts the high Arts David Canova they enter into my book but so does a whole cast of lesser known
literally more downto Earth people botanist scientists other people in his household Architects Etc and the point really was to have a broadcast but a principle of selection as well which would enable a more diverse set of perspectives on him there's a common stereotype of the differences between English and French Gardens that the
English supposedly like Gardens to be wild diverse spontaneous the French insist on a kind of top- down control almost a mirror PX portrait of the thinkers is that overdrawn or do you agree I think it was in that period a very definite difference there was a fashion for picturesque English style Gardens which actually also Drew upon an
Italian and Chinese inheritances is not just that it's English but it became known as the English style and it became very popular in France in contrast to the formal and regulated style which was associated with traditional French Gardens especially in very Grand places by the time you get to the end of
your John Aubrey book which is called my own life titled by you you describe Aubrey as and I quote a wonderful friend could you say the same about Napoleon absolutely not and by the way that description of Aubrey is picking up on my first book with robes Pierre where at the very beginning of the book I say that he has friends and enemies even to
this day like Napoleon he's a very very divisive figure and that I had tried to be his friend to see things from his point of view but that friends as he always suspected have opportunities for betrayal that enemies only dream of and actually my editor was quite nervous about this was my first book and she was
very nervous about me putting that sentence into my introduction because she thought people might just think this was a mad to try and be robes Pier's friend and I insisted I really mattered to me that if you give someone the benefit of the doubt if you don't start off vilifying them even if they have been responsible for the terror then the
portrait that you construct at the end of the day is going to be far far more damning because you've included the good you've included the things that there are to approve of you've included those sides and you haven't started off basically telling people you know we're going to write a book from this particular position so when it came to
Aubrey I had obviously a huge contrast in topics for these books Aubrey was a wonderful friend and I felt felt that being in his company I had actually and this is literally true made new and wonderful friends through him because he still continues to attract friends he is just that kind of charming guy you know
and nobody's really going to say this about Roes Pier or Napoleon but Napoleon did charm people right that was part of how he rose to success he absolutely did charm people but there's something I quote in my book that I I keep thinking about uh which Madame gal said about him which is that his eyes and his smile
were never actually synchronized and she said people have said he had a charming smile but actually it was more like a Grimace it wasn't a genuine smile and you could see he was kind of calculating what he was going to need or how he was going to you know Advance his purposes through this person she takes a very very negative view of him and she says
you know actually for Napoleon other people don't really exist they are means to an end for him now she had reason to be extremely negative about him but she did represent the Deep liberal voice of the French Revolution and it's very interesting to me that although she says people claim he had a charming smile people claim he was Charming actually
what she sees is manipulation and actually a lot of of power there in so far as We Make History more biographical how would that bias history itself I don't think history can be too biographical because at the end of the day we are interested in people who went before us and understanding the Frameworks of their lives and the
choices they made I think it's important to be as Broad and inclusive in who we are interested in and that is very very important to me certainly was one of the ideas behind the Shadows it was about the people that Napoleon's Shadow fell upon that I began really trying to think about him to get away from the idea that
you know he is the center he's the son he's the ego and that we can think about history as a series of great egos great men obviously that is something I am deeply opposed to and I'm very interested in trying to broaden the biographical approach and many other people are doing this as well which brings me huge pleasure to actually
acknowledge that you know for every one of these iconic figures was situated densely amongst other people whose lives were actually as important to them as Napoleon or robes Pi was to them what makes gaines's essays and biography so good so this a biography of Marshall of malus right yeah sure the Versa figures
why does that book work so well I'm sorry so I have not read that book very recently I I have read it in the past so I wouldn't like to tell you as one biographer speaking to another what he does so what do you think works so well KES puts himself into the book he was remarkably perceptive as an observer of features he knew and with the other
Cambridge economists such as malus and Marshall you can read kan's account as a running rivalry that he's afraid to admit up front but he's always comparing himself to them and the straussian reading of that book is that half of it is about Gaines yeah I think that's absolutely right and I don't have any kind of problem with that you could say
is he explicit enough about that I mean perhaps since CES we've reached a state of biographical writing where people feel Freer to be more honest about that to actually highlight it to say you know I very much approve of the idea that the biographer is going to present a portrait that they can of whoever so if
kanes is writing about people he feels competitive with he's going to be motivated to do that in a particular way I personally don't feel competitive with my biographical subjects and in so far as I would put myself into the text it is through what I've seen rather than in any sense paralleling their lives and mine I mean Perhaps kan's Perhaps
rightly had a much higher opinion of himself why in Cambridge in particular do you think there's a preoccupation with biography there isn't to be honest there absolutely is not who were you thinking of I mean you well I mean it's very kind of you I don't in Victorian right yeah well Bloomsbury Circle Virginia wolf yeah but
they are Outsiders they are absolutely Outsiders I was so so flattered that one of my friends who read an early draft of my book said she couldn't at first think what it reminded her of and then she suddenly thought it was like Jacob's room and of course it's nothing like Jacob's room in so many ways but I I
know kind of the resonance and thing and the thought that I was in any way building on the deep and profound biographical achievements of Virginia wolf which by the way I think they cross the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction certainly in her case and I'm sure in other people's but she and strich I mean they I see them as
subversive Outsiders I don't see them as Cambridge and I don't think they would have seen themselves like thought do you find it striking how much Virginia wolf is no longer known for her writings on biography and she wrote herself quote even Dr Johnson as created by Boswell will not live as long as FAL staff as
created by Shakespeare is that true and if biography is not so enduring why is it so important because it is about how we understand another life for me it's a relationship I mean it is trying to find the form in which to capture something that you have been able to see in another life I think that you're right you know people do know that Virginia
wolf is very interested in biography they know for example clearly you know that Orlando is one of the greatest experimental essays on biography and many of her other writings I mean they're so rich and very numerous maybe we should be more optimistic I mean perhaps people are very engaged with this I really hope so she means an
enormous amount to me should we worry that possibly biography especially long biography is the least read genre today relative to purchases so people will buy a biography of Eisenhower Theodore Roosevelt they put it on their shelf it signals something about what kind of person they are but they don't read very much of it if any does biography have
that problem more than history or fiction or smart non-fiction I doubt it that kind of person probably buys the pullets of Prize winners and and puts them on their Shelf ready for their guests to arrive and as an author well good luck to them if that's how they want to furnish their rooms then that's absolutely fine by me I think one of the
concerns is with Publishers and their fear about biography now you know that people will not invest in reading a long life and perhaps it's difficult for writers to get these books commissioned writers in general are struggling very much indeed to survive I mean you know I have an academic job I could not
possibly live off my writing I need to have another job I'm fortunate that I do I think perhaps there are Publishers who would be reluctant to give even a small advance to what they saw as a traditional biography and you can't the problem with biography is it's hard to win I mean you come along and you say oh
I would like to write about robespier and they say well surely there's enough books on robespier we want you know we don't need another Napoleon book we don't need another robes Pier book we have many many biographies of them already and then you come along and you say I'd like to do a biography of John Aubry and they're like who's that I mean
nobody's going to buy that because nobody knows who he is so it's very difficult to pitch the biographical project you've either got to be saying listen nobody's heard of this woman or this guy and I'm going to write the book that changes that and maybe someone will take a punt on it or not or you've got to convince someone listen I know this
has been done before but I want to bring something new to the table well that's a tall order actually it's probably easier to just sit there and write your novel and hope that somebody likes it enough to publish it I went to Arlington County Public Library this morning and there they have it a separate section called
biographies and in that section are all the biographies and that's actually a funny kind of segregation should they do that I think about that in bookshops a lot I'm not sure I think it's better to integrate them with the history books I mean I don't want to tell other people either how to do their jobs I mean you
know sometimes I go into a bookstore or a library and I'm thinking what is this you know why is it organized that way maybe there's something I'm not seeing but I'm always very disappointed if I go to the biography section because apart from anything else it kind of looks so Random you know it's just like the recent biographies and jumping between
periods and I think it would be much more interesting to have at least with the historical biography is them integrated by period that's what I would do but I mean I'm not running a bookstore or a library as you may know daunt books in London in fact organized as by country so a biography of Napoleon
is in the France section that to me seems much better da is a wonderful Bookshop I'm very grateful to D and indeed to many other bookstores as well one good thing is that bookstores are having some Independence and creativity on an individual level especially the independent ones they can put unusual combinations together they can
experiment a bit more I think that's very very valuable which other historical figure if you would name one might we understand better through the lens of is her Gardens oh wow that's a very interesting question cdge Hardy Kipling Newton Churchill someone else I mean Hardy I don't think we'd understand him better
I've been to Hardy's Cottage I've seen the remnants there of what must have been his garden it is a very interesting question but the point here is that the method the idea of doing it this way came from the material not the other way around so it's difficult for me because I didn't actually someone asked me the same question about my Aubrey book they
said okay so if you were going to imagine a diary based on the historical evidence for another figure who would that be and I was just like well I can't answer that because I invented that approach to fit Aubrey and actually even now in Napoleon I think if you said to me well your next book has to be in the
same mode you have to do another figure and has to be through their Gardens I would really struggle with that now in most of these conversations we have a middle segment called underrated versus overrated are you ready for some of that okay okay IAH said something montue overrated or underrated as a thinker underrated he's my desert island choice
I love the spirit of the laws and what is the depth in there that most people fail to see they don't read it it's huge that's one reason for it being a desert island montue is a brilliant brilliant man he's a true true liberal and I absolutely adore that text and he's also one I think he's probably in France the
very earliest social scientist as well Stonehenge as a monument overrated or underrated you know it's a megalith right Stonehenge could never ever be too overrated it is so important and I am part of the dismayed group of people who are having to fight and trying to fight this plan to sink a tunnel under Stonehenge and cause God knows what kind
of Destruction I mean it's really really terrible and the idea that we would do this to those megaliths that we have actually so fortunately and largely also with help in some very important respects for aubury they're part of our posterity I can't believe that we would underrate them enough to be doing this road traffic
system Tom stoppard's Arcadia the play I love Tom stoppard's plays and especially Arcadia that's my favorite that's absolutely brilliant play everything's underrated here's another easy one abely everything's underrated the composer Robin Holloway he has the office downstairs I know of course Robin Holloway should be
much much more famous and much much more rated actually he is pretty rated he doesn't have a bad time compared by the way to a lot of musicians and composers um very often he has a prom you know this guy has attention but I think he should have more dist try the French ideologue overrated or underrated also underrated I love him too he's a very
important figure in continuing the development of social science in that early period After the Revolution I mean obviously you can criticize some of his ideas but for me without him compt and Simo they don't even make sense okay here's maybe the only tricky one Oxford the town yeah yeah exactly yeah okay you don't have to be
polite on this podcast you know yeah okay so I in in itely prefer living in Cambridge why it's the way the river goes through the center of the city for me water is very important to me it's the way the colleges back onto the river my college for example is divided by the river so we have some on one side some
on the other I think at a certain level it reminds me of Paris a little bit whereas Oxford you have to go slightly hunting you know that it's there of course but it seems more peripheral to the city it City seems closer to to London and the other thing that's interesting is in Cambridge the colleges house all of their student even our
graduate student we have a lot of investment in doing that whereas in Oxford they don't um not even their undergraduates and that means that there is a huge Market in basic kind of landlords who are making money out of the students they are housing them in very very shabby accommodation it's you know really run down Lots of Oxford even
quite Central Oxford for this reason and I think that does make a big difference so I think the colleges and their approach to looking after the housing of the undergraduates in Cambridge is actually a big contribution here now you've reviewed a great deal for the Times literary supplement we live in an internet driven world and although
there's online TLS it doesn't actually circulate that much the links are not always open how would you articulate how how and why the TLs remains important today well it's partly the readership it's interesting academics all over the world really really care about their reviews in the TLs I remember my supervisor explaining this to me you
know you can be in a university in Israel and your book comes out it really matters what happens to the book in the TLs in a way in which arguably doesn't so much matter in the broad sheets or the litery magazines so I think that's one argument there's that sense of you know it's not peer review it's better
than peer review because peer review is always so fraught and you know you're basically trying to find people to find fault or something there's a certain amount of that in the TLs but there is also a platform for an International Exchange of ideas and books and you know noting I mean when I started writing for
the TLs I was and I still do a lot of fiction for them and sometimes that would be the only review that a first novel would get and then maybe that person went on to write other things and you look back on that and you think well yeah you know the TLs was I remember Mary K Wilmer once saying to me because she was obviously the London Review of
Books and she had previously worked at the TLs and she said that what she really valued in the TLs was was that it was a journal of record and I think that's right why is Elena fante special to you like you know millions of other people I was completely captivated by the quartet the brilliant friend in ways
in which I almost haven't been since childhood reading I'm kind of nervous to go back and read those books because I had the most intense immersive experience with them and then I read her other shorter fiction and I'm reading her in Translation obviously by the way but she's a terrific writer she reflects upon language the power of language
deeply deeply feminist I was absolutely enthralled by discovering her on a second read they held up quite well for me but I would say one and two Rose in status and three and four fell a bit yeah I can imagine that I haven't done it yet so I don't know but that makes sense you know there is a recent machine learning study that suggests
they were written by a man Domo ston may or may not be true but it's plausibly true I find that disturbing as a thought but I I didn't see this study I did follow the outing of her and all of the controversy around the fact she had wished her real name not to be public ston is the husband of the woman who was outed yeah I'm not really on board with
this IDE at all apart from finding it disturbing I would need very very strong proof to even start engaging with that and is there any proof do you believe in machine learning I don't know a computer says it's the same style take that as you wish I'm going to be passing over that now a few questions about the Ruth
skar production function for our final segment in one of your essays on finel which is the house you work in you said and I quote I am attracted to calm order and symmetry if so why write a biography of Napoleon why well he's attracted to Symmetry and Order maybe not calm but actually I think he does like calm when he can get it but I'm talking there
aesthetically about my surroundings I kind of have a real aversion to a lot of clutter around me I mean one of the reasons I have so many books here in my office is is that I made a deal with myself when I bought my first house that I would only have books in it that I was either working on or would want to read
if I came awake in the middle of the night and that's it and that's because I didn't want that sense of being overwhelmed by books and then being kind of out of control Etc so sometimes people are very surprised when they come to my house and they're like well where are your books you know what have you thought you Etc but there was something
about maintaining a orderly environment that was very important I mean to be fair in that article I mean I have caused chaos in finel in my office in order to have this calm environment at home you also wrote and I quote when I was an adolescent weaing Heights appealed to me much more than Sense and Sensibility but now the reverse is true
yeah how did that happen age thank God why does age flip you away from weathering Heights OH weing Heights it's over the top right High passion you know Heath cler Cathy out on the malls I mean I thought that was it you know I thought that was what it meant to love someone would to the extent where they'd be
visiting you after their death and you know trying to get in through the window but actually I completely changed my understanding of what's involved in loving another person and actually being gentle with another person whoever they are you know my children my relation ships with my parents and other
significant relationships in my life I think the weaing heights model has not weathered well how has continuing to live in Cambridge shaped how you think speaking of environment it's an enormous privilege to have spent so much time living here and to have brought up my children here I mean they do in all seriousness my younger one now is
applying to University and she's like oh my God you know why did you bring us up in Cambridge I mean we don't want to go anywhere else we love it so much how has it helped how I think I constantly making new friends in Cambridge it's a very vibrant and also to a certain extent transient place people come they come for a year they come for 3 years
I've really have benefited from having the contacts through my college as well interdisciplinary I good friends with scientists engineers and I kind of feel I'm living alongside their work as well as my work and trying to understand it as best I can who first spotted your talent as a historian before you were a
historian oh I don't know but you ended up in your current job somehow right yeah sure sure yeah I mean I have a combination I mean Talent as a historian is a very specific question I mean I would say there would be some of my fiercer colleagues who would be happy to recognize my talent as a biographer and
as a writer I remember my supervisor saying to me he was a brilliant brilliant man isvan hunt Hungarian he came to Harvard and who was absolutely a huge intellectual influence on me and I remember him once saying to me when I would give him drafts of my work he say well you know you've got this big disadvantage Ruth because you write so
well that it takes me quite a long time to realize that you actually don't know what you're talking about that was his contribution so I would say he perhaps but you know there are many different kinds of history and the first real deep support for my robespier book came from Norman hampson who was a brilliant
historian and had written an experimental book about robes pier in his time and we had a very important Exchange about that so perhaps he was the first to really engage with what I was trying to do as a historian as well as as a biographer and let's say a talented young person a prospective biographer comes to you and they say well I'm
thinking of having a life where I'm essentially a biographer with some other job attached maybe in Academia and you're trying to figure out does this person make sense as a biographer other than the obvious hard work intelligence what is it you look for in a good or great biographer to spot one you got to
be brave and completely open in my view to finding the form in which to tell the life you can't go in there with a workmanlike attitude saying well you know I'm going to do Cradle to grave or I'm going to do it this way you've got to somehow connect and resonate with the life and then things will develop from that that would be my advice but you
know I'm not teaching biographical writing I'm not sure I would be particularly good at that I have friends who teach creative writing and I always kind of had the deepest respect for it but I can't begin to imagine how you do it so I always think of Muriel Spark's novel the finishing school which was her last novel where she sends up a creative
writing course and it's so so brilliant it's one perfect first paragraph and she's explaining how you you know in the voice of the creative writer teacher you got to set the atmosphere you can say you know the visibility is very poor etc etc and she says you know it's much too early to write everything was covered by
the beep fog and what do you do personally to stay open as a biographer if that's such an important trait I wait for my subjects to find me in a strange way I'm open to Jumping between periods centuries kinds of lives I have a kind of adventurous approach to what I might do next I feel very privileged to be
able to pursue that I remember when I finished my ropes Pier book and I decided I was going to do this aubre book and I was still married to my first husband and he was very kind about it but I think he thought I'd actually gone crazy I mean I think he thought this was so inexplicable and lots of people do still say that to me how could you what
on Earth you know why did you make that jump why didn't you do one of s hust why didn't think or even if I'd gone from Roeser to Napoleon okay that would have been a certain kind of conventional path but that is not what happened and I have absolutely no regrets about that last question what is it you will be working
on next I can't tell you it's too wild I think but you know what it is right I suspect what it is I have to find out if that's going to happen or not I thought I was going to have a big gap I just got married and I thought okay we came through the pandemic and I'm going to have a long rest now my children are pretty much grown up I'm starting this
new life but then suddenly I'm starting to think quite seriously about another book Ruth skir thank you very much and again everyone I loved Ruth's latest book Napoleon a LIF told in gardens and shadows I'm also a big fan of John Aubrey my own life also by Ruth and finally her robes Pierre biography fatal Purity robes Pierre and the French
Revolution Ruth thank you thank you Tyler thank you thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the show [Music]