Margaret MacMillan

My guest on this episode is Margaret MacMillan. Margaret is a historian and author whose bestselling books include The War That Ended Peace; Nixon and Mao; Women of the Raj; and Paris 1919. She is emeritus professor of History at the University of Toronto, where she served as Provost of Trinity College, and an emeritus professor of International History at Oxford University, where she served as Warden of St Antony’s College. Her work has won numerous awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, a Governor General's Literary Award, and the Duff Cooper Prize. In 2015 she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Her most recent book, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, was published by Allen Lane in 2020 and was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize. The Guardian called War a “hugely readable chronicle of conflict.”

Margaret and I talk about the current alarming state of international relations, about her drive to write historical works that can be read and understood by non-historians, and about the Canadian short-story writer whose biography she would love to write.

This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.