GREGOR FISHER

Churchill: Walking With Destiny – Andrew Roberts Me – Katharine Hepburn My wife loves pageturners but my books are much fatter and take much longer to read. I’m not a great man for the novel, I’m more of a biography person. I’ve just read Andrew Roberts’ version of Churchill – and I say version because you never quite know unless you’ve met the man. I also tried reading Roberts’ biography of Napoleon but only got halfway through and thought it quite tedious; it was all about the formations at Austerlitz and endless battle formations.

Roberts’ Churchill biography was a different matter altogether – he really got under the man’s skin and I just couldn’t put it down. It was fascinating. It wasn’t a dry history, and was strangely full of gossipy stuff – like who he was having affairs with – which I thought was a bit rotten. I still read it though.

Roberts’ book changed my view about Churchill but then everything I hear about Churchill changes my view of him. I loved the passage where he says to Harry Truman that: ‘I wish I had been born in America because America is the place to be; Britain’s gone, finished.’ I thought: ‘Really? Churchill said that!’

But Churchill was a mixture, like so many aristocrats. He was the son of an American heiress shipped in to bolster the fortunes of the Blenheim lot, but I thank god because that’s what won us the war, isn’t it? If it wasn’t for the Americans we’d all have been speaking German by now, wouldn’t we?

Churchill’s contradictions were enormous: he believed in a European superstate but the ramifications of his terrible treatment of De Gaulle during the war had a direct effect on De Gaulle’s treatment of Harold MacMillan when he was trying to get into the Common Market, when De Gaulle reduced him to tears because he was buggered if he was going to let the Brits into his private club after the way Churchill had treated him. It’s personal, isn’t it; everything’s personal, that’s what you learn from reading biographies. Somebody snubbed somebody, and on it goes. Putin felt snubbed by the West so he is determined to teach us a lesson.

I also re-read the best biography I’ve ever read, which is Katharine Hepburn’s Me. It basically told you nothing but told you everything. It was a fascinating read because you thought she was going to talk about Spencer (Tracey) in a minute but she never did – or she did, but she didn’t really. I suppose she was that generation, people didn’t kiss and tell in those days. I first read it on a flight from New York and it didn’t last the flight. When I bought it I just needed something to read and I was vaguely interested, but after the first chapter I just couldn’t put it down. It was absolutely fascinating.

Actor Gregor Fisher plays the title role in Rab C Nesbitt, and has also appeared in Para Handy, Love Actually and 1984.