In this special crossover edition of Secrets of Statecraft and Uncommon Knowledge, I interview historian Andrew Roberts, Baron of Belgravia. Roberts explains why great individuals still shape history—and why Winston Churchill remains history’s ultimate example. Roberts also confronts attacks on Churchill’s record, explains Britain’s decision to fight Hitler in 1940, and discusses tyranny, Brexit, socialism, immigration, Donald Trump, and Britain’s future. Roberts also despairs of the decline of literacy and historical memory, and reveals both the world leaders he admires today and the source of his own podcast’s title, derived from Winston Churchill’s enduring advice: “Study history, for therein lie all the secrets of statecraft.”

My brother and I got into a discussion the other day, and we disagreed a bit. The Lindsay Clancy trial prompted the conversation. The discussion centered around the claim of “insanity,” for lack of a better term, and the allegations that one juror didn’t want to follow the judge’s instructions, resulting in a mistrial. Though only loosely familiar with the details of the Clancy case, I have some experience with deliberations over this controversial defense.

Some years ago, I was on a jury trial and even served as the foreman. The facts of the case were as follows: an individual stole a police car late one night and drove it around until finally the police found him, began following him, and attempted to pull him over. As soon as the police turned their lights on, he took off, driving at a high rate of speed until he crashed the car in a field. Fortunately for him, nobody was hurt, not even himself.

I recently wrote about the wretched experience of trying to access a medical referral by using a medical portal that required various security gyrations, which in turn would grant me access to yet another portal with a fresh set of requirements before I could have a look at the actual referral.

Alas, the first portal’s requirements proved too much, and I had to abandon the effort because I can only spend so much time coming up with a password that requires 16 characters, an Egyptian hieroglyph, the maiden name of my third-grade teacher’s mother-in-law, an unpublished Hemingway manuscript, and one character not currently recognized by any code known to man, before going full Lizzie Borden on an iMac. 

Besides, my doc needed some information from a previous doctor in another city, and I happened to have stumbled on the contact information for that doctor. So I looked at a couple of paper documents, scanned them in and emailed them to the guy and asked him for more information that I could provide to my current doctor. The result? Silence.   

It’s 9/11 again. And I could be morose… again. Friends of terrorists are ascendant. Friends of the West are written off as Islamophobes and white supremacists. But I’ll steal a lyric from Leftist David Crosby’s Almost Cut My Hair … “I’m not giving in an inch to fear. ‘Cause I promised myself this year. And I feel, like I owe it … to someone.”

So instead of gloom and doom, I’m celebrating the liberation of Vienna from a 140,000-strong Ottoman Army on Sept 12, 1683. Vienna had been under siege for months. The Ottoman Empire was trying…again…to kick in the back door to Europe, and Vienna was all that barred the door. Finally, a relief army arrived, commanded by King Jan Sobieski of Poland. The iron fist of that army was the Polish heavy cavalry, the Winged Hussars. Calling the Winged Hussars an anachronism is being kind. Recall, 1683 is squarely in the age of gunpowder. There were more than 200 cannons at Vienna. But the Winged Hussars were old-school mounted armored knights. They were slow, expensive, and very much a one-trick-pony. You’d get no reconnaissance, harassment of the enemy, scavenging for supplies, or lightning flank maneuvers from the Winged Hussars. They did one thing and one thing only — they broke massed infantry.

The relief army arrived outside Vienna on the morning of Sep 12th. Units engaged as they came up on the field and remained on the fighting ground all day with no clear victor. Then the Winged Hussars arrived. If you have seen the Lord of the Rings films and watched the Ride of the Rohirrim scenes, you have some idea of what it was like. Director Peter Jackson was inspired by the history of what happened at Vienna when the Winged Hussars hit the massed Ottoman infantry at the gallop, with 16-foot lances extended. It was over in 20 minutes. 

On one hand, one looks at the pro-Islamist mayors of two great Western cities, London and New York. One looks at the blunt antisemitism embraced by elites and Ivy League schools, at the portrayal of Israel in the mainstream media, and at the post-liberal discourse enthusiastically preaching the decline of the United States. Twenty-five years later, it is hard not to think that Bin Laden and company mostly won. Had someone shown them this outcome at the time, they would probably have considered their sacrifice a great bargain, costs included.

For 25 years, CAIR and other American Muslims have, with considerable success, promoted the idea that the prevailing message of 9/11 is that it would be Islamophobic to tar Islam with any semblance of blame for the mass murder on 9/11 carried out by Arab Muslims in the name of Islam. It is statistically indisputable that the vast majority of Muslim American citizens are not in any way currently involved in terrorism or violence; therefore, as we are told, any imputation of fault to Islam would be unfair. We even permitted a mosque to be included in the building that replaced the Twin Towers.

We are also told that any Quranic suras calling for violence apply only to long-past historical contexts and that violent jihad is only permissible in self-defense and even that jihad really means a personal struggle for a deeper spiritual life. Oddly enough, millions of Muslims (including the 9/11 terrorists) have apparently misinterpreted their defining texts for centuries. Was the violent conquest of much of the Christian world, the destruction of tens of thousands of Christian churches and synagogues, the enslavement of millions (probably 14 million mostly European Christians and 10 million Africans) all just pre-emptive self-defense in search of a deeper spirituality or perhaps merely an honest and forgivable misreading of the Quran and the Hadith?

This isn’t a 9/11 story, but it kinda is. I am over the fact that I came so close to dying on that day. I was supposed to be on United flight 175 to LA on that beautiful cloudless Tuesday morning. I made that flight many times for work. My customer this time was east of Fresno, so the plan was to fly to LA and drive up. I hated flying on Mondays. It was only a couple of hours more than flying to San Francisco. My customer was beyond pissed. He was ready to send the machines back. I was the engineering manager, so I had to go. But I refused to go. I insisted on going on vacation instead. My boss said any of us, including me, could be replaced. I told him to do what he had to do. I took the time off and painted my kitchen. Listening to God is the only reason why I am here to write this today at 12:48 AM on September 11, 2026.

The gate at Logan Airport was always the same. It changed a lot since then, but UA175 was all the way down the end of the Terminal C hall, then turn right all the way to the end. I have nightmares about the morning I didn’t have. I got Dunkin coffee, and then I would have run into my classmate Brian Sweeney. We weren’t friends, but I would have recognized him. (Please say a prayer for his family today. PLEASE VIEW THIS LINK.) I know his sister, and I have gotten closer to his older brother over the years since. I have just seen him tonight, and he is the same hollow guy I’ve known for years. It’s sad.

Yes, that is actually what Tucker Carlson and his lunatic guest Jess Elofson concluded recently. Further, they decided that mixing letters with numbers is fake math. Math being a subject Tucker regards Elofson as having “high” knowledge of because he can build a wood kiln. Jess Elofson is a ceramicist, so I’m not sure why we would care about his views on algebra or Jews.

You’ll want to watch the video of the exchange (NSFW). It was so funny, I’ve enjoyed it multiple times.

The horror show that was the Lindsay Clancy trial may be repeated if the civil suit defendants (four psychiatrists, four health care facilities, and three nurse practitioners and therapists) choose to go to trial rather than settle. I have no expertise as to what the standard of care was in this case or whether there was some breach. I do expect that emotional factors will loom larger than legal or medical issues.

My prejudice about psychiatry is that it involves ad hoc mixtures of talking and numerous drugs to an end where, if the patient actually improves with respect to emotional and mental health, then the psychiatrist takes credit, much like a professional rainmaker whose rituals seem effective if it actually rains or like Anthony Fauci expecting to be regarded as the hero who defeated COVID after it faded naturally entirely on its own.

[The following is adapted from the speech I will be making the first day of Rosh Hashanah this weekend]

The world is sick. Humanity is dying out. And this is not because of external forces, but entirely driven by tendencies that, in the big picture, can only be described as broadly suicidal. Individuals, communities, entire nations, and Western Civilization writ large have lost the desire to live. It’s a uniquely modern phenomenon, caused by the conditions of modern life. Survival is no longer hard, and people have generally decided that life is not worth the hassle.

Since at least March 11—more than six months ago—President Trump has repeatedly declared that the United States has already won the Iran War.

“Let me tell you, we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won.”