Historian and biographer Sir Alistair Horne takes us on a wonderfully entertaining and evocative journey through his life from childhood as a wartime evacuee in America, to periods as a soldier, spy and journalist, and to his eventual career as a historian and biographer. But What Do You Actually Do? is the title of the second volume of Sir Alistair’s memoirs, and he answers the question with a fascinating account of his adult life.

Along the way, Sir Alistair delights with portraits of the many entertaining and well-known characters he both befriended and lined up against. These include the likes of Harold MacMillan, whose biography he wrote, and George W Bush, who invited him to the Oval Office to talk about his book on the Franco-Algerian conflict, A Savage War of Peace. Sir Alistair was knighted in 2003 for services to Franco-British relations and also holds the French Legion d’Honneur for his work on French history. Here he talks to Peter Conradi, a journalist with The Sunday Times and co-author (with Mark Logue) of The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy.